We're not in Tamil Nadu anymore Toto

Hiya folks. Lots to report on. But lacking time, so we'll see how much we get. I am not officially on VACATION. It's wonderful to having time to just travel and see things. Although, it has been a little harder on my wallet. No matter.

Two weeks ago, I left my place and the wonderful little town of Sivakasi to go to Varkala in Kerala. I had been to Varkala before, for my first weekend away. It's a lovely sea side town with a long boardwalk stretching down the coast up on high cliffs. Absolutely lovely place. We spent several days there and didn't do much other than sit on the beach, sit in hammocks, or sit in cafes on the cliff side. It was wonderfully relaxing. I also performed the service of a jukebox by taking requests and constantly singing backround music. Disney songs were quite popular, especially the Little Mermaid. One evening we had a campfire on the beach. I sang, another guy played guitar and we lit off some very unstable and cheap Sivakasi fireworks. The night eventually degraded to us throwing large explosives into our fire, sending hot embers and other explosives in all directions. It was a lot of fun.

I left Varkala on tuesday afternoon with Sander and Anup, two other volunteers and met up with Adrienne and Hannah in Trivandrum where we caught the express train to Goa. Well... it was supposed to be the express train, 14hrs supposedly. However, after leaving trivandrum and pulling up into Kollum (the next stop) we were delayed significantly and stuck at the stations for about 40min. The train finally left the station, but made it a very short distance before it stopped, and started going in reverse. We then went back to the station on and sat there for another extended period of time. Knowing that the train would be there for awhile, we exited the train and stretched out legs. We saw a large group of indian men looking a the back of our carraige, which just so happened to be the back of the train. Funny... it wasn't the last car when we boarded at Trivandrum. We soon realized that they had somehow lost the back half of the train when leaving the station and were completely baffled as to how to rectify the problem. It was immensely humorous at first, but then the delay just got annoying. We finally managed to attach the back half and get off to Goa. We finally arrived 20hrs later.

The long train ride was most definately worth it. Goa is gorgeous. It was similar to Varkala in the sense that we spent most of our time relaxing, swimming and eating western food. We also went to a large market where we practiced our refined haggling skills. Indian people really don't listen when you say know. They all know what it means, but they just don't listen. I much prefered shopping at the Tibetan stalls (which there were many of). Sander and I also go matching straw hats, which for some odd reason made us very very popular with the locals. Despite how many westerners were there, we found ourselves constantly getting photographs taken of us. One day we headed to Old Goa to see some of the remnants of Portugese architecture. On the way, I was able to identify a beggar that had leprosy which I thought was pretty cool. Well, awful for him, but made me feel good that I can diagnose it. Old Goa had some lovely old churches. One of which contained a priest that was over 4oo years old and was still well preserved, which was probably a result of him being burried in the salty ground of China for 50 years. There are really no other amazing stories from Goa. It was just a wonderful little "peace" of tropical paradise where we let our worries melt away in the hot sun.

We caught a train to Mumbai (Bombay) on Sunday and arrived 10 hours later. I'm having a hard time believing that I'm still in India. It is incredibly modern. It is very easy to see the British influence from many of the old building still in existence. The architecture is beautiful. We've spent some time wandering around, looking at buildings, going into museums and telling guys wanting to sell me marijuana to go away. After living off southern indian food for over two months, we've been gorging ourselves on western delights. We even went to a movie theater and saw the new Bond film. Before the film started, they put up advertisements for what to do in case of a bomb scare, but said nothing about cell phones (which is too bad because everyone's phone kept going off... and they answered them!! crazy indians). Before the movie started the indian national anthem was played and we all stood up and sang along... well, we didn't but all the indian did. The movie quality and sound was poor and had some awful editing jobs to keep out the "raunchy" bits. They also added in an intermission for our convenience.... so wierd.

Tomorrow we leave for Udaipur in Rajistan. It should be great fun. Hopefully I have the time to post again soon. Take care everyone. I wish you all well