Blue Marine Guest House Varkala

... She tells me to get naked and to lie on the bed in the concrete room. Luxury is not bothered with here, only the basic necessities. As she stares me down, I take my clothes off, a bit perturbed by her lack of sensitivity. But alas, I am comfortable with nudity, going to unisex saunas in the Netherlands and nudist beaches, so I soon forget about it. If she previously lacked sensitivity, she went to town giving the massage. Soon I was covered in smelly brown herby oil, her ...

... week. We spent a lot of time sittting outside our hut watching a pair of coucal (jungle cuckoos) building a nest. We watched kites and dolphins and fishing boats under a palm tree inhabited by a chameleon. We also met a lot of lovely people, both Indian and foreign, so that it became harder and harder to leave, but we managed it eventually, and the next blog should be with you tomorrow or the day after, from Kumarakom, where we are hoping to see lots of flapping things.

... but what would I do if they were?" When the pool attendant didn't take any notice I reasoned that there wasn't anything amiss but it is somewhat disconcerting to be somewhere where there is actually some reason to pay attention to gun shot sounds. A reminder that we are so fortunate to live in part of the world where orchard air guns meant to scare away birds don't make people duck for cover. Varkala has a rather nice beach side ...

... palm, which is on average is 25 metres high, lets drop it's 2 kilogram coconut, it hits your unsuspecting soft skull at about 80 kilometres an hour which makes for a force of about 1000 kilograms, scary stuff! We are going to have to remember this whilst we sit under swaying palms knocking back lemon mint drinks and seafood sizzlers on the cliff. The tree climbing guys slurped the refreshing juice in glee then one of them offered me half a coconut to take on my way ...

... There were thousands of people waving their red hammer & sickle flags and they find it quite amusing that we've joined them. Power to the people. We checked into a town center hotel and had a day walking around town taking in the sights and lots of photos. The people here are amazingly friendly and there's absolutely no hassle. In the evening we ...

... so far. Kanyakumari in state Tamil Nadu, the most southern tip of India, where the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea meets, is a important pilgrim place for the hindus. It's a nice, quite touristic but quiet town. At south tip there is a memorial of some Indian philosopher and a huge statue on two separate islands. The boat ride there took only five minutes, but because of the enormous waves we were quite wet when arrived there. Nothing like the waves on finnish seas :) We were ...

... you know that the highlight of their day is when they get to practice their English on a Westerner. I politely answer and hold myself back from screaming "I just want to pee man, not get stuck in a conversation about my life story". I've been trying to have fun with it to break the monotony and tell them anything that comes to my head as I start to walking away from them, but even that's getting old. oh well, I realize if the Indians overly friendly nature is the worst ...

... the southwestern coast of India. Actually I had been thinking of going to Cochin in Kerala for some time. So when Raj offered me a ride along with some of his friends (they were going to a friends wedding) I naturally accepted. The drive to Cochin took around 12 hours since we ended up doing a major detour. All the time Rajs friends in the car were talking on the phone with their soon to be married friend - he was a bit annoyed since we kept running ...

... a couple of hours and very excited about it. My sister-in-law suggested the other day that it's sometimes difficult to tell from our blog whether we're having fun or not, and we thought that was interesting and wondered if other people had thought the same, so we decided to mention it. When we started this blog I had wanted it to have lots about how how we felt about things, rather than just what we were doing, but ...