Funfair and festival

Health and safety wasn't high on the agenda. The rusty Air India flight, above, taxied round a small circular track at quite an alarming speed. Nearby, a Pirate's Ship looked rather shaky in its moorings. Its pushy tout approached me and my friend Kristy, rupee signs flashing in his eyes, and tried to get us to board. No-one was on the ride. 'No thanks,' we said. 'Come, no problem,' he head-wobbled, a phrase you hear many times a day here. We declined again.

In the end, it was the motorbike track that convinced me I'd be heading home rather more dead than alive. A two storey-high wooden structure, supported by slim, rainbow-coloured wooden beams, it looked like one stiff breeze would bring the whole thing crashing down like a matchstick house. After parting with 20 rupees we climbed a tall metal staircase, the treads sloping dangerously forward. It was shaking furiously, and by the time I reached the top, I was hysterical with laughter and nerves. Not letting go of the side, I peered inside, where a young guy was speeding round the almost vertical wooden walls on a motorbike, hands-free. I took a quick photograph and we climbed down, almost crying with relief when we reached terra firma.

It was a week-long festival in Alleppey, in Kerala's backwaters. Outside the fairground, we joined the cruising public: courting couples; strolling families with giddy children, buoyed up on sugar; and groups of young guys, arms slung round each other's shoulders or holding hands, the strength of the pack giving them confidence to shout cheeky comments. Boys and men in India are extremely tactile, walking arm in arm and hand in hand. With the younger guys in particular, I wonder if they're compensating for the fact you can't do that in public with girls. Friendships between guys are strong and long-lasting: they often refer to each other as brothers.

Alleppey's streets were lined with bountiful stalls selling dates, popcorn and sugar cane. You could either crunch this raw, or find a stall that was crushing it into juice, served with a squeeze of lime and ginger. Delicious. Plastic tat abounded, as did men offering henna-style mehndi hand painting (a quicker, more noxious version using inked stamps) and old men manning weighing scales for a small fee. There are weighing scales everywhere in India, particularly restaurants, usually by the door. For the way in or the way out, I'm not really sure.