Beach?

(Written 21.00, 10.10.13) 

Waking up to the tranquility of the Alleppey backwaters is an ideal way to start the morning! I took up my favourite position at the front rail of the boat and got the music back on for the cruise back to the jetty!

After a temporally long, but seemingly short journey to Kovalam, I set about finding the white sands and blue seas I had heard about. The beach near the hotel, however, exhibited a multitude of cans, a few murders of crows, and a half eaten rat. Possibly a winning picture in the Tate Modern but not ideal in real life! I headed in the opposite direction (towards town) to explore. This was a very odd journey. It reminded me of 1984 (the novel!) with obscenely loud announcements/chants from loudspeakers on lamposts, and with me looking (and feeling!) dramatically out of place as the only obvious foreigner in the area. I reached another beach, which was slightly more aesthetically pleasing, but the grazing cows on a random tuft of grass still made for a peculiar scene!