Trivandrum, Kovalam, Kanyakumari

OK, this is a text I wrote two days ago, only when the time came to publish it, it was just impossible, so I am trying again...

"Wednesday, late afternoon, Trivandrum, after a thrilling three hours' bus ride from Kanyakumari... I did one of the things I wanted the most in this trip, went to the southernmost tip of the subcontinent, and when I checked my little... damn, I forget the word, this thing that shows you where the north is, I saw that towards the south there was only sea... That was it, I was at the very end of this country, and call me silly but... it felt special. Another reason I will remember Kanyakumari for, is the meal I had before taking the bus, one of the best, if not THE best, I have had in India. I ordered a so called 'Special south Indian meal', which came with a bunch of extras, like a rice pudding and a little banana, little touches I loved, as much as the food itself. Dipping my fingers in the rice, having poured on it first some of the sauces the meal comes with, looked to me messy the first days, but as the days went by, I started enjoying it more and more, trying to remember that I am not supposed to use my left hand at all... Kanyakumari... Third reason I will remember this day, is the train ride in the morning from Trivandrum to Kanyakumari. It took a little more than two hours, and I spent most of it hanging half out of an open door, something you canNOT do in Europe... It felt... rejuvenating, and I can't wait for my train ride tomorrow morning to Cochin to repeat it, says the kid in me... :-) Yesterday I spent half the day at Kovalam, some 15km from Trivandrum, a place which is said to have the most idyllic little beaches in the whole Keralan coastline. It is indeed a place taken out of some brochure in travel agencies, advertising 'exotic paradises', but I got a little... you can call it sad, noticing that more and more hotels are being built, and more and more palm trees are being chopped. What bothered me more, is that most of the hotels are just... cement boxes, nothing nice, nothing picturesque, nothing like... local Keralan architecture. In... say... Santorini, in Greece, tens of new hotels are being built every year, but at least they follow some specific architectural pattern, so it doesn't look that bad... Anyhow, unlike what my guidebook says, the lighthouse on the edge of the main beach CAN be visited, so I spent two good hours sitting atop, with my feet hanging, people watching from hiiiiiiiiiiigh up, one of the highlights of this trip, I reckon. As for Trivandrum, I have two comments: the locals are some of the friendliest chaps I have met these 13 days in India, and the humidity is really overwhelming. My plane from Bangalore landed a little after 8pm, two days ago, and the moment I exited the aircraft... a wave of humidity swept me away... When I walk around Trivandrum I sweat nonstop, my clothes stick on my body two minutes after I exit my hotel, but after 48 hours here I say I got used to it...
Little littles from these last three days... Yesterday I met in Trivandrum a Russian couple. They are traveling around India for three months. Both of them, a few weeks ago, needed to be hospitalized because of some virus that got into them, and this made me feel (sorry guys), a little better about my lost luggage. I am perfectly healthy, and this is faaaaaaaar more important than losing my luggage... Actually, I have lost weight, I can easily say because my pants are falling these last two days, but I guess it's because I walk a lot and sweat a lot. On the other hand, I eat a lot, truly, but this hasn't helped me maintain my normal weight... Beats me...Guess what! I got "sexually harassed" both yesterday and the day before that. At Bangalore, a 50 something bald guy called me as I was walking towards Brigade Road, the heart of the... westernized, let's say, area of Bangalore, and after telling me that I looked 'smart'(!), he didn't hesitate to ask me if I wanted to go with him to his hotel room nearby(!!). He was Indian, looked very cheerful, but he didn't look equally cheerful when I told him that I would just prefer going on with my solo walking around... Then, yesterday, on the bus to Kovalam, another 50 something Indian guy, one with a funny face and very gentle voice, asked me if I would be interesting in joining him in a lovely evening(!!!). Eeeeeehm, I think it's high time I cut my relatively long hair... I mean... it must be making me look girly, or...? So, tomorrow morning I am taking the train to Cochin, where I will spend two and a half days before taking the train to Goa... This is my 13th day here, I still have 12 to go, and making just one short comment that says nothing but also much at the same time, yes, I would travel to India again. Soon? No. I don't see me being one of those who fall 100% at India's spell, coming back every year, spending here at least a month at a time. If not soon, when? I think in 3-4 years' time, after having been to other places I am dying to visit, like Cuba and South America. But, I feel it in my bones that one day I shall be back here, seeing the north of the country.
A hungry (yep, again, I can almost smell my dinner :-)) hello from humid-humid Trivandrum!"