Last day in India

Well it's hard to believe but we've come to the end of our Indian adventure and on we go to start a new one in Sri Lanka. After Periyar we did a fair bit of public bus travel (I know Ass, I'm telling them!!!) which is so much better than trains and private travel cos you get to see so much but it can numb the ass a bit... Have seen a few s#*%hole towns along the way some with no redeeming features and some built around a single one. Stayed in Kottyam, the less said the better or the suicidal tendencies might return, suffice to say it was horrible and the location of a nasty tussle with some very evil internet cafe people. Then went to Kanyakumari, the southern tip of India, all the charm of a chamber pot, where we saw the sunset and had a big arguement which threatened to split the daring duo apart, well I thought so anyway, but it was all ok by the next day of course! And so on to Trivananthapuram (I'm sure I've spelt it wrong again) our exit point. A day trip to Varkala was a tad disappointing, what a scumhole, dirty sand, evil autorickshaw drivers, crap food, and unfriendly people, won't be going back there again...
But the succession of awful towns can't possibly tarnish the absolutely positively wonderfully amazing time we've had in India so far. We've had highs and lows, the people we've met have been the nicest and craziest and sometimes just plain weirdest people we've ever met. From people offering us money on the street to having our photo taken with a group of 25+ to holding a 3yr old child sized fish and drinking buckets of chai it's been incredible!!!
So for my final India blog I'm just going to write about what I saw out the window of my bus just the other day, I wrote as I saw, in order:
It's hot as hell, even with the windows all open, you have to even thought the sun burns as soon as it touches your skin otherwise you'd bake (had one hours rain the other day, man the humidity afterwards!!) and the dust blows in every time a car or bus passes beeping all the time, dust, smells like oil and fumes and it blows in your eyes but you clear them with a few blinks and keep on looking cos everything comes so fast and you don't want to miss anything even though it gives you a headache, sensory overload. So you watch, repair shops, 6 foot cubes full to the brim with scrap and some guy sitting out front waiting, hippy types with orange shawls and a can for collecting donations on which they live, moustaches big and small, umbrella shops, you see the women walk around, shade from the sun, stick no bills, men, dirty and clean at the same time in what look like nappies tied up or down like sarongs, the women dressed in saris clean and proper and elegant, every colour you can imagine, fruit shops, fresh veg, pineapples, coconuts, husks strewn everywhere, jackfruit bit as a 16" tv, bananas red yellow and green, ads, intricately handpainted on every available wall or posters of the latest Bollywood film, same chubby guy with a moustache, he's everywhere, rubbish in the gutter, men sitting in there with it, desperate looks, billboards showing the next mobile phone, apartments in Mumbai, a black scum topped stream, people washing in it beside straw huts, kids running naked in the street, mothers shouting after them, goats eating everything, including the ads, a woman puking out the bus in front of us, palms as far as you can see, busses beeping, earsplitting, women at the stops with babies, begging, and chatting and laughing with the conductor, sellers on the bus for 30 seconds, sweets, magazines, childrens books, family planning posters in the court, stares and smiles, bare feet, men sitting head in hands with nothing, houses falling down around them, galvanised roofs, curious kids smile and wave, poor men in groups chatting and smiling and laughing, work hard, mobile phones, shoebox shops full of junk, dogs asleep in the sun, brown skin, rice sacks, people dropping rubbish, filth everywhere, smell of urine, whoa!, banyan tree 3m wide, beeps and dust, bicycles, tuk-tuks, blaring music, lorries with open doors, brightly painted, shirts off in the heat, a man slick hair brown wrinkled skin drawn face sweat toothless carrying a pick 70 years old, wood carving, log cutting, smell of dust and dry earth, flowers and palm leaf shacks, next door A/C car showroom, a lorry with a load 3 times its size, a man asleep under a tree, security guards, rocks, nuns, tailors, jewelers, an ambulance (mini Hiace, nobody takes any notice), Nokia, Reliance, rattling and skaking, hope the bus makes it, see a broken down bus, people waiting, tiles and thatch, 10 men for a one man job, picks and shovels, piles of dust, white models on billboards, banana trees, paddy fields, perfect houses, ornate gates, railway tracks, petrol stations, clean and tidy, irrigation systems dug in the dirt, tourist cars from the 1950s, spitting, temples and shrines, motorbikes.................
India, goodbye and thanks for all the fish.