I love my India...

...it says inside my plastic yellow rickshaw. These noisy, fumey, bumpy little three-wheelers probably top my list of things that, after three months here, I now take for granted. Here are a few more: cows in the road; sleeping under fans; watching the sun set; sweating all the time; fresh coconut juice straight from the coconut; washing my knickers in a bucket; mosquito bites; having all the time in the world; chai; eating curry every day; colourful Gods on display in homes, shops, buses, trains, kiosks, stalls; beautiful faces; daily power cuts; speaking with an Indian accent so people understand me; and the most exhilarating sense of freedom.

I expect total strangers to ask, 'From where are you coming? What is your good name? Are you married? First time India?' Often, these are not conversation openers, they are facts that need gathering. Once gathered, a smile and a wobble of the head signifies the questioner is satisfied.

I am used to being in a country teeming with people. I now no longer huff and puff when I'm sitting on a train, squashed indecently up against my neighbours, five of us to a bench designed for three, when a rather overweight lady squeezes into the middle by essentially sitting on my lap. People don't flinch or tut or sigh when you knock them for six with your backpack, racing for a bus. It's what happens when there are over 1 billion of you sharing the same turf.

And it now feels completely normal to have rewarding, spiritual, deep conversations with almost anyone, at the drop of a hat. These can last two minutes or two hours. There's often no pre-amble: people here love to get to the serious, life and death stuff straight off. That, and a hundred other reasons, is why I love India.

All welcome

Christianity is a loud, colourful, frenzied affair in India. This is a Catholic cathedral in Tamil Nadu decorated in thousands of fairy lights for a ten-day, pre-Christmas festival. It looked like Blackpool illuminations. An effigy of Virgin Mary, looking rather dark skinned and wearing something akin to a sari, was navigated through the happy crowds on the shoulders of half a dozen young men and locked safely inside a glass cabinet near the altar. Crowds surged forward, hands and mobile phones aloft, anxious to get to her.

Many of the southern states, particularly Goa, have large Christian populations. Goa was ruled by Portugal until 1961, after all. It reminds me that India is a secular state, with many religions co-existing happily. The extremists are the exception: Hindus, Muslims and Christians, and many others in between, accept each other without a thought. I've met many young non-practising Indians born into several faiths and what defines them, they say, above all else is that they are Indian.

Gods, Goddesses and fairy lights

Pink and brown

Candyfloss seller at Kanyakumari (see post, below).

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.

'Where three waters meet...'

Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India, is a small town with a big personality. Three seas meet here: the west-facing Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, which touches Thailand to the east. And, due south, with nothing between land and Antarctica, the Indian Ocean.
It is the place in India to watch sunrise and sunset. Both occur on the same stretch of water: if you sit on the very tip of India itself - marked by a small scrubby beach packed with shrieking bathers - and incline your head slightly to the left, the sun rises. A tilt to the right, and the sun sets. And, on full moon days, you can see the sun setting and moon rising at exactly the same time.
A few steps behind the beach is a 3,000 year-old temple, dedicated to the virgin Goddess Devi Kanyakumari. The town and its surroundings are believed to be part of the land created by the God Vishnu, hugely important to Hindus.
Unsurprisingly, the town has received several important visitors. One Swami Vivekananda sat on a rock 200 yards out to sea to meditate for three days in 1892, before embarking on an evangelical crusade to America. Today, the rock has a couple of temples dedicated to him, beseiged by exciteable Indian tourists. A rusty ferry took me and around 200 of them the six minute journey across, after a jolly one-hour queue. Although the sky was clear, the sea was choppy and the boat heaved up and down violently, to cheers, wolf-whistles and people falling about. Notices saying no standing and imploring life-jackets to be worn were ignored. The latter lay strewn across the floor. It was high spirits all round.
Gandhi visited Kanyakumari three times: in 1925, 1937 and then in an urn, his ashes carried by train from Delhi and scattered out to sea in February 1949. He wrote: 'I am writing this at the Cape, in front of the sea, where three waters meet and furnish a sight unequalled in the world. For this is no port of call for vessels. Like the Goddess, the waters around are virgin.'
Standing on the rocky island, looking out to sea as the sun danced on the waves, I thought of the expanse of ocean before me, and the immense country behind me. And despite the heat, I shivered.

Tuff Security

Me and my friend Catherine spotted him in Anjuna market and followed him down to the beach. He stood out among the crowds of scruffy, dreadlocked hippies, overweight sunburnt tourists and painfully thin Western girls in bikinis. He was tall, smart and decidedly un-tuff looking...

Anjuna market, Goa

Hot, hassley, and once you've seen a few stalls (of the thousands there) you've seen them all. I bought a serene Buddha head, a dress, a bead bracelet - and lots of lemon sodas.

Beach Hawker

The Barber of Baga

Purple Valley

Retreat is a suitable word: you barely need to step inside the gate and trip down the path into the landscaped garden, and you leave India way, way behind. Purple Valley Yoga is quite the most sublime place I've ever had the pleasure of staying in - and after nearly two months of intense India, very welcome. I didn't set foot outside the gate again for five days and when I did, the noise, the dust, the colour jangled my nerves and saturated my senses all over again. And that was just sleepy Goa. I'd been de-India'd in a jiffy.

Our days went like this: Ashtanga yoga from 7am til 8.30am, which left my hamstrings screaming, sweat dripping off parts of body I didn't even know produced sweat, and my body wiped out, at least for a few days. Our teachers were Jeff and Harmony Lichty, a gorgeous, inspiring Canadian couple with eye-poppingly bendy bodies and a deep knowledge of yoga in its widest sense: as a way of life with many other branches aside from the postures, or asanas, you do on your mat. So as well as getting my stiff body moving again, the classes provided spiritual lessons on how to live a better life. Jeff, a former paramedic, is a natural comedian and if ever he sensed anyone was taking the yoga too seriously, he would throw out a silly joke and make us all giggle.

They studied in Mysore under Mr Ashtanga himself, Sri K Pattabhi Jois. Now in his mid nineties, Pattabhi Jois (aka, Guruji) turned millenia-old asanas into a flowing system of moves - the Ashtanga yoga of today. He has taught hundreds of people like Jeff and Harmony, who can call themselves certified teachers, and seems an inspiring man - quite the looker in his day.

Back to the daily schedule. Yoga was followed by a breakfast of fresh porridge, pineapple, papaya and watermelon. There followed intense periods of chat, sunbathing, swimming in the pool and biding time until the gong went for lunch. And what lunch! Saori, the resident Japanese chef - five foot tall and cute as a button - produced meal after meal of sumptuous vegan food. A team of Indians made scrumptious dinner. Every day we vowed to eat less, and every day we were beaten.

We often had classes at 4:30, but these were Q&A sessions, gentle stretches and, more often than not, silliness. When we did start to venture out into the real world, it involved taxi trips to markets and the odd restaurant, or a wander to the cafe down the road run by a German lady who was already baking her Christmas Stollen.

But really, what made Purple Valley even more special were the people there with me: interesting, independent, well-travelled and utterly fabulous. Barely an hour would go by before we were hysterical and wiping tears from our cheeks about something. The only downside was my photography went from attempts at artistry to cheesy, self-taken holiday snaps (see above). But I'm not complaining.

Pleasure seekers

The four hour train ride from Ratnagiri (see below) to Goa was fun for two reasons: fresh, piping hot samosas, the likes of which I've never eaten, bought to your seat from the adjacent Pantry Car (I've been to enough parties with canapes to know to loiter near the kitchens), costing 12 rupees each. And second, because of Vikram.

He is a navy officer, currently based in Goa, 27, twinkly eyes, a gorgeous smile and - something I hadn't realised I'd been missing here in India - a cracking sense of humour.

He was very curious about us. He asked: 'What is the purpose of your visit to India?' And Angela, who I was still travelling with, muttered something about wanting to see more of the country, learn about its people. He smiled beautifully, and looked utterly dissatisfied with the answer. 'But what is the specific purpose of your visit?' It was then I realised that visiting a country just because you want to is an alien concept to Indian people. Vikram said we were very lucky, being able to leave our jobs/take time out of our jobs for reasons of pleasure. 'Indian people cannot do that,' he said. 'We have too much responsibility.' To their jobs, to their family, where a child, often a son, will be the bread winner for the entire lot.

It reminded me of a news story I'd read in the Times of India the day before. There is currently a bill lodged in Parliament here on whether or not to legalise homosexuality. An outspoken opponent of this, an MP, put his case forward: as well as saying how immoral it was, he said it was another threat to Indian culture from Western society, 'which is just about fun and pleasure'.

Ratnagiri

"Your Highness," says Mr Cox, an English policemen accompanying the Burmese royal family to India where they are living in exile - in Amitav Ghosh's novel, The Glass Palace. "I am glad to be able to inform you that the matter of a permanent residence for you and your family has finally been resolved."

"Oh," said the King. "And where is it to be?"

"A place by the name of Ratnagiri."

"What?" The King stared at him, nonplussed. "Where is this place?"

"Some 120 miles south of Bombay. An excellent place, with fine views of the sea."

The Glass Palace is why I headed up the coast, to a place where no tourists venture. In the novel, King Thebaw, forced to leave Burma for India, lives out his days in Ratnagiri (the accent is on the 'na'). He spends his days gazing out to sea, watching for boats bringing supplies of his beloved pork. Above is his view. There isn't much to see or do in Ratnagiri, but if you want to be the only white person in town - and try to deciper menus written only in Hindi - it's the place to come.

Hampi ghats

Hampi is an extraordinary landscape: piles of enormous boulders for hundreds of miles around, many teetering so precariously it seems like the slightest wind would dislodge them. It was formed by volcanos caused by shifting plates. It feels unlike anywhere else in India, and almost prehistoric. A sleepy river winds through the town. These are the ghats (steps leading down to the river): people bathe in it, sit by it, wash clothes in it and ferry people across it.

Chennai-Mysore sleeper

This is Sleeper Class: three tiers of fold down beds and no AC. Our heads were up in the fans and the strip lights as we had the sought-after top bunks, but actually it felt like I was in the bowels of a ship, cargo class.

Mysore night market

Learn Tamil in 30 Days

My inner graphic designer was instantly attracted to the typography and colour of this little book. But it wasn't until I opened it and started reading that I realised the real beauty of this guide to learning Tamil, the language of Tamil Nadu, lay within. It was written in 1967 when, according to the introduction, Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister and Chennai was still known as Madras. This edition, published this year, is its 35th.

The front contains letters from political grandees and newspaper reviews commenting, in wonderfully dated language, on how useful it is. According to The Mail in Madras: 'The publication of this book, written with the object of helping foreign tourists to Tamilnad who cannot engage a teacher during their short stay, is timely.'

After pages of grammar, spelling and pronounciation is a section of real-life conversations the visiting tourist in the late 60s may have. Here is one:

At Mahabalipuram [Mamallapuram, on the coast near Pondicherry, famous for its giant sculptures]

Foreigner: Yonder. I see an elephant standing! How did it come here?

Guide: It is not a true elephant. It is a monolithic sculpture.

Foreigner: My eyes deceived me. The deftness of the hands of the sculptors is something marvellous.

There is also a sample invitation to attend Christmas. 'My dear Celestine. I have great pleasure in requesting you to go over here for Christmas with your sister Miss Juliet and your brother Tildon. It would be better if you can take leave for at least a week. I am sure you won't disappoint us.'

Hampi priests

These three men were chatting, laughing, debating and apparently enjoying life, outside a tiny temple dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey God. The temple was perched on the highest hill for miles around, a few miles from Hampi. They are Hindu priests, and have foresworn family for religion. We sat with them for a couple of hours, joined by a friendly young software engineer from Bangalore, Sandeep Moonka, who had come up to Hampi for the weekend: he is a temple architecture fanatic. The youngest priest, Swamy Sharnanand, is from Rishikesh, up in the north of India. The priests shared their coconuts, oranges, apples and bananas with us, and we discussed religion, tourism, India, our jobs, their lives. Coconuts were ten a penny, laughed the priest in the foreground, as devotees who climb to the temple bring them as offerings. Well, someone has to eat them....

Goa bliss

In this sleepy little village in south Goa, Agonda, I've found an Internet connection. I shouldn't really be surprised: I'm in a country of, in parts, world-beating IT wizardry. And in a world where you can get a connection and a mobile signal pretty much anywhere. But I'm still surprised. And ever so slightly disappointed....
We - an English friend I've made out here and am travelling with for a while - arrived here yesterday late afternoon. We are very, very happy. It is the sort of beach I didn't believe still existed in Goa: quiet, peaceful, beautiful, and with a handful of charming little beach huts, fairy-lit at night. The beach is at least one kilometre long, with wooded headlands at either end, and I counted a dozen people at its busiest today.
You can hear the sea in bed (it's a small bed - Angela fell out of it in her sleep last night). We walked along the beach last night, clutching torches we didn't need as the moon was so bright, and stumbled on a restaurant with great food, decent music and yet more fairly lights. After quite a busy couple of weeks travelling from Pondicherry to Chennai to Mysore and to Hampi, with a few long-distance bus and train journeys, we are so glad to throw off our bags, long clothes and Lonely Planets and throw on our bikinis..
One more note. World news hasn't escaped these parts, of course (Mum texted me at 5am UK time to tell me the fabulous news about Barack Obama). The following day, Angela spotted Obama's photograph on the front of a Hindi newspaper. The following exchange took place:
A, pointing to paper: 'Great news?! Barack Obama win, are Indians excited?'
Man: He is not Indian.
A: No, but good news, are Indian people happy about it?
Man: He is American, not Indian.
A: Yes, he won the election in America. People must be very happy?
Man: He win election in America, not India.
Continue, ad nauseum......

Holy Cows

The beach at Mamallapurum, Tamil Nadu: strictly for fishing, not sunbathing.