Kerala "God's Own Country"

according to the Keralans at least - we are now in Kovallam, a rather western dominated resort but beaches are clean and in our case interesting - watched fishermen hauling in fish in a huge net manouevred by about 50 Keralans and a few beefy German tourists.
Since the last post we've been out of Internet contact - firstly staying in a villa by a lake in the Palani Hills and actually going for real walks round the lake, into the hills and up to cave temples. We then went to Madurai - which has been described as the capital of kitsch but liked the temple though the 4 gateways were a little Disney-like. Then moved onto Trivandrum, capital of Kerala, in theory with reserved berths on a sleeper train - but from about 4am thousands (literally) of women carrying firewood and cooking equipment, poured in and several ended up joining us on our berths. When we finally got out of the station, they were lining the streets - each with cooking pot on bricks - then at a signal around 10.30 they all started cooking - it was the annual festival of Pongal. All the roads were closed to traffic and the women hung around by their pots most of the day until Brahmins came up from the temple with holy water in buckets which they sprinkled on the pots after which the women packed up and set off home - lots of numbers were quoted but there were at least 100,000. We've also been down to Cape Comorin, the most southerly point in INdia and seen some rather cosy looking Keralan palaces and also some Kathakali dancing - which I'm afraid we both found incomprehensible and a bit boring.
Off to backwaters and wildlife sanctuary next.

Pondicherry and beyond

hi from Tanjore
We went to Pondicherry last Saturday via temples at Kanchi and a fine hill-top fort at Gingee and spent a couple of days enjoying French food and sort of croissants and coffee, staying at a new-agey hotel (no shoes beyond the front door) . Pondi is a major new age centre, dominated by the cult of Sri Aurobindo and his disciple "The Mother" (French/Egyptian). They own the hotel we were at plus half the other businesses in Pondi, and they are developing a new international city just outside Pondi at Auroville. In fact, the city at present is no more than a few scattered ashrams between the many Tamil villages in the area plus a weird sphere at the centre, which looks like something out of Thunderbirds (for the more mature amongst you) or some 60s sci-fi movie (see above). The inhabitants of the ashrams are also mainly leftovers from the 60s - hippies who presumably found their souls and settled down here.

From Pondi we've been doing some more temple visiting - the Tamil temples are very different from those in Orissa, huge and generally brightly painted, though the older ones are very impressive. We got here (Tanjore) mainly by back roads where along with the usual challenges - cows, dogs, potholes etc the car had to negotiate the local system of threshing - leave a (rice) haystack in the middle of the road and the cars and buses driving over it will separate the rice from the stalks.

We're off to relax in the Cardamom Hills for a few days now, probably out of cyber-contact.

elephant carvings

These are on a huge rock in Mamallapuram covered with gods, animals and the like, called "Arjuna's penance".

This is (we hope) the Mukhtesvara temple in Bhubaneshwar, a classic of the Orissan style and rather different, as you can see, from the Buddhist ones. They're supposed to symbolise the resurgence of Hinduism over Buddhism in the 7th Century or so.

Sorry by the way for the odd method of posting, but it seems easier at this end. Hope it doesn't cause too many problems at your end.

Buddhist temple in Darjeeling

First pix

toy train to Darjeeling

Chennai and Mamallapuram

We're in the real south now after a long train journey in the comparative luxury of 2nd AC (air-conditioned - but not as comfortable as that sounds). Still, we got to Chennai in one piece and fortunately our hotel booking (which we'd cocked up by getting the dates wrong) was also OK despite the fact that all our attempts to change it had seemed unavailing. Chennai's not exactly a travellers' mecca but it was a tiny bit less polluted than Kolkata and a bit richer (less poor) looking. We're now in Mamallapuram, which is something of a travellers' mecca (or at least was) - lovely beaches, fantastic temples and rock carvings etc, but in fact now something of an overpriced dump because of all the travellers (and, according to the locals, all the North Indians who've moved in to do business with them). Off to Pondicherry next for a bit of French cuisine (maybe) and cheap beer (certainly) - we'll try to post some pix, but can't promise it will work.

Orissa - sun, sea and temples

We're in Orissa now, by the sea. The weather is warmer, which is nice (it's been snowing in Darjeeling), but internet access is even slower, which is not. They're blaming a broken cable in the Mediterranean for some reason. Nonetheless we're doing some serious temple viewing - Orissan temples are a style unto themselves, and include the Sri Jagannath temple here in Puri (after which the Juggernaut was named). In fact, Jagannath doesn't look all that frightening, more like a South Park cartoon, with big eyes and a sketchy face. All due to a silly chap who peeped prematurely at the deity so was punished by it remaining unfinished, as they all now are.

It's wedding season here and the streets are full of carts and processions gaily decorated but playing amazingly loud music and holding up all the traffic. Appropriately, perhaps, we went to an "adult" temple today with carvings of all the positions from the Kama Sutra which children aren't supposed to look at - includes girl on girl but not boy on boy action as far as we could see.

No pix still I'm afraid because of the broken cable problem. We're off on a 20 hour train journey to chennai on sunday, for some really warm weather.