Cosmo Hotel Mangalore

... He couldn't speak much english so we had a translator...who also couldn't speak much english. He said some things which although weren't shocking because I plan to do them, but were shocking because he knew about them. I'll just share a few snippets with you rather than quoting the hour-long session verbatim. Firstly, I'm going to be a doctor but it will take some time. Yes, and it'll take four years (duh). Secondly, our marriage will be a success. Yes I knew that, but good. Thirdly ...

... a little after 4am, and so we could catch up on a few hours. Our hotel was literally a couple of minutes walk from the bus stand, a helpful group of tuk-tuk drivers pointed us in the right direction, what the hell they were all up at that time of night for I don't know. When we entered, there was no-one at the desk, just two bodies covered in white sheets on the reception floor! Just as we were assuming we had walked into a deserted ...

... st*rted from Mlore by 11 PM. The ro*d to S*kleshpur w*s re*lly b*d. I w*s * bit worried th*t we'll be tired *fter re*ching S*kleshpur itself. We re*ched there by 3. Somehow m*n*ged to find * lodge *nd took two rooms. It w*s ne*r the old bus st*nd *nd we informed Vinu *nd Vij*y* the det*ils *bout it. They c*me to the lodge by 4:30. Poor people! They didn't get *ny direct bus *nd didn't get se*t *lso. Dre*m-route trek st*rts Everyone got re*dy by 7. We ...

... blow sent our way .... we had train tickets booked for the wrong day!!! An honest mistake given that the tickets were booked for right after midnight ... but for the 27th not the 28th! So we had missed our train a day earlier. The guys bargained hard for a rickshaw and we crashed at a hotel that had cockroaches the size of a baseball ... after 4 hours in the nasty place we ...

Just a quick one this time, to record that we were here. There's not much to say about it. We had a bit of an argument with the taxi drivers at the station about how much we should pay to come into the centre. They were telling us the minimum price was 100 rupees and we felt that was too much for a 4km journey. However, it was a small station with nothing around it and we worried if we didn ...

... gather the gifts of the sea, heading off to market, and sharing the profits. Everyone knows everyone here, and so the fishing is treated as somewhat of a cooperative, the profits of the more lucky being shared with the less fortunate fishers. All in all a pretty friendly and good system, Community makes the world, lack of it breaks the world. . . That is the story of how I became a Goan fisherman. They call me "full power," and I do try to live up to that moniker, I guess I always have.

... is a home for one somewhere half a world away, all of that can be thrown completely to the four winds to do with as they please. I believe there is a muslim expression for this, "En shah allah" or some such, meaning, what god wills. . More on the details of palolem later, it is getting time for a late afternoon snack. There is much to report, how I became a Goan fisherman, I have a possible role in a Bollywood movie, How I became the arm-wrestling ...

Finally left Goa and the hotel which had become more like Fawlty Towers than is funny. 40 days in one place other than home is never a good thing, especially when the management could not manage to do a thing and the people staying there were useless. Half of them arrived one day plonked themselves by the pool and then left a week or two after, i;d be amazed if any of them actually saw anything out of the confindes of ...

South India seems like a whole different country. We are in the state of Kerala. So far, this has been my favorite area. The people are friendly, rickshaw drivers are less pushy (they go away after the first No), the food is great, the state's infrastructure is much more developed (we have better access to banks and better roads), the people are more educated and the cities are cleaner. I no longer feel like ...

... prosthetic leg sat next to him on the floor, they'd have a very civillised exchange of 'hello, how are you?' 'fine thankyou, how are you?' and that would be it. Bizzare. Because clearly he's not fine! This last week we haven't been very far because I've been too ill but from what we can gather, Goa is the Costa Del Sol of India. I suppose when you compare it with other places it's bound to seem that way. Goans look very different to other Indians on account of the ...