I've never been waved off on a train before - at least, certainly not such a long train (at least half a kilometre) going such a long way (Trivandrum to Chennai, 16 hours) and in, I suppose, romantic circumstances. Rexel drove me to the station, heaved my pack onto the train and gave me a brief, but importantly public, kiss on the lips. I waved until he was a tiny, waving blue and white speck and then burst into tears. I had to pretend to the guard I had something in my eye as he ushered me to my bunk looking a bit uncomfortable...
The great thing about travelling in AC 2 (the air conditioned carriage with two-tier bunk beds) is just that: cool and uncrowded. The worst thing is you are invariably at the front of afore-mentioned very long train, which means you sail past all the food stalls that line major station platforms and don't really have time to dash to them while the train stops. By the time we got to Ernakulum I was starving. I was standing in the open doorway as my carriage passed at least a dozen open kitchens with the most mouth-watering smells coming from within. I had to settle for a couple of dry, spicey fried doughnuts and a yoghurty dip from a roving wallah further up the platform.
My bunk buddy was a chap in his early 30s, originally from Kochi but now living in San Francisco, off to spend the night in Chennai with some friends while his wife, also from India, did boring family stuff. He was smart, educated, spoke excellent English and had a good job at Deloitte & Touche, but clearly you are forever a mummy's boy here: she had packed him a supper of rice wrapped in a banana leaf and more tiny bananas that anyone could possibly eat in one evening, even if you do share them with a ravenous English girl. He ate the rice reluctantly as he was trying to lose a bit of weight, he said, and at home in the US avoids carbs in the evening. We laughed, and both agreed that eating delicious, buttery, rich Keralan curries every evening wouldn't really make it onto the Atkins diet.
I was asleep as we arrived at Chennai in the morning, but was promptly woken up by the guard and sleep-walked onto the concourse to find a rickshaw to take me to the bus station.
R had warned me Tamil Nadu would be hot. I'd either not taken in that information, or thought he might be trying to put me off leaving Kerala. But even at 7am, Chennai was getting pretty scorching. By the time my rickety bus had driven the 40km or so down the coast to Mamallapurum, you could have fried an egg on the pavement. But it is dry heat, more like being in hot Europe, as opposed to rather humid, slightly cooler Kerala. And that's a blessing of some sort. It also means that, despite slathering on the Factor 50, I'm changing colour fast...
