It was ambitious getting down to Dalhouse, an out of the way town south of the Ancient cities and well into the Hill Country. We had a purpose - get some sleep, then make the pilgrimage up Sri Pada (known to westerners as Adams Peak), the most sacred mountain in Sri Lanka. Sacred that is to Christains, Hindus, Muslims and especially Buddhists.

The biting cold snapped us out of our sleep and transplanted us into an even more surreal landscape. Pricks of light pierced the blackness, not constellations but a dim lit spiralling path to a summit. From the bottom we began our ascent, with sugar supplies, boots, beanies and enthusiasm. From the bottom pilgrims began their ascent too, barefoot, some young, some old, the embodiment of pilgrims.
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After a lazy rise, not helped by some D+V, Adrian and I bused up to Dambulla, the site of revered 1st C BC cave temples housing 150 Buddha images and striking painted ceilings. The caves, some way up the sloping rock face, are also occupied by monkeys with mischief glinting in their eyes. An offering was made and the caves were closed off for 15 minutes. All, that is, except one door, left slightly ajar. As I pushed the door the hinge creaked and out ran a monkey, humanlike on two legs, with a silver pot of rice half his size in his arms! ‘So where’s the pot disappeared to’, the temple attendant gestured. ‘The monkey took it’, we performed. Skeptically his eyes said it all – ‘oh sure, blame it on the monkey…’
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Sri Lanka hangs like a teardrop off the southern coast of India. The teardrop could represent such beauty to wet the eye, or for its still recent war torn past. It stunned my senses like I never thought it would – punchy blue skies, vivid greens, and a spectrum of colours injected by women in Sari’s. Marco Polo described the Island as the ‘finest of its size’, and I would have to concur. I hate making throwaway comments like ‘it’s my new favorite country’, so read on…

Like a wave the humidity engulfed me as the airport doors parted. I headed for the Fort area of Colombo, the centre of it all, and checked into the YMCA. (Why? – its fun da da dada). Colombo, it’s fair to say, is not like any Indian city I’ve been in. For a start it’s clean - there aren’t the trash lined gutters and pavements and the CBD is developed complete with a twin tower world trade center! The Fort is also the traditional target for Tamil Tiger bombings. (A cease fire has been holding since Dec 2001, however there was an assassination of a high TT leader in the north the day I arrived, generating speculation in the papers.) The buzz of the center is muted a little by road blocks with an imposing military presence complete with sandbagged posts, razor wire and automatic weapons. PHOTOGRAPHY FORBIDDEN. Adrian, whom I met at the YMCA and split a room with, posited: ‘Do the military guys arrest people or just shoot?’ I didn’t push it with the photos. North of the fort men played cricket on a dirt patch under the nose of a sentry tower.
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I could paint my experiences of Chennai with colourful language, or I could just call a spade a spade. After 5 months on the road I think I’m qualified to call a city a shithole when I see one. Its not even an interesting shithole. So why don’t I leave? I think I will. I’m off to Sri Lanka tomorrow.

Auto-rickshaw’s run this town. They hang in packs and price fix extortionate rates for foreigners - forget the meter. Distances are too great for foot, and buses just aren’t practical to cover this mad experiment of a city. Of course I’d have to want to go somewhere first… I gave a few places a try. The Fort museum (not like a fort anymore) holds a stale collection of colonial relics. The Government museum, with its institutional green paint flaked walls, brought alive only a sense of death in its Zoological section. And its scraggy plastered up ruins are an example on why carvings shouldn’t be hacked off their original supports and displayed out of context in a museum. The Contemporary Art Gallery - what can I say – where was the art? All this for a cool Indian 5 rupee / Foreigner 250 rupee, entry fee.
Sunday on Chennai’s wide beach attracts a huge crowd and a carnival atmosphere. Rides, Flute and drum sellers, food stalls, and general junk – its all here. Families hang out by the shore and the men only jump in for a swim in the chop, despite the health warnings. The stupidest attraction, naturally a hit, was the cardboard cutout film stars waiting for you to grab them for a photo.

St Andrews Church, with its genuinely beautiful classical style and 55 meter steeple, was having its Sunday service in the evening. I flopped along in my beach jandals.

jandal (plural: jandals)
1. (New Zealand) an item of footwear, usually of rubber, secured by two straps mounted between the big toe and its neighbour.

Synonyms
• flip-flop
• thong (Australia)

I sat among my suited Indian brethren to hear the Word Indian style (a fair balance after all my Hindu temple visits). It was funny; Indians talk in circles anyway, but you’d think they could just spit the Word out.

Its not the hopeless poverty, with its hollow calls of ‘llo mista’, or even the city layout and dud attractions, that depressed the place. I’ve got to say it - It’s the people. There’s little sense of fun in anyone, even Indian to Indian. No-one is satisfied with agreed prices, Auto-drivers push to take you ‘shopping’ along the way, and Indian security guards press for Baksheesh (a bribe? Nooo, Baksheesh!) when taking photos in the grounds of attractions.

Indian bureaucracy deserves a special mention. I set aside special Indian administration days from time to time and practice yogic breathing. Sometimes I fail. Why, TP, pray may I ask, do Indians effectively bar foreigners from buying foreign currency in India? Or Travellers Cheques? Some banks don’t even know what a cash advance on a credit card is (duh it’s like buying money) so I wanted to buy some backup Travelers Cheques. Thomas Cook helped:

‘The most we can offer you sir is 10000 rupees (200 US)’
‘That is the most?’
‘Bank of India Policy for… for Foreigners. You sir’
‘Ok, Ill buy 10000 with my visa card
‘Sir, (head bob, bob, bob) we need an encashment certificate from you. From when you changed foreign money to rupees at the airport’
(I didn’t have that with me, from 2 months ago) ‘To buy money?’
‘If no Sir, not possible’
‘Ok, can I buy rupees now on my visa card and you issue me a certificate so I can buy some (bloody) Travelers Cheques?’
‘Possible’ (bob, bob). ‘I need to see your departure tickets’
‘??? My flight tickets to withdraw money from my Visa card?’
(I had changed the date on my original ticket, confirmed with Qantas but not had my ticket revalidated yet. I’d also stupidly told them I was going to Sri Lanka)
‘Sir, this date has passed, I need to see your Sri Lanka ticket’
‘I have an onward ticket, with printed email confirmation, what is the problem?’
‘Not possible’ (bob, bob… bob, bob) ‘Buy your Sri Lanka ticket and come back’

To cut 2 hours short, I bought my fricken Colombo ticket and went through the ‘normal’ window to window to window shuffle and purchased the travelers cheques with the rupees I had just bought with my visa card after buying a new flight ticket for Sri Lanka. Oh, this isn’t new. I need an encashment certificate with me if I ever want to change Rupees back to foreign currency, or even to purchase a train ticket, a train ticket, with Rupees. You should read the newspapers here (full of expert opinions) to me the country’s administrations run like a circus. At least it has a free press, unlike Nepal, with the kings suspension of constitutional rights and freedom of speech…

I need a drink. Scott, Mark and Rob, some lads I met in Maderai and I tried to find a club on Saturday night. Aside from a smokey, blokey hotel den, where Indian men (only) have no shame rather gaily dancing off to Michael Jackson, the city was empty. Nothin. Oh, we did stumble upon a Muslim parade in some random backstreet.

Tamil movies are pumped out in Chenai’s studios (Tamil the local language). I checked one out in a happening theatre. I expected a nonsense plot, but not the total indiscriminate street style violence, which made even less sense. The theatre was packed – families, children, teens, and a drunken muppet next to me. I didn’t even last the first hour. If you’re ever flying in to Chenai, before you land, check for an exit.

I said goodbye to Romana as we got off the boat at Kollam after our trip through the Backwater canals from Allepy. We couldn’t afford the luxury houseboat option, but we shrewdly negotiated the only seats on the bow - perfect theatre.

Weighing up time left on my Indian Visa, I thought I could get a little beach action and catch a Kathakali performance in Varkala. The cliff is dominated by competing signs for tourist services and stalls but the sandy beach below rolls in nice surf. I caught the Kathakali show at a quaint little theatre set up. The performance of traditional Keralan storytelling was but a slice of a full show for our tourist attention spans. (Real Kathakali runs the night.) The Demoness servant of a king goes to the abode of the Devas to capture maidens for the King. Great plot, bold makeup, and a spontaneous performance to the rhythm of the background musicians.

I met some Swedish girls and some English lads over a few drinks and grilled Barracuda at a cliff edge bar with views to Madagascar. Next morning Asa, Theresa and I rose early to see a ritual on the beach where the waves carry out the prayers for the deceased. In the corner of the grounds of the nearby temple was an odd and disturbing twisted Snake Tree, hung, or rather strung, with warped plastic dolls - offerings for fertility.

Deformities, the loss of limbs and the sorry looking poor aren’t uncommon sights throughout India. Occasionally, still, an unlucky soul makes my eyes pop out - in this case, a begging leper with pussing boils from head to toe. I gave up some change and boarded my train, leaving Kerala state for Tamil Nadu. Dazed as you are on night trains, I woke up at 5:00am in Maderai and sucked back some Chai in the company of a French Canadian girl and German guy. We blasted through Maderai in a morning, visiting its impressive temple and laughing off touts, and then on to Trichy, a less intense temple city.

Buses I can work out, trains I have problems with. No E.T.A on the ticket, no platform numbers, no numbers on the inside of the carriages, poorly signposted stations. I had a problem – I overshot my connecting stop for Pondicherry and ended up in Chennai, a miss of about 100km. I backpedaled.

I hadn’t been to France until I came to Pondicherry. My inspiration for coming here was the French architecture and a little book ‘The Life of Pi’. Read it. I enjoyed some promenading along the coast and boulevards, and playing Caroms with kids on the street corners (whilst always looking out for Richard Parker). The Sri Aribindo Ashram, where I visited and thinked some thoughts, can be credited for a lot of community initiatives in Pondicherry. A few blocks back, in Indian streets again, I had a run in with my ‘Christian’ guesthouse owner, shifty and scrooging. I left for Mamallapuram.

The face of Mamallapuram is a tourist façade, frequented by the package tourist. Out on the front on the beach locals were rebuilding boats, walls and buildings, totaled by the Tsunami. Their pockets have been hit hard too; everyone is more desperate for a nibble of tourist rupees. The attraction of the area is the ancient ruins and caves, dating from the 6th Century, particularly a large bass relief, ‘Arjuna’s Penance’. I met a blind Indian gent, Saswot Souvraj, whose N.G.O. is helping with the Tsunami effort. I wrote and edited a little copy for him. Sadly, everyone is on the Tsunami bandwagon. Kids and beggars, who you sense weren’t directly affected, plead ‘Tsunami!’ with their hands out. On my bus up to Chennai I evidenced the fields of tents that affected families have been living under for 6 weeks now.

Fort Kochi lies off the mainland of Ernakalum, with silly cheap ferries shuttling between it and the other nearby islands. All the European colonialists had their time running the show here at some time, leaving a legacy of European architecture, churches and restaurant menus. I played some cricket with local kids in the park, willing me to hit the ball ‘like Chris Cairns does’ over those trees and football in the evening. At the barber I got my hair buzzed as Indian men popped in and out for a mo trim. Chinese fishing nets that need 4+ men to operate pull in catches that are served up at the seaside.

I smiled on the inside when I read Romana’s email - she’d not unusually changed her plans and was in town. And not unusually again, we walked straight into the middle of a festival at the Shiva temple. Music and dance and fireworks (of minumum beauty but maximum bang). 3 giant tuskers were the centrepiece, cloaked in gold headresses. Close enough to be sneezed on. Close enough to be trampled under. Beautiful. Fueled by sweet Chai for the pigrims and sugarcane for the elephants, the procession continued on past 3am.
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