Dolphins for Breakfast

They love a backwater in Kerala. I thought they were gonna be this super exclusive thing, but nope, they have backwaters everywhere. Even in the middle of the city. Those backwaters are a bit stinky though, not exactly the picture postcard houseboats-and-Chinese-fishing-nets backwaters that they advertise.

Talking of which. First bit of picturesque Keralan waters and there were dolphins, just hanging out. Doing the dolphin thing. In Kochi Harbour. By the Chinese fishing nets. You don't get dolphins in the city centre back in Blighty; Chelmsford needs to up its game.

I snuck out of the city to Cherai Beach, an out-of-season resort town on a superlong stretch of sand where everyone was just lazing - as I guess you do on a beach when there are no tourists. I ate my first Keralan fish thali in about the least restauranty restaurant I've ever seen; a battered patio table beside an old man's house. The food in Kerala is a bit different to the North. You get rice and poppadoms (like a proper British curry) rather than the bread you get in the North. And they love a banana leaf - fish cooked in banana leaf, curry served on a banana leaf, banana served without the banana leaf. The food is still not spicy though, even when they even promised to make it "Indian spicy".

I spent the last day cruising the backwaters (box ticked). The nice ones, not the stinky ones. You could tell they were nice, they were full of water snakes and kingfishers: if there's one thing I know about water snakes and kingfishers, it's that they are very particular about their accommodation. 

Pink Around the Edges

Rishikesh seemed a whole heap calmer this time round. Not certain whether it's because I'm a lot more used to the hooting pandemonium that is India or because it was genuinely a whole heap more calm with it not being Durga Pooja.

Had a pretty different experience this time round too. Way more sensible than last time's daft treks. We snuck in a safari to Rajaji National Park. Didn't see tiger / leopard / king cobra. Did see loads and loads of deer and peacocks. And a hyena, that's kind of cool, right? I didn't know they had hyena in India.

I'd been dismissive of the rafting last time I was here ("It won't be as good as the Zambezi. It won't be as good as the Nile. Look how much I've travelled, I'm so great." Idiot). Here are two very, very good reasons why you should go rafting in Rishikesh:
1. It is incredibly cheap.
2. The views of the Ganges winding its way through the Himalayan foothills are absolutely phenomenal. 

And, as a bonus, you get to see monkeys on rocks. Everyone loves monkeys on rocks.

I finally found a way to stop everyone asking for selfie-with-me at tourist attractions. Hang around with a white girl. It's like an invisibility cloak for selfies. Noone wants a picture of the angry looking white man when there's a smiley, female alternative that's still pink around the edges from Holi.

This cloaking device only works for selfies, it has the opposite effect for any kind of business transaction. Turns out if there is Man around it is compulsory for all questions and money to pass through Man. Everyday sexism to a ludicrous extent.

In other news, I finally made it to the Red Fort. I'd put off going as I'd only heard bad things, but it was alright. Yes it's not as good as Agra Fort and yes it looks like it could do with a cuddle; but it's a veritable oasis of calm in the madness that is Chandi Chowk, and for that alone it should be celebrated.

Festival of Colours

Now my romantic image of Holi was big piles of powder paint at the side of the road. People grabbing fistfuls of colour and throwing it in the air, everyone would then gambol about as the colour fluttered down. In slow motion. Maybe Purple Rain playing in the background.

The reality didn't quite hit this idyll: it was more strangers rubbing handfuls of paint and spit in your face; kids spraying bright blue insulating foam in your eyes; roaming gangs of increasingly feral men trying to grab whitegirl boobies with their painty, painty fingers. Happy Holi. I'd wondered why Holi was a dry day, given that without alcohol the whole city looked like Stabilo armageddon it was probably a good call.

We were in Mathura for Holi. Have you heard of Mathura? Of course not. It's one of those super-religious places - a bona fide pilgrimage site, with its ghats and its Krishna and its Arati - and it takes Holi pretty seriously. The night before Holi the town was full of peat pyres topped with plastic gods. Nothing says spiritual like toxic poo smoke and colouful groping.

I've revisited some of the big sites, this means we can reassess without anything being influenced by first impressions:

Qutb Minar: still ace. Who doesn't love squirrels on ruins?

Lotus Temple: amazing from far away. Inside it looks like a particularly soulless baptist church.

Taj Mahal: Like the Lotus Temple the vista is better than the reality, only dialled up on both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, it's real pretty from far away. But close up it's too big to see and inside it's dark and depressing. Added to that, wherever you are you're getting jostled by idiots and kettled by whistle-blowing Stazi, so the whole experience is just unpleasant. Given that it's at its best when it's far away, you may as well just look at a picture of it and save yourself the discomfort.

Agra Fort: A far more enjoyable experience than the Taj.

Akshardham: When I saw it the first time I thought it was the prettiest temple I'd ever seen. Now I'm far more jaded. Now I've seen a whole heap more temples all round India. Now I've read up about it and know that there's no real history to it. No other building that I've seen in India comes close.

Odisha

Odisha seems to be a bit different from everywhere else I've been in India. They have different food; it tastes of mustard rather than chilli. They have different gods; Jagannath is  Vishnu's Southpark incarnation. Gone are the marigolds; the offerings are all about cowri shells here. The buildings are more colourful. The police dress like cowboys.

I started in Konark which is famous for an enormo-temple decked out like a chariot. The temple is covered in hundreds of ornate carvings most of which fall into the NSFW category. And there was me thinking that Indians were conservative; they cover their tourist attractions with 800 year old smut.

Next stop was Puri, which is an absolute hotchpotch of a place. I stayed in the western end of town where it appeared to be a simple living beach community (wide beach; fishing boats; sandy roads, full of baby animals and basket weavers - the kind of place backpackers flock to so that they can feel a bit grimey).

But that's not all Puri is about, oh no. It's a super-holy pilgrimage town so the colourful streets in the centre are full of shells and streets and pilgrims heading to the temple (as an aside, the temple is walled and accessible only to Hindus; to see the architecture you have to climb into Miss Haversham's library to see over the wall, which doesn't detract from the overall weird).

But that's not all Puri is about, oh no, it's also a bona fide resort for Indian holiday makers. This was the bit that probably blew my mind the most. If you travel between the medieval temple city and a fishing village, you'll find yourself in Southend. It's got a promenade, a strip of generic, beachfront hotels and a load of shops selling tourist tat. The only real difference from a British resort was that there were camels to ride rather than donkeys.

When I was in Puri a lot of people asked me why Westerners stopped visiting twenty years ago. I suspect that the answer has a lotto do with everywhere expecting you to check out by 8am. Rather undermines the chilled out vibe that the city was going for.

I finished in the capital, Bhubaneswa, a city whose name I really have trouble spelling. Unlike my other two Odisha stops, Bhubaneswa is famous for its medieval temples. I managed about twelve before I was officially templed out and ran into the hills to look at caves.

So yeah, a smash and grab tour of Odisha's highlights, mainly on the local bus and it felt like I was backpacking again. By which I mean I found the transport uncomfortable, the accommodation unclean and felt sort of grimy for the whole weekend. I'm now slightly worried that I'm growing up.