Fishermen's (drunken) picnic

We spent Christmas Day at a rather fine upmarket beach resort about an hour's drive south of Trivandrum. We were enjoying the wonderfully generous hospitality of our Trivandrum homestay hosts and their resort-owning sister, and we had the run of the place for the day. But one unexpected restriction was that we couldn't actually go onto the beach.

Christmas Day was the one day of the year when the beach was the sole province of its real owners - the local fishermen and their families. Every other day the western tourists could bathe, parade, or sunbake, show off a few acres of white flesh if they liked. It was tolerated. But not today. The locals had their civilian marshals posted, and were turning back any intrepid westerners, like the Swiss family we'd got to know, who tried to crash the party. At the resort itself, the security staff had locked the bottom gate, and were politely explaining the situation.

They were having a lot of fun on that beach. They were all Catholics, we were told, so not only were they celebrating Christmas Day, but they were also celebrating it with alcohol. Much of the fun consisted of groups of men throwing each other into the water. Likewise groups of women. Always segregated sexes, always fully clothed. No wonder they didn't want the westerners there to complicate it all!

Churches, mosques, and temples of South India - Churches

Here are some churches we came across in Mysore, Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Kanyakumari. There seem to be lots of Christians in South India, about 19% in Kerala according to Wikipedia, and they're clearly often devout too.

Kerala trains and buses

Train or bus? If there's a choice, you usually go for the train. They cost very little, they're faster than buses, they're moderately predictable, and sometimes on time, and if you book in advance and go for the most expensive class available, they can offer a fair degree of comfort. It's also essential for every traveller to experience train travel - so important is it to India's life and soul. We travelled AC Chair class from Calicut to Ernakulam, and 2AC sleeper class from Varkala to Kottayam.

For the Ernakulam to Trivandrum leg of the trip the trains were all booked out. So we took a bus. We were advised to go for the air conditioned Volvo service, and after a fair bit of confusion and faulty advice from the bus staff, we did manage to secure the last two seats on it. (This was just before Christmas, and a peak travelling season). The first of the buses pictured here is air conditioned in the traditional Indian way, by virtue of its unglazed windows, but the lower one is the genuine article.

It was in fact a comfortable bus, physically speaking. The main drawback was the horror movie being shown. It was called 'View out of the front window', and it featured dozens of close calls with grizzly death scenes - our own. Of all the homicidal/suicidal road user maniac subclasses, the bus driver subclass is the scariest. We charged down the middle of the two-lane road, sending all other traffic scattering in every direction, sometimes right off the road. Occasionally our game of chicken failed us, and we would  screech suddenly to a halt. Even one of  the local Hindu pilgrims on board couldn't take any more, and started loudly chastising the driver at one point.

We were very relieved to arrive in one piece in Trivandrum. But I can't help wondering about the perceived safety of our train rides. Could it be that on a train you just can't see out the front? Maybe if you could, it would be just as scary as a bus ride?!!

India's dog days numbered

Stray dogs are everywhere in India. They serve some purpose, traditionally, as scavengers and as guard dogs, but they can be a nuisance too, and they can spread rabies. Every now and again cities launch programmes to eradicate them, generally using inhumane methods.

I met a very interesting and personable chap in Trivandrum, who told me passionately about his work for the Humane Society International / India , whereby he and his team are eradicating dogs there humanely, by sterilising them, and at the same time educating the populace about not being afraid of them, and treating them better.

He was a vet by training, and hailed from Kashmir. (You start to wonder how many people are left in Kashmir - so many do you bump into in other parts of India.) His parents had been trying to lure him back there with talk of good safe jobs. He'd even been offered Australian residence, and knew he'd earn vastly more there if he took it up. But no, his passion was to travel India doing this sort of project, and his life was just fine as it was.

Zoo of Pi

This is one of the tigers in Kerala's Trivandrum Zoo. It's name is probably not Richard Parker. But Richard Parker is the name of the tiger in the award-winning novel (and brilliant award-winning film), Life of Pi . If you haven't seen it, do.

Trivandrum Zoo is said to be the one that inspired the novel, in which the protagonist, Pi, was brought up in a small private zoo in South India. He later found himself drifting across an ocean with a tiger, a hyena, a zebra, and an orangutan for company. Eventually there's only the tiger (and Pi) left. The story explores ideas in epistemology, theology, ethics, the lot. And it's brilliant.

It was quite a good zoo by Asian standards. Some quite large enclosures, though some animals were rather too caged. I'll rephrase that. All cages are bad news, and in the case of the flying birds, they're outrageous. Zoos are probably not a good idea anyway, in this day and age. But lots of them, unfortunately, are worse than this one.

I kept finding that what was attracting my eye most (and my camera's too) were the animals of the human kind. So colourful are the people of India that I couldn't stop myself making them the subject of my pictures!

The poor caged white tiger was a sad but similarly photogenic subject though.

I watched the film for a second time on the flight home from India, and as is often the case with clever stories like this, I got a much better understanding of what it was all about.

White knuckle travel

At first glance this could be a picture of fairly orderly traffic. Two cars on the left, and a bus and a truck on the other side of the road, going the other way.

Alas no. This is India. It's actually a picture of us, and alongside us the truck which has just overtaken us. Coming the other way are a bus and a car, side by side. All four vehicles are about to come together in an almighty head-on crash!

At the last moment the truck swerves back to the left, and the oncoming car sees the light and ducks back in behind the bus. Crisis averted once more!

This sort of thing happens every minute or two on every drive on every Indian road! On this occasion it was made worse by the road being the nine-hairpin-bend stretch of road which drops 700m from the Western Ghats to the Malabar Coast. Wherever you are though, the best strategy is to just not look out the front. Let the driver do the driving (and the honking of the horn every few seconds). All you can do is quietly ponder your funeral arrangements.

The accident rate is indeed high. But it can't be as high as we'd expect it to be. We're still alive after all. The nominal road rules may be totally irrelevant, but there are conventions and patterns which presumably must be followed, about who wins and who loses the constant games of chicken.

Within the cities it's all played out at a slower pace, because there's traffic gridlock most of the time! Here are some views out the front in Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Nagercoil.

Colourful women of Kerala 2

The Kerala part of our trip took in the Wayanad region, Cochin (Kochi), Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram - 7 syllables in the local name!), Kovalam and Varkala beaches, and the 'backwaters' of Kollam, Poovar, and Kumarakom.