Finished that

No more Emma, I hope this Pip fellow knows the value of stoicism.

One line did grab me however, among other chuckles, for having been written near 200 years ago.
"They come from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr Weston"
Sorry Charlotte!

Confessions, part 2

The shirts that I have been wearing for the past month are held together in places by superglue.

Local brands

A popular local drink is 'Thums up'. Yes this is the spelling. I should stand for functional language and I can't make strong enough a case for the 'b', but still it pains me. There are bigger misuses of language to worry about. Ok maybe the person who created the sign which reads 'XOROX' should consider why the 50,000 other signs for this micro industry are all spelled 'XEROX'. Or I'm in error and I don't even wan't to know what XOROX means.

Error in creation

The shop didn't have any chilled 7up, sprite, or generic versions of these drinks. I'll try a different brand I thought, Jeera Masala I thought, it looks a bit like coke and lets face it all soft drinks taste the same. What a mistake that was, 600ml of something between a coke and a curry. Masala is the term for spiced foods, often implicitly a certain style of spicing. It turns out Jeera is cumin, so that can start you imagining the taste. Somehow this drink tasted salty (without containing salt) while also sweet. If I try and think of curry the sweetness shocked me, if I thought of sweet the spices get you. Much like most biscuits here are an inedible 'sweet salt' mixture. I managed to drink most of this creation, but post this as a warning should anyone else get curious

Confessions

Half of my enjoyment from eating bananas is seeing the excited animation of a cow presented with a banana skin

Risk factors

So by chance I'm offered a lift to my next destination, and I accept as my back has had enough after the previous days 10km fully loaded. Things will get better, the sooner I finish reading about the silly little 'Emma' the sooner I can lose another half kilo of wasted exertion. Before we even set off I have created much amusement and intrigue among the hotel staff, for I'm doing something unusual. It's called a seat belt and after some conversation one of the young guys uses the word 'safety' and gets an understanding response from another. Clearly that too is a loan word/concept from English.
We follow a jeep which demonstrates the rather different approach to vechicle lights in India. In this case the reversing lights and rear headlights are wired in with a couple of other red, blue, green and yellow bulbs and flash alternately.
As we get going the driver asks the usual questions, nothing untoward, and then offers me a beer. I refuse as even for me its a bit early, but shortly he stops and gets a bottle. I should point out that his driving until this point was good by Indian standards, his dangerous overtakes are balanced by a little bit of power in the car which means we tuck infront of the trucks nicely. After this point he is a little distracted, for the primary danger of drink driving is that one hand is then tied up holding the bottle. It all makes sense now! Its still only about 2.30pm and this is the main coast road in bright sunlight, but seems to be accepted.
He talks about wanting to do something with his life, and just as I'm expecting some uninteresting introspection he mentions he has a BSc and his personal interest is in biofuels. Actually experimenting with marine plants and mentioning a shortage of land. This is curiously something which has interested me before, and I've read what I see about the debate, ethics and concern of iron sulphate seeding for algae. I try and engage him with a discussion on increasing the productive land - as shortage of water and good soil are other avenues, but I'm not sure if I am understood. I get tied up in an explanation of desalination costs, and he drifts onto Indian corruption (the death of all conversations in India)

New years day

Well its only right to have a swim on new years, show you have no fear of the elements, early in the morning ...when the temperature is barely above 20 degrees outside. Before the mid-day sun makes it... oh poor Europeans. Often you see rocky outcrops and islands and they look so close, and today I thought why not swim to it. Not sure why, I didn't even have any doubts... it is probably quite dangerous. So it turns out distances over water are deceptive, but thankfully the closest rock was only about 500m out and I quickly gave up on reaching the others (still keeping too much for the way back for anyone who has seen Gattaca). And as my writing this proves there wasn't any current. But really why are rocks so sharp? Despite all my care I have dozens of cuts on my hands and feet, and you can imagine the fear of sharks these small drops of blood can excite in the mind of your humble narrator! So later I get back to land and in Indian style they know these rocks to be 1.5km away, (google confirms this is in fact about 750m if you measure from the same point). And also that I should probably have worn gloves... and now I'm thinking about foot-gloves. Do they make marine versions of those 'shoes' with individual toes?

A bit of a quiet one

I pretend to shun the company of other westerners and wont let myself go to Goa or Gokarna for new years. Instead I think, well somewhere coastal is bound to have one or two other tourists I will just choose somewhere further south. I was wrong twice, and settle on the second coastal town I try without a single westerner to be seen. It probably wasn't a good sign that the last tourists the hotel so excitedly talk about sound a lot like the friends I know who stayed here some days before. It turns out Murudeshwara is a popular stop for Indians at new year which has really forced up prices anyway. The beach party is moderately lively by local standards, with music here and there and a beach full of cars and small groups of people drinking. The police take a gentle stroll down the beach twirling their beating canes just to make sure nothing gets out of control. It's not a bad place really, the tallest Shiva statue and temple are both illuminated at night on a rocky outcrop of land.