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We are super chilled, brown around the edges and slimmer already after a week's relaxation at Kovalam. Kovalam in March is entering low-season and is not so busy with tourists. I have been running (6am is the only time cool enough) and swimming. Paul has been eating himself slim. Our wonderful Lonely Planet restaurant has provided the vegetarian diet - Veg. Kadai (mixed veg and cashew nut curry), vegetable sizzlers (spicy rissole, tomato based vegetable curry served in a sizzling cabbage leaf) always followed by Masala tea (spiced with cardamom powder, cinnamon powder, ground cloves, ginger powder, and pepper powder). Apart from our daily meals in LP restaurant we ate at a fish restaurant on the seafront - tiger prawns in a curry sauce, white fish in garlic butter and squid fried in Masala spices. So, you are getting the picture we have done very little apart from enjoy our food and do the beach resort thing. Notable things from the last week were our 40 minute walk in 27 degree heat to Vizhinjam harbour at around 9:30 in the morning to watch the overnight fishing boats return with their catch. The walk was grim - the road there was lined with stinking refuse and Paul walked partway along a beach spattered with red spit marks (chewing tobacco), urine and faeces (human). Vizhinjam is planned to be the main fishing harbour for Kerala - it is a really strange place. The streets are narrow and winding, the tumble down houses are mainly shanty or tiny concrete blocks but the town is dominated by iconic religious buildings (you will already have seen Paul's photos) a huge green Disneyworld Mosque, a bizzare Christian church topped with a concrete boat and Virgin Mary statue and a couple of other mosques and churches - it is like the architectural version of the crusades. A stream of boats speed to the shore and a crowd of people wait to see what they bring in. There is some frantic activity of bartering between the boats and the middle men and women. Some of the fish is sold directly at the harbour - women line the market place with small quantities of fish to sell to the locals and hoteliers. As the fish was so fresh the smell was hardly noticeable. LP restaurant has kept us amused with regular sightings of nature - you have seen the photos of the mongoose, woodpeckers, kingfisher and the snake. One of the waiters was keen to show us a video of a snake on his mobile - we watched the vid of a 4 foot long snake swallowing a fish - it hid its head under a rock so no-one could steal its meal. We continued to watch for around 5 minutes as the fish was squeezed further and further down. Then to our horror the video took a turn for the worst - the staff beat the snake to death with a stick. We had no idea it was to be a snuff video!!
We met a true backpacker in our restaurant - James originally from Boston. He walked in with shaved head and the biggest beard you ever saw. Paul showed him some of his wildlife shots from the restaurant and we got chatting. He is a massive Beatles fan, has been to the Liverpool festival. He was in awe of our accents and tales of where we had lived in Liverpool. He was so full of youthful exhuberance despite his age of 50, such a fun guy, mildy camp, bouncing with the fun of life and the copious quantities of caffeine in his coffee. He regaled us with tales of his travels. He had shaken hands with the Dalai Lama an experience that had him crying his eyes out. He walked everywhere and is seemingly often taken in and looked after by people on his travels. He described a bus journey in Nepal as a scene from Amistad (Steven Spielberg's slave film) which was an hilarious analogy. He stays in places for £1 or £2 a night. We picked up some tips of where to go next - always the best way!
Paul wanted to visit the cape and a tour ran from Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram or Trivandrum or Triv as we call it. We had phoned the tour company who said to just turn up on the day, tours were every day except Sun and Mon at 8am. We tried to book but they assured us it was not necessary. A note on cultural differences - Indians do not like to deliver bad or disapointing news to you, they fib a little rather than let you down. So we arrive Tuesday morning in Triv for the tour - the young man at the tour place was awkward and covered his mouth with his hands as he told us the tour bus was for 23 people not for 2. Paul struggled to understand what he meant - I knew it meant that as it was low season and as only two people wanted the tour it was not going to happen. Despite our wasted 10km journey into town we decided not to be too perturbed and got a couple of local buses to Neyyardam. I love the bus journeys for people watching - the women are dressed to the nines (Liverpool on a Saturday night out?) stunning in gold jewellery, flower decorated hair and vivid saris. Men are dressed in shirts, sarongs and an obligatory moustache (Liverpool circa 1983?). Neyyardam is a wildlife sanctuary - more like a theme park set around the lake created by a dam. The surrounding area is beautiful - rolling forested hills provide a backdrop for the lake. The Indians have not quite got it right though - most of the place is shut up or delapidated. Weird 1950s fibreglass statues of people and animals are placed around the grounds. The forested areas are pretty inaccessible, so you are restricted to a lion safari, a boat trip and a grim looking crcodile enclosure. The lion safari was Rp395 for the two of us (foreigners) and Rp150 for the family of Indian nationals who paid at the same time. They were probably way more affluent than us but such is the two tier pricing system. We got lots of close-ups of the lions - see photos - but they were not in great condition. It would have been great to do some guided treks in the open forest there, but no such luck. The place needs a bit of vision. Varkala next; Seapearl chalets perched on a clifftop. Varkala is another beach resort 50km further north from Kovalam, unlike Kovalam it is not a purpose built tourist resort, it is a thriving temple town. Join us next week for the next thrilling installment!
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