The end of the holiday
It rained on my last day in India. After two months without a drop, it rained today.
Earlier today Sankar and Ramon caught the train to Chennai to visit Sankar's family. It was pretty sad to see them go as we have had a ball together over the last two months. Tomorrow i fly to Sri Lanka to begin my research project.
Since my last update we spent a few days chilling in Goa. Goa, the former Portugese enclave, really is a world away from the vibrancy and the intensity of the rest of India. The locals who live there identify as Goans rather than Indians. There really isn't much to say about Goa; the seafood was pretty good, the water was warm, the alcohol is dirt cheap and so are the drugs. Accordingly people there are pretty laid back to the point of being spaced out.
After Goa we headed on into Kerela which has been sweet. We made a day trip out to Kanyakamuri (the southern most tip of India where the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal meet and supposedly you can see waves coming in from three directions. I only saw two waves...) and for the past few days the three of us hired a houseboat and went cruising around the backwaters of Kerala. The backwaters were really nice, the south western part of India has a huge network of canals and lakes just inland from the shoreline and you can travel between costal towns by boat.
Anyway, now is the end of my trip and it's pretty sad to go. India was a great experience, a really amazing country. Sure at times it seemed like everyone was out to cheat us, and sometimes there just seems to be so much poverty around everywhere but we met alot of friendly genuine people, ate some fantastic food, drank some delicious drinks, experienced interesting experiences, and generally had a great time.