Ahhh, so it has been a more mobile and cultural day or two. I have left the beach, left Goa behind, and sit now, typing to you, from a town called Hampi in the Indian state of Karnataka, and yes, there are still fucking taximen here. It's a big tourist draw, quite evidently, but still very different.
I'm 360 kilometres from the sea, for one thing.

Last days in Palolem - extremely messy, two nights of utter debauchery and drunkenness, very entertaining though. Good people, good fun all round.
There was a noisy interloper in the group, who managed to get the wind up just about everyone in the end through her constant - and I really mean constant, not one sentence uttered was in any way different in tone - complaining. Yes we all like a good moan and there are things that need moaning about and yes I'm guilty of this more than most but please fortheloveofJehovahwillyoushutthefuckUP, woman?!! I won't mention her real name, but the episodes of woe did lead to Greg and I thinking up the term Duchess Buzzkill, which we both agreed would make an awesome name for a heavy metal band.
I personally like the idea of there being a Duchess of Buzzkill, both a good name and a mandate to spoil fun wherever her Grace went. I could deploy her to parties of people I wish to annoy, send her off to San Francisco and bring all those hippies down from their permanent 30-year high, that sort of thing.

The day before the silliness began, however, I hopped into a hastily (and not too economically) negotiated taxi along with Greg, a Brit guy called Mark, and another damned Brit called Marlon. Yes, we are all Brits now - this is what happens when you live with a Kentuckian for 3 weeks, your vocabulary becomes shamelessly adulterated.
We taxied (that ain't a verb) to the Goa Jungle Adventure park a few clicks out of Palolem and spent 2-3 hours climbing up rope ladders, swinging on ropes, walking across highly ricketty aerial bridges and walkways and, most importantly, throwing ourselves down zip lines - deathslides, we call them, when we're feeling especially cheerful - which was rather a lot of fun. There was something grimly satisfying about watching Greg shoot 320feet or so down the last and largest line, attaining something approaching the speed of pain then safely managing to break the force of impact by tactically using his face as a buffer.
I lol'ed, I don't mind telling you.

Pics soon - got shitloads more from the other beaches and Panaji to get through too, try not to be too touristy about it all but, when the pics go up eventually you can also see our special friend from there, Shelob the demon spider queen.

Standing at the very outer entrance to the park, Marlon let out a shriek and informed us, in the tones of someone preparing to watch acquaintances die before his eyes, that we were standing underneath a spider. He was not wrong. It turned out to be something none of us had seen before (except Gene): large, square-edged body in yellow and black, and legs that comfortably spanned 10"/25cm across its web. The body of the thing was almost 5" long, and that's a lot bigger than any other arachnid I've met.

Gene, the instructor, informed us that it wouldn't kill us. As long as we got the anti-venom injection, at least. I think what he meant to say was `it could kill you, but there's a GOOD CHANCE you'll get the life-saving antidote in time`.
I don't fancy testing Good Chances with my actual bleeding life in India, so I left if the hell alone, I don't mind telling you.

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So I buggered off from the beach, Greg and I went our seperate ways although if he doesn't get to Geneva in time and with the merchandise then he wont get the antidote (insert evil cackle), and I went off for one night and a smidgeon of a day in the city of Margao, Southern Goa.

It is a pleasant enough city, not as busy as the guidebooks would have you believe although I only wandered into some areas not all, what with only my smidgeon of available time. The have a Dominoes pizza which I studiously avoided (after a good twenty minutes mental in-fighting) and a municipal park that looked a lot nicer than Panaji's. No gay hookers either, as far as I could tell which made me feel just that little 2000% safer the absence of these things naturally engenders.

I did eat a meal I didn't understand, from a menu I couldn't decipher, and sat crammed with 4 people (in a tiny booth) that I didn't know in a restaurant I could never identify if it came to a police investigation.
It was about the only restaurant I could find open, strangely, and a meal costing Rs. 40 filled me up more than a Dominoes pizza that would have cost about Rs. 400 and that clinched it. Hoping I didn't cause too many offences or ate with an incorrect number of limbs, I read the same passages in my Lonely Planet as I had done dozens of times before while I ate, and waited to pay the bill quietly and safely extract myself. The food was superb, and plentiful. Alomst certainly very healthy, too.

In case anyone ever goes to Margao as a stoppover, go to Hotel La Flor, it really is the best place. I indulged myself with a proper hotel and, for only Rs. 560 for a night's stay - I have paid as much for a frickin' bamboo hut with no toilet - they gave me an immaculate twin room of adequate size and modernish furnishings with a truly modern and quite perfect en suite bathroom with, this will make any of you who've backpacked through India before groan in envy, hot Power Shower

After nearly 10 weeks of cold water that smells slightly of poo this was absolutely heavenly. The reception staff were also top notch, being helpful and professional beyond expectation. Also prompt, which is not one of the qualities of Indian employees in general, although rather endearingly so, it must be said.

Also, more cable TV, which along with the 4 days I spent in Panaji languishing at HItler's pleasure at the Comfort guesthouse brings my 12-monthly total now to about 3 times what it was before I left. It was good, to be a slob again.

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The trains of India, I have finally sampled. I bumped into a retired Canadian couple waiting for breakfast in the hotel and split the taxi to the station, chatted with them and then another retired fellow who turned out to be a German ship's Captain, although whether during Ze War or not I wouldn't like to say and couldn't politely ask
In any case the seating was haphazard as hell and I wasn't given an actual seat by my travel agency, so I swung myself and my bags up into the uppermost of the 3 tiers of sleeping bunks, much to the amusement of all the European passengers, as soon as things got crowded in the first carriage I came to.

They sleep 6 in each little cabin, with 3 tiers of bench seats/beds on each side, an aisle for bumping into people and swearing in, then a further pair of bunks running parallel to the train's length. Me, with my size 11 military boots and looking (in tan buttondown bush shirt and olive green jungle shorts) not a little like an Australian crocodile hunter, and my direct approach were pretty visible as ther are no divider between `cabins` so everyone had a good laugh before realising that's what the Indian were doing too, once they'd found their seats.
Not having a ticket of course I worried myself silly on the two occasions a ticket inspector came around, the first vaguely indicated i wasn't in the right place, but only scrawled something illegibal on my paper printout of a ticket and motioned down the carriage without further word.
The second seemed quite amazingly officious and browbeat an Indian guy for a full five minutes over what looked like him sitting at the wrong end of one of the benches in the next cabin, where the bench was otherwise unoccupied. Fearing he would pretty much execute me on the spot for sitting in the wrong CABIN, having my impossibly conspicuous boots up on the seat as well as being shamelessly foreign, I made sure I was heavily absorbed in a massive book (The Company by Robert Littell, in case you wondered) and looked as unflustered and native as I could. Mercifully he was either too stupid too look above his head or didn't fancy the look of my greasy form that had, at that point, not changed clothes in 3 days (I had a launderette malfunction if you must know).

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So I got to Hampi, after 7 hours on the train, and as we all jostled to get onto the platform then joslted even more to get the hell off the platform because the taximen and postcard sellers crowded it so thickly, I got talking to another English couple called Steve and Emily I think, and as a single Imperial force we battered the taxi men down and eventually achieved the front doors, where we then had to fend off the other thousand touts and taxi drivers with pre-sharpened poles and makeshift riot batons. Alsomst, anyway.

The spirit of enterprise is seen nowhere more obviously than in the taxi drivers, I am beginning to understand the sheer joy the entrepreneurial Indian male takes in extracting oversized transit fares from tourists.
As we slowed down, back on the train, one enterprising chap jumped aboard the rapidly moving carriage and travelled the last minute or so with passengers standing eagerly by the doorway (all doors are simply open, at all times, during travel) pitching them to use his taxi.
He must have walked a kilometre or more up the tracks and ran alongside us to jump on early enough in order to beat the other thousand guys at the station.

When you do arrive they literally cram the doorways six or more people deep, almost as if you can't leave the train until every one of them has stitched up a tourist of their very own with an inflated fare.
Not being so sensitive to these things any more, and weighing still a good 190 pounds not including attached rucksacks, I walked straight into them and they parted like a group of skinny underfed people before a boisterous fat man. Score another point for Pies, folks, they're the sixth food group.

Leaving the station I lost Dteve and Emily to another rickshaw as the German ex-ship's Captain truned up and we shared one for the 13km ride to Hampi. Turns out his name is Wilfred and he seemed to be something of an adventurer, very keen on hiking about although he must have been at least 70, and at journey's end he paid the entire rickshaw fare with a smile and wandered off to find accomodation among the ancient stones of Hampi Bazaar. I couldn't help wondering if he was in some way apologising for his country's actions during ze war by being so effusively charming and helpful, although there is the chance of course he was trying to recruit me for the CIA or other such secret service (I've been reading The Company for a bit too long now, as you can see)

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So, the town of Hampi, I am here and I am ill (cold, ther's a nasty one going around all the travellers from what I gather) and for the next day as well as this and the last I plan to acheive sod-all, and generally cruise about and/or take gentle walks.
I have seen so far, I can tell you, both cobras and monkeys, first hand and not 10 feet away. However the monkeys had an agenda of their own and after crossing the street in their little group they monkeyhandled themsels and a bit of stolen fruit up the side of a fruit stall and over the way. I hadn't the heart to tell the owner of the stall about the tehft, they were so unbelievably adorable.

The cobras were the property of a snake charmer by the river and, I strongly suspect, have been operated on to either remove their teeth or possibly disable their jaws, sadly. I watched them for a few minutes and they lunge for and must strike their handler many a time, he encourages them to do so when they lose interest in him and his reedy pipe in fact, but they never open their jaws. Poor little fuckers have probably been mutilated, or possibly they have been drugged, either way I know enough about snakes to know that they don't strike out unless they are trying to attack, and that guy was not in any danger of getting bitten.

Strangely I met a bunch of the jugglers from Palolem, Reuben Darrol and Adam, last name Wherley, and who came up with the best trick ever to make people remember his name; he had a couple of t-shirts made up with
ADAM
FUCKING
WHERLEY
embroidered on the front. Not subtle, but a better way to make sure people know who you are I can't think of.

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Met up with John in Palolem (and left him there for a few days) who I hadn't seen in 6 years or so. He'll be coming along to Hampi very soon, so much clandestine alcohol procurement can be acheived and all taxi fares can happily be split

Right that's it - pictures coming again soon, although we're still playing catchup of course.