Who wears bushy fox tails pinned to they're ass, outside of Portland

Indian beer tastes like they use water straight from the source, which by the way, does not mean rocky mountain fresh.

Im writing from a smokey bar straight out of what my tv i

imagination says is the 50's. Low light, dark wood, marble floor

tilling, etched glass and moody paintings. It's like an episode from

mad men, except replace the suited men with indians in collared shirts

and Lungi's.

Kanyukamari was a bit of a disappointment for me, I half expected it

but I went anyway, and spent two nights for no good reason. Kanyukamari
is at the southern most point in India, where you

can see the sunrise and sunset at the same location, of which i saw

neither. First morning the clouds where in the way, the second

morning, I assumed that the clouds were in the way rather than

checking. Now, normally here in India i have the strange ability to

leap out of bed early in the morning, without alarm clock, all bright

eyed and bushy tailed. Kanyumakari was the kryptonite to my newly

attained super power. According to a random Indian guy ( Im not going

to bother with checking anything, just repeating a

conversation), Tamil Nadu, which is the state i was in, is one of the poorest

in India. They have 12 hours of power cuts through out the day.

According to him, Ford or other big international companies come in

and steal all the power for they're factories, and since the politicians are corrupt, it

stays that way. They get they're power from a mix of nuclear and wind

farms. This means that instead of making due without power, everybody

and they're mother have generators, included the hotel i stayed in (

i think this is only in the tourist/busy areas). The noise

of muffled air-gas mixture explosions going on periodically through

out the night, can really start driving you crazy.

So this guy had on a large bushy

tail hanging behind him, you may have seen something like this before,

he was a tourists. The indians were shocked and confused, and every

person touched it and asked what it was, as if you need more attention

as a visitor. I just thought he should keep the weird at home, India has enough

of its own.

After kanyukamari i took the train back north to Kollam, I like trains far better

than the bus, until they get so packed that people are almost sitting on

your lap and shoulders. There was definitely one sitting on my feet,

and another leaning on me. When I got off in Kollum I decided to just

start walking, see what i could get myself into. After careful

reconstruction, my path looked something like this...

Three or so hours later I found my self at an unknown beach. Which had some

form of tourism, 10 years ago, now all that is left were skeleton buildings.

Normally you get inquisitive looks from locals, on my walk towards the beach i got a lot, i guess now I should

have read them as puzzled. I got to the water and sat on a wall, and

people started trickling over to talk to me. Before i knew it I had a

group of crazy, older guys had surrounding me with talk of what am i

doing, are you alone! am I married, how do you like the beach and can

we be friends. They were, on the scale of sober to fully inebriated, sweaty

and slow eyed. Next thing I knew they were driving me around, poorly,

in they're tuktuk crammed with 6, looking for a place for me to stay.

We were driving past places and turning around twice, climbing over

walls, and banging on doors, as they lead me around, attempting to hold hands

with me. By now I had cold feet, and the one place we found that i could stay the night wanted far

too much, to my satisfaction, giving me an excuse to catch the next

ride back to the city. This was of coarse a difficult idea to propose

to them, and my only savior was one of the younger guys was a very

sweet, empathetic well spoken and very sober man. He asked, you must

be a little uncomfortable, to which i nodded, and he guided me through

the storm, out. But not after the mobb, well meaning for sure, had me

sitting in three separate tuktuks as they bargained the cheapest ride

for me. Fun times, good memories.

So i got back the city, booked a night at a hotel, got some food and

went to sleep. Next morning (today) i booked a backwater boat ride to

Allephy. This was an 8 hour ride on the famous backwaters. The

backwaters are natural inlets from the sea which create a network of

waterways in the land near the coast. I travelled some 90km north,

occasionally powering over rocks and low water areas. The scenery was

very interesting, lots of small villages and fishermen in they're

gondola type boats. The edges were lined with palm and mango trees,

and I saw many egrets, eagles, king fishers and some mammal creatures,

very cool trip.