This blog is going to look as if I went from Thailand to India. Not true! I went home for a week in between.
All is going well here on Kovalam beach. Our hotel is fairly basic but very clean. Only problem is the frequent power cuts.... these happen at least once a day and can last up to an hour. The beach is long and sandy and there are excellent waves. They hire out body boards and I have seen a couple of surfboards. Sundown is a great time to watch the locals come down to go in the sea. The young men strip off to their shorts but the girls and women go in the sea in their saris - but seem to really enjoy themselves.
They have a very strange attitude to alcohol here. Beer can be bought at government shops but restaurants are not supposed to sell it so it is not on the menu. However they all sell it. But you are given a pottery mug to drink out of and the bottle has to be kept on the floor in case the police walk past. Strangely this doesn't apply to wine which is served in the normal way.
India is just as I remember it - colourful and chaotic.... I have been trying to photograph the colourful lorries they use here with religious murals painted all over them.
My friend Val knows lots of people in the area (through her earlier visits and her charity work). One friend took us out to his house a few miles inland. His village consists of a small cluster of very simple houses. Local children came to look at us and we took their photos. One girl of about ten brought a little sister who took one look at me and burst into tears and had to be hurried away! Scary white people!
Some friends of Val came to visit her here at Kovalam. They used to run a children's home for Global Care. I joined them at a local restaurant and soon after introductions and a few social pleasantries the husband said to me: "And do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?" My philosophical answer was clearly beyond his knowledge of English and the point was not pursued.
We went on an organised tour last week and when we stopped in the local town Trivandrum we saw about 150 women sitting on both sides of the road cooking up a sort of porridge in a pot balance on three bricks with a wood fire underneath. Each woman had her own pot and her own fire. This was a practice day for a huge Hindu festival that is going on today. 2.5 million (yes, 2.5 million!) women are gathered in the town today to cook this special porridge and make an offering at the temple. With all the smoke and chaos I think it is a good idea to stay away from the town today. But you can see the festival on http://www.attukal.org/
On Sunday I went on a trip inland to see a Temple Elephant Festival. No-one seemed able to quite explain the religious significance but I this it is a dedication of the elephants to the temple god. The elephants (about forty of them) were all resplendent in their decorations and were preceded through the streets but very energetic drummers. It was really great to watch. At one point an elephants seemed to want to go in the wrong direction and all the people standing nearby fled! Apparently sometimes an elephant runs amok and people get killed. We were watching from a rooftop so felt fairly safe.
A message to the Reading Group: I finished The Golden Notebook yesterday. Wow, what a slog! Will have lots to say about it when we meet........
