sunday 27/1-08
went to cochin. driving trhough the lower parts of kerala's mountains is liking travelling through the pictures in the jungle book i had when i was a child. it's so grean, and wild, and tangled. love love love!

a very thin guide showed us chinese fishing nets, which seemed very inefficient, but as they still use them after millions of millions (or something) of years i suppose they must be better than they seemed. we also lloked at a museum that used to be home for the maharadjas, and the first mosque in the british commonwealth. now it only had 17 members.

Had an hour to shop in the jew streets. a fantastic place with second hand shops and flee markets and fake antiquities everywhere. (un)fortunately (?) we had most of our money in our suitcase. but i found a couple of brass sighthounds. met a couple from our group and borrowed some money, so i could buy one of them. the busdriver told me about a sighthound breed called "rajapalem" or something, that is bread in tamil nadu. he advised me not to buy one though, because the breed was not good anymore :)

the hotel looks luxurious, but has a very strong smell of mould. from our window we had a view over big new apartment blocks, stores, a refuse dump and a circus. decided to go and have a look at the circus. i expected to see animals to feel sorry for. when passing the refuse dump we noticed that people and children and babies were living among the garbage. the children came running when they saw us, begging for food and pointing at their mouths, running to get babies to hold up in front of us, touching us, laughing, and begging begging begging. it was horrible to know that they were living right outside our luxury hotel, and not even being able to invite them all in for the dinner i didn't even want. on the road beside the dump parents with little girls in princess dresses and boys in t-shirts and jeans were passing by, on their way to and fro the circus. i wonder what it does to the princess girls' minds, growing up with dirty begging children in the garbage dumps as a normality.

in the evening men from cochin cultural centre performed a short version of kathakali at our hotel. kathakali is cool. have to learn more about that. they call it a dance, but i experienced it more as a complicated language.

monday 28/1-08
went to our hotel in kovalam, where we're going to stay a week. our first room was luxurious looking, but smelled of mould (have we heard that one before) and had a not so beautiful view over the sewage. so we changed to a smaller room with lower standards, with a stronger smell of mould and the addition of old cigarette smoke, dysfunctional lamps, only cold water and a door that sometimes wouldn't lock, but with a wonderful view over the sea. and we don't see any poor people from here. so we can sit on our little (!!) balcony (with the door shut, to keep the smell inside) and look at the view and pretend we're on a luxury vacation when we feel like it. and anyway, as long as i have toilet paper i feel like a king :)

tuesday 29/1-08
went for walks. bathed in pools and in the sea. the waves are enormous. almost a bit scary (another sigh of me getting old). when the water is being sucked out to form new waves it is so strong i sometimes fall. and then when the wave comes in it hits you so hard you fall over again. ten years ago i would have loved it! now i think it's a bit scary.

there's some kind of festival going on in the village/town next to the hotel. the drum and shout and sing all day and night, and visit the temple and throw flowers, and boil rice over millions of little fires. i think they said the party was going on for a week.

talked to a man at the hotel who is studying "beach tourism". he owns 500 acres of land in munnar, and is going to start farming tourism. he asked if i would help him with his broshures later on. maybe he was just eing polite, but it would be fun to help.

went to samudra junction to try the internet. it didn't work, so we stayed and wathed the first song of an outdoor concert that was part of the festival. looots of people, from babies to oldies. women and men watched separately, so we stood somewhere in between.

wednesday 30/1-08
read under an umbrella by the pool. the hotel manager asked us to come back around 6 in the evening, to be photographed for the hotel's new website.

walked around a bit after lunch. met a goat and her new born baby. bathed in the sea. scraped my knees and elbows in the sand.

read some more at the hotel, and wathed them prepare for the photo shoot. were photographed. maybe ythe whole world will see us in the background by the pool one day :)

it's cool that the everyday life is going on right in the middle of the tourists and the hotels. fishermen pull of their nets in the mornings, people take their goats out to find food, and take them back home again in the evenings, and there always seems to be one kind of religious ceremony or other going on.

thursday 31/1-08
took the bus to thiruvanantapuram. walking to the bus stop we saw little old women making gravel out of stones, to repair the road. they used hammers and hit the stones into smaller pieces.

at the bus men sat in front, women in the back. only one woman on the men's side. at first i was standing right inside the non-existing door. didn't feel scary, but i doubt it would be allowed in a swedis bus. later i was squeezed down between some women. when we were taking a turn we met some kind of machine working on the road, so the bus went very close to the edge of the road to let it pass. taking that turn was the second time this trip i was convinced we were going to die. the road side ended in a steep slope down to a pond. and the left side of the bus was just about off the road. and the busdriver kept on driving, one short jump at the time. if i wasn't stuck between a big womand with a big bag and the wall i would have jumped out. what made it extra scary was that several of the other passengeres looked nervous too, and either went up the the left window to check how close we were to falling off, or leaving their seets to get to the other side of the bus, to keep most of the weight on the road. but once we had survived the turn the big woman next to me told everyone else how frightened i had been, and they all laughed at me and pretended they didn't find it scary at all :)

the bus took a very small (and quite long) road to the city. in the middle of the road was a thin stripe of asphalt, so that only one set of tyres could be on the asphalt, and the other had to drive in the dry mud. i wonder why they bothered to asphalt at all? maybe it has something to do with the rainy period, and not getting stuck in the mud...

the city was hectic and hot. i still haven't seen a single coca cola ad in this country, and thiruvanantapuram is the capital of kerala. we wondered if we'd see mc donalds in the city. we didn't. nor any other "westernised" resaturant. the restaurants serve rice and spicy stews on banana leaves, that you eat with your right hand. my right hand was dorty, and even the husband wanted to wash before eating, so we waited with lunch til we got back.

found a big shop on four floors, with ac and fixed prices. stayed a long time, to relax, cool off and look at things in peace and quiet. apart from "big bazar" we found no shops that looked like they do at home. the rest of the city was like a gigantic market place. you can find anything in the streets of thiruvanantapuram!

took a rikshaw back. spent the afternoon reading at the beack. after traveling a lot last week it feels nice to just relax a while.

friday 01/02-08
we were going to lighhouse beach , but the man with 500 acres in munnar asked us to stay, so i could have a free beauty treatment and be photographed for the new webpage. so we stayed and read by the pool. as it was cloudy and windy we thought that would be ok. later we noticed it wasn't. we were both red.

had my pictures taken in the beauty parlor. strongly doubt they will look even the slightest bit ok. had an ugly towel thing around my head to keep my hair away, and another dirty towel to keep my clothes from being stained. hopefully they focues on the beautyfying woman :) whatever it was she put in my face it made my forehead sting and itch. she said i could come back anytime i wanted for another free treatment. don't know if i will... but maybe it would be rude not to.

there was a guru conference going on at the hotel, with lots of thin men with very long bears and long dressed walking around looking cool.

walked to lighthouse beach after lunch. did some chopping. bought tailor made clown trousers. first time of my life i buy something especially made for me :)

had dinner at a restaurant by the sea. they didn't have permission to serve alcohol, so they served it in tea cups and placed the opened bottles on the floor. i don't like beer, but if i did i would definitely want it from a tea cup. talked to a nice couple from switzerland. the woman was originally from sweden. this was their ninth trip to india, but they would never come here again. it had become too dirty.

walked back in darkness. hit my toe in a rock. it started to bleed :( met a litter of pups walking around by the rocks. bought coca cola, water and beer from a little old woman. we only bought the beer because she asked us whisperingly if we wanted one, and we got it very well wrapped up in newspaper.

my very short and limited experience of kerala so far is that it's a mixture of everything.
smells of shit, dirty water, food, flowers, perfumes, rot, fish
sounds of horns, traffic, music, drums, talking, birds, and here in kovalam the waves from the arabic sea
jews, hindus, christians, sikhs, muslims
beggars, big modern flashy hotels, garbage, goats, cars, buses, rikshaws, latrines, long colourful sarees, westernised youngsters with jeans, hand painted trucks, elephants, cows, children with bells around their feet
i love it all  ¶ 9:51 AM