Southern-most Ed

Just a quick post today. I am leaving paradise... I made a decision to get off my beached ass and do as much as possible in my last month and week. I will explain this plan later. I'm currently in Varkala in the south of Kerala which is itself at the south of India... as I only have a very short time left in this neck of the palm trees (at the time of writing a mere six hours) I decided that I should take the opportunity to go down to the southern tip of India.

A short (relatively) train ride away and there I was.... the closest to the equator I have ever been... metres from the southern-most tip of the subcontinent.... I walked down to what surprised me as being quite a beautiful piece of rugged coastline, full of the obligatory load of uncontemplative thrashing noisy Indian tourists and me. It's a pretty impressive feeling, incredibly satisfying to have made it all the way down and beautiful to look over a body of water so large... that would, on a map, be intersected by huge dotted lines delineating the beginnings and ends of the three seas that intersect it... strangely enough nature doesn't recognise this. I spent a while trying to clamber over some rocks with a camera to try to get further out that everyone else if only for a moment. It wasn't to be but I was close and happy to be there. On my way to catch the boat to one of the islands off the coast however I spotted a collection of rocks which spread itself quite far out to sea... I was sure that if I got there I could be a little further out to the rest... so dodging broken glass and pot-head beggars and crashing waves and jagged falls I made my way slowly out to sea until the end of the road. Quite literally I guess. As I stood looking out to sea I was literally the southern most human being in mainland India.

I went out to the islands eventually... I think there too... depending on which you count, I managed to win myself the accolade of southern-most person. I was also amused to discover what the southern-most functional building in India is. A temple? No. A Museum? No. A Fort? No.... it's a toilet. For men and for women you will be glad to hear. This made me laugh and was the perfect Indian punctuation to what has been an incredible joy of frustrations getting down here. Thank you whoever it was who decided to build that there.

And so to me. I made it back yesterday evening after a couple of coach journeys, my first road crash (which involved half destroying a tiny red car with our massive green bus... noone injured thankfully) and a train journey. I am now the morning after, my final Keralan morning, contemplating a 48 hour train journey which will take me from Varkala, via Chennai all the way up to Calcutta. It took me two months and three weeks to get south, its going to take me 48 hours to do the reverse. Fortunately Valium is not prescription out here. I'll let you know haw that goes.