Gopalpur-On-Sea is a fantastic little beach town; quiet, clean, cheap and hassle-free. The beach is surprisingly garbage free and uncrowded. What more could you want? We shared an auto-rickshaw from Rambha with Kollom, so getting here was easy, too. We managed to find a place right on the beach with a huge balcony, a TV, and steps down to the sand, for 400 rupees a night ($7.70). My only regret was that we only had four days before we had to catch our overnight train south to Chennai. We spent our time swimming, eating in the shade, and generally lazing about, which has become a practised routine. On the night of the full moon, Su and I took a walk through town to the tiny fishing village, and then back along the beach, while Raven kept pace with the latest developments on Top Chef. There are no touts, hawkers, or salesmen, and very few beggars.

  Always eager to interact with the locals, you can imagine Su’s excitement as she returned from an afternoon walk with an invitation to lunch from a local retired fisherman. I was slightly hesitant, since Su has a tendency to be overly optimistic in situations like this, but I figured that I would keep an open mind, and be vigilant in case we were about to be drugged and robbed.  The family was very friendly, with a bright, clean house and lots of photos from a trip to Australia displayed prominently. Su described the seafood feast pretty thoroughly, which she enjoyed the most. I’m not a huge fan of seafood in general, and certainly not small, head on, bony fish, or tiny little crabs, but I made an effort, and made all the appropriate sounds of appreciation. Tony’s daughter seemed very happy to be serving us, and we made it through lunch without any requests for money or an afternoon trip to shop at some relative’s souvenir shop. I was very thankful to finally enjoy some time with an Indian family without there being some ulterior motive. Well…almost. After lunch came Tony’s good friend, his son, and the pitch. The son wanted to find work in Canada, and they assumed we could be of some assistance. If anyone has an opening for an electrical engineer, let us know, and we can forward his resume. The plot thickens…Tony’s daughter and the son are hoping to marry, but he needs to find work before that can happen! They were very nice about the whole thing, and thorough, too. They came to see us at our hotel every day until we left.

Sculling through the surf zone

Raven and I went outside to play with the cute little baby goats, so we missed the part where Tony turned up the heat on Su, working the ‘this lunch cost so much’ angle. We were engaged in a slightly more serious crisis. One of the goats Raven had been letting suckle her finger bit her and drew blood. It was a small cut, and after cleaning it up, it didn’t seem too serious, until Raven asked ‘Will I get rabies?’ Hmmmm. We were all pretty worried, as Raven would require a series of five shots, and they may not be available in the area, or even in India. We did some research, and sent an email to a travel clinic in Chennai, and eventually our fears subsided, as the general consensus was that a young healthy goat was not a rabies risk. Whew.

  All too soon we were packing our bags, saying farewell to Irish, and heading to the train station. Orissa exceeded all expectations, and had revealed some incredible places, but I had heard so much about South India, and was eager to discover for myself what all the excitement was about. Raven was most concerned about finding a replacement for her Ipod cord in Chennai. I had repaired it a few times, but eventually we’d lost the plug end, so she couldn’t even charge it. We had decided to spend two nights in the big city, formerly known as Madras. India’s fourth largest city, it has a long history as a stop on the spice trade routes, and is now the center of India’s independent film scene. Having been in Nepal only a month ago, Chennai was definitely hot and sticky, but clean and quiet compared to the cities in the north. It’s a bit of a sprawling collection of districts, without a central core, and so the interesting sights are very spread out. Su came back from a trip to the internet café with an offer from a rickshaw driver for a ‘sightseeing tour’ for 50 rupees. Again, anything that seems too good to be true…I showed her the page in the guidebook under ‘Scams to Avoid’. A 50 rupee tour will include 3-4 different shops, where you are pressured into buying carpets, jewelry, silk, etc. Not the way I wanted to spend an afternoon. A trip to visit the real sights would cost more than a night in a hotel, so insteadof dealing with traffic and crowds, we just went for coffee in an A/C café!

  After our time in Nepal and northern India, I just really wanted to spend time at the beach, the closest being in Mamallapuram, two hours south of Chennai, and about half-way to Pondicherry. The state run busses areuncrowded, on time, and cheap, and the highway is quite new, smooth and fast, a trend that we would continue to enjoy as we explored the tropical south. I suppose that the heavy monsoon rains down here would wash away any weak spots, but in general, the roads are much better than in the north. Our only problem leaving Chennai was with the rickshaw driver that we hired to take us to the bus station. Down south, Hindi is less common, so we’ve been having more difficulty communicating, but have become more assertive by confirming our intentions repeatedly. I told the driver wherewe wanted to go, showed him on the map, and asked to go to the bus station. As I mentioned, Chennai is very spread out, so fares are comparatively high, but 80 rupees seemed reasonable to go the 7 kms to the main bus station. Instead, we went in the opposite direction, to just beside the Central train station, where there was supposedly a bus stand, even though there were no busses visible! The heat and frustration finally caught up with me, and I lost it! I started yelling, throwing our bags out onto the side of the road. “This isn’t the bus station! Why would you bring us here?! The MAIN bus station! MAIN BUS STATION!  *&%^7!!   %%^& !!!   %^&&!!!!” Some guys from a travel agency came over to translate, and yes ,the main bus station was now 10 kms away, the other way. More cursing. Now the rickshaw driver wanted 350 rupees to take us the right place. Plus the 80 we had agreed on. I lost it again! Why would I pay to go to the wrong place, and then pay even more to go to where we should have gone in the first place?! I told him to F*^k Right Off (Irish style), refusing to pay. He threatened to get the police, and I said “go right ahead”, while I tried to flag down another rickshaw. The police showed up, and as a crowd gathered, we explained the situation. The guys from the travel agency were pleading the driver’s case, saying he’s losing money, he has a family, etc. The policeman seemed to be on our side, at one point raising his hand like he was about to bitch slap one of the guys. I started to feel bad for the driver, as it was an honest mistake, and he had more to lose than we did. I offered him 250 rupees to take us to the station, so he could save face, and we could all get on with our day. I think he wanted to escape the escalating drama as much as we did, so he agreed, and so we piled back in and left the policeman and the crowd of onlookers behind. Of course, once we got to the bus station, he started asking for more again, but I gave him the 250 and a look that said ‘Really?’, and walked away to find the bus.

Mamallapuram is known for the many surrounding ‘rock cut’ temples and carvings, and the talented stone masons that still practice today. As we walked from the bus stop towards the ocean, we passed shop after shop full of exquisitely carved figures, ranging from simple, small lingams to massive, multi-armed statues of Kali. We found a beautiful hotel with a roof top restaurant that had views of the nearby temple and the beach. The tsunami hit this area quite badly, but as the waters receded, temples that had been buried under the sands for centuries were exposed. People also reported seeing a wall exposed when the ocean withdrew, just before the waves came ashore, so the navy did a survey of the area. They found the wall, two meters high, by 70 meters long, two temples, and a sacred cave nearly 500 meters offshore, another unexplored chapter in the rich and mystical history of India.

Pondicherry Promenade

  This is a minor tourist mecca, and has all the restaurants and shops that cater to western tastes. We enjoyed some of the best western food of the entire trip so far here, but the beach wasn’t very inviting. Most of the long crescent of sand was steep, with vicious currents, and the southern part that was shallow enough to enjoy, also seemed to collect the most garbage. We swam a few times, but avoiding plastic bags and floating debris isn’t much fun. We had a TV in the room again, a trend I was hoping to escape, and free Wi-Fi, so we spent a lot of time in the shade, still adjusting to the heat and humidity. The landscape around Mamalapuram is stunning, giant boulders and smooth outcrops of rock surrounded by cactus and a shimmering heat haze.We had a few sweat soaked explorations of the temples and viewpoints, but it was pure lack of motivation that kept us for five days before heading south to Pondicherry.

  Expectations are the worst thing you can carry with you while travelling, and unfortunately, we had a few concerning the renowned French enclave of Pondicherry. I was looking forward to my first taste of ashram life, some yoga and meditation at Auroville, and some tasty cuisine. As Su has mentioned, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was very difficult to access unless you were already a ‘devotee’, and then there was the fiasco of a bike ride out to Auroville.  It’s only 12 kilometers from our hotel to the meditation center, the same distance as from Westwind Dr. to the inner harbour. I can easily ride it in half an hour, so a leisurely one hour bike ride seemed like an enjoyable and feasible undertaking, especially if we left nice and early, before it got too hot. Raven didn’t. In fact, after about 10 minutes, she stopped on the side of the road and refused to go any further. You can imagine, I’m sure, how the rest of the trip progressed. It took so long, that by the time we got out to the village, still four kilometers from the meditation center, it was going to be closed for the afternoon. You see, in able to visit the meditation center, you first have to take an orientation, watch a film, and then you can get a pass for the next day’s meditation. Unless we waited around until the visitor’s center reopened, we would have to come back the next day to start the two day process over again. By now it was already boiling hot, and we weren’t really talking to each other, so we gave up and rode back to Pondicherry for lunch in the coldest A/C restaurant we could find. The third strike was the beach, or lack thereof. There is along promenade along the shore, but no beach, just a rock seawall, so swimming was impossible unless you made the trip a few kms north or south of town. Pondicherry did have some wonderful restaurants and bakeries, but the prices were also European. We did, however, indulge in the guilty pleasure of KFC! We’d seen commercials on the TV for cheap combo meals at KFC, but hadn’t seen one yet. Raven spotted this one blocks away. ‘Is that a KFC?!’ There really wasn’t a choice as to whether we would go or not, especially not after having walked from the bus station. Chicken, fries, and a drink for 99 rupees! Hell Yeah! I’ve been almost entirely vegetarian since arriving in India, since even chicken loses it’s appeal after seeing the condition meat is kept in, sitting un-refridgerated, covered in flies. But a crispy, deep fried piece of chicken breast, washed down with fries and a cold pop in an A/C fast food joint was unbelievably tempting, and ultimately, satisfying. Later on, Su took Raven to the Pizza Hut just down the road from our hotel, and yes, I was very envious, but resisted the urge to go myself.

  We are all ‘hitting the wall’ so to speak. After nearly six months on the road, the novelty has worn off. We’ve been ‘out of the comfort zone’ for almost half a year, spending almost all of our time together 24/7. This was around the time I had expected Raven to start hating the trip, and really start wanting to go home (not the 2^nd week). Tempers start to flair easily, even cows and chaotic traffic are commonplace, the romance of such a foreign culture fades, and one starts to wonder ‘What are we really doing this for?’ This is when we start to find out things about ourselves we hadn’t expected, answers to questions we hadn’t thought to ask. Patience, compassion, and a sense of belonging become the most challenging demands. Come on, let’s go to the beach.

  We hadplanned on spending more time in Pondicherry, and had another onward train booked, but now that we wanted to leave earlier, all the trains were booked solid, and had up to 70 people on waitlists. Su wanted to spend the extra money on a first class ticket (can you imagine?), but they cost six times as much as a second class sleeper. I talked her into taking the bus, splitting the journey into two legs, and using the extra money as a ‘splurge fund’ to make the trip as enjoyable as possible. This way we could still spend two weeks on the beach in Varkala, and see some temples and forts along the way.

Our first stop would be Trichy, short for Tiruchirappalli, an easy 5 hour bus ride into central Tamil Nadu. It’s a good thing we had a splurge fund, because rooms around the bus station were expensive. We’ve gotten into a routine of stopping at a restaurant with our bags, having some drinks or lunch, and taking turns looking at rooms, baggage free. After looking at quite a few rooms, and working up quite a sweat in the process, we settled on a room on the 8^th floor. For 800 rupees, it wasn’t anything special, but had a TV and a nice view, and most importantly, 24 hour check out. This meant that the next day we could just leave our bags in the room, visit the Rock Fort and the Sri Ranganathaswamy complex, and head straight back to the bus station. After a sweltering evening of Top Chef and CSI, we were up early to avoid the hottest part of the day. The local bus service is the best we’ve seen anywhere in India. It was very easy to navigate, since the bus we needed went in a loop past both destinations, and returned to the main bus station; too easy.

The 437 stone stairs up to the top of the Rock Fort were mostly in the shade, but we were sweating buckets by the time we got up to the top. After cooling off in the breeze, enjoying the sweeping views, and spending a few minutes with the resident elephant, we made our way back to the bus. Our next stop, the massive 60 hectare Ranganathaswamy complex is visible from across the river, the largest gate standing at 73 meters. Dating to the 10^th century, the complex is a series of seven concentric walled compounds, only the last being off limits to non-Hindus. More carvings, more temples, another elephant, and a tiny little museum with some interesting artifacts, rusty 17^th century rapiers, carved elephant tusks, and a large collection of international bank notes. We retreated to the life-saving respite of another A/C restaurant before returning to pick up our bags from the hotel. Since the roads have been so good, we decided to risk an overnight bus to Trivandrum (short for Thiruvananthapuram). We opted for the latest departure time, so the nine hour trip would see us arriving around sunrise. While nowhere near as comfortable as a sleeper berth on the train, at least the bus wasn’t crowded, and I could stretch out and sleep fairly well. The bus arrived outside the train station in the dark, but we were lucky, and walked right onto an uncrowded train heading north to Varkala.

 As the sun came up, the beauty of Kerala, God’s own Country, as they say here, started to reveal itself. The sparse, arid climate of central India had given way to lush, tropical foliage, with ripe mangos and papayas hanging heavy on the trees, coconut palms stretching away into the distance. One last rickshaw took us to the top of the Cliffside area of Varkala, near the Helipad. A narrow road runs along the top of the cliffs, providing access to all the hotels and restaurants in this Western holiday paradise. What caught my eye most, and made my heart leap with joy, was the constant pattern ofswells, marching from the horizon towards the sandy beach at the bottom of the cliffs, where they would rise up, curl into long tubes, and then break with a thunderous roar and a plume of mist. I couldn’t wait to get into the water!