I remember when I arrived in Cochin (Kochi) on the 7th of this month, and I have to wate a couple of paragraph bitchign about it I am afraid but it's okay. I lighten up right afterwards 
It was after The Train From Kannur and that journey fully deserves the Pratchettesque use of capital letters: bit of an ordeal, sleeper class (which is misleading in the extreme: you can only sleep sitting bolt upright crushed between bodies and with the aid of anaesthetics) for 7 hours or so, and the damn thing left an hour late, was delayed twice en-route for no particular reason, and then spent an extra 20 minutes sitting just outside the station waiting for a platform to free up.
I met a guy on the train who tried to strike up a business proposition re: his brother being an interior designer and sculptor looking for export contacts, all after I gave the usual lie about my building houses for a living. I gave him my email because there's no harm in it, and anyway, after reading the actual wording of the adderss I like to use any business response was pretty damned unlikely 
Against my wishes I lie a lot here, because every Indian you are in the company of for more than 60 seconds will ask you what your job is, and it is hard enough to explain to English people in their own country what my bloody job was, so over here I just lie.
I have tried it both ways and it is useless trying to explain it, because I had no job title and no definite position, and the industry is one that doesn't even exist in this country - it's rare enough in England - so all that is ever acheived is a irritable lack of comprehension at me not having a proper, normal, conventional job they can pidgeonhole nicely without too much stretching of the mental comfort zone, or, ironically enough, a sense that I am lying about what I do 
No-one but Greg, Stefan and maybe one or two Brits have ever grasped what it is that I used to do for a living in the past 4 months, and many of those I experimented on were European.
Believe me, my time is more valuable And so is everyone else's!
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So I arrived after the usually comfortable `safe time` (before about 6:30pm) in a new city, with no hotel, and if had been anything less than a city I would have truly been up shit-creek sans paddle, because a new village at 9:30pm in India does not present many, if any, reasonable prospects of accomodation. You have to have a readiness to use that emergency blanket you've got filed in the `Paranoid` section of your luggage and crash down in some outdoor shelter where no-one can see you, rob you, or accidentally pitchfork/knife/poker you to death in mistake that you're trying to steal their goats/soft drinks/stock of fossilised turds, depending on your choice of unfortunate venue were it to go all wrong.
It's about 50/50 chance of there being no hotels or guesthouses, and none that are open to new arrivals, in the smaller towns and villages I would guess.
Happily I was okay despite being almost 3 hours late or something equally ridiculous, and managed to effect the fastest hotel check in in history: I had already selected my place of residence from the LP and knew exactly where I was going, also I trusted the Good Book because Kochi is a popular place, and the staff at LP HQ themselves would have been pitchforked to death by travellers if it wasn't competantly accurate.
With a haughty wave to ward off all taxi drivers, I walked sufficiently far into the city proper to realise that it was a bloody stupid idea to think I should better walk to my hotel just to save a few rupees; my legs were partially atrophied from the train journey and my irritable nerves weren't ready for an Indian city, so after less than a mile I reneged on the macho idea of taking my first trip through a strange town at night with luggage whilst tired, and hailed myself the first empty rickshaw I could. I'd barely made any ingress into the city, as, from my map I could tell (maybe 10% of the way), and the taxi cost just Rs. 25 so I probably shouodn't have bothered. Mind you, the taxi from the train station would probably have neen at least Rs. 60 or Rs. 70, such is the nature of tourism
Here is a formula for you, or rather a `to do` list if you need to book budget accomodation in India:
> Arrive. Smile at everyone, it's free ;
> Ask for a single room only to be told there are none (they always say this even if there are);
> Ask the price of a double;
> Whatever figure they give repeat it back a little louder and and with a question mark at the end, and most importantly, do not put any of your luggage on the floor. Be ready to leave in an instant;
> Wait for the price to be lowered a bit and ask to see the room;
> As long as it's not plastered in grime and the bathroom has what you need for the (new, improved) price, say `thanks very much` and go throw your lugagge down there;
> Lock the door;
> Give a (often false, up to you) name;
> Hand over the key to reception so the following evening of drunken stupidity doesn't see you arriving at your hotel at 5am not only to wake all the staff up, but also to face the tricky negotiation of getting a second key to replace the one you have unaccountably lost to a room you have booked under a false name and that you can't remember the location of, due to being unable to see in a straight line;
> Run away into the night for aforementioned night of silliness.
In this case, despite my floor being two storeys heavenwards and having to move my luggage up there on my own (not a posh enough place for porters, of course) this process took less than 3 minutes and happened completely by reflex, and I even filled in (very messily) the `C form` that all guesthouses & hotels must take from their customers.
I even used an only slightly false name.
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From there I went looking for beer. This was my first night in town and I managed to pack an impressive amount into it, though I do say so myself.
I was given the most amazingly convoluted instructions beerwards though, and I'll just quickly explain why:
In this country which is most religious you have the following tribes competing for followers and temple space - Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists. Almost everyone is Hindu, Muslim or Christian, but the other three get a good look in - here's the thing though; In Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism alcohol is illegal, a crime against God(s) and society, and in Buddhism it is strongly warned against; exceedingly strongly in fact.
Judaism and Christianity allow room for it of course, and Christians, being mostly Westerners, therefore being largely drunkards even include it in the conventional Mass. There, see, they've got one thing going for them, at least
So beer or booze of any kind, outside Goa, is extremely hit and miss. Technically it shouln't be there at all and strict Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus should really grab the bottle out of your hand and give you a drubbing to show you the error of your (their) ways if you drank it in public, but like many things here it is more relaxed in certain ways.
Oh, and it seems that I couldn't help myself and that I just wrote this post on a forum about Chinese history in reaction to the digging about I just did - gives you more of an idea about the various religious views of alcohol, if you ever wanted to know.
I just can't leave anything alone...
Anyway despite all the competing god-botherers, bars exist. It's just finding them that takes the effort...
I walked down the road a while, asked at a stall if they had any beer (the sign above said `Drink` which was good enough for me) and they, the stall and his nearest 5 customers, directed me to another corner, and another stall. They probably wanted just to get rid of me.
The 2nd stall directed me along a road to a certain corner; third corner on the left after turning left just there or something; and that took me into a sort-of back yard that somehow managed to be on the front corner of a dark, gloomy and seriously delapidated building.
There was an ancient BAR sign strung out the front around about the first floor level, and the building's personal space and associated doorways were quietly humming with activity; there seemed to be a hatchway serving horrid-looking fried pieces of animal to somewhat less-than discerning customers, and on the approach you had to half-leap over a sheet of corrugated iron left angled like a tank trap.
Being a highly keen self-medicator of course I hopped it and approached the hatch with a thirsty gusto, but it was not to be; I was motioned to the side of the hatchway and towards a door I hadn't dared to enter - I was hoping to buy beer and take it away in the manner of the best reclusive lone drinkers and alcoholics, but instead I had to enter the bar proper. Oh well...
I did, I found a darkened, pillared room mostly full, with lots of activity and a grimy look and feel to everything - defintely a local place - and after a few seconds surveying the darkness and the low interior walls and pillars that held the building above in place, someone ushered me politely but firmly out, into the tiny ante-chamber before ejecting me streetwards and opened a cupboard door to reveal a set of stairss, a neat trick if ever I saw one, and ushered me wordlessly but smilingly up them.
Another bar. Same dark and grime, slightly fewer customers, mostly slight better dressed.
Again after a few seconds I was spotted by someone (I presume these were the staff) and removed from the room - removed through the other end of the room in fact and these guys were less drunk, so as I made my way busy tables and aisles I got more stares than before - and sent up to the roof, where I was promptly sent down a fire escape, back to ground level, to emerge as I could see inside a small, totally enclosed courtyard: I was wondering at about this point what the hell was happening; the reminder that cows are sacred yet many menus advertise `beef`, and this was a was unpleasantly clear in my mind.
Bottom of the metal stairway, door, looks a bit cleaner (how clean is your average abattoir, I wondered?), through there a restaurant that survived despite being apparently sealed off from the outside world.
Again a polite, smiling, unspeaking and quite resolute person took hold of my arm and guided me gently through the restaurant (half-full, much cleaner, clientele much like the last place but a bit better lit) and out to their own stairs which, after climbing a good few flights in an environment of semi-clean white tiling and only very slightly greasy stair treads, I emerged at last, a good 5 or 6 minutes after entering the whole labyrinthine complex in the rooftop garden of one of the posh places in town.
There was a bloody great fountain and waterfall scene of rock, wood and ornate metalwork constucted across one whole end wall of the place, spanning a good 10 feet or more under the metal-posted frame and corrugated roof that supported that protected the few diners and I from the elements, and which would have been even more spectacular had it had any water in it or been switched on, but still.
It was awfully pretty and you could see just what they had in mind when they made it, with channels and spouts and a big collecting basin with, no doubt, hidden feeds for the water to be pumped back up again. I just hope that it did actually work when required because it would have been a lot of effort to go to to make, and even more effort for me to plough through all those fucking stairways and passages to come and see it.
If I hadn't been in such a good mood at the prospect of beer I might have bitched to the management and tried to get it switched on or filled up or whatever was needed to make it go - the thought did occurr to me, but then also so did the thought that behaviour like that would make me a complete arsehole, so I left it, seated myself and order beer. I had dinner there as well.
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Now, what happened after that I can't prciely tell you, firstly because I can't remember all of it and secondly because I don't want to; it was not my finest hour, I know that much.
I was stopped as I was elaving by two Indian guys with some pleasantry, and answered, chatted a couple of exchanges and they aked if I had time to stay for a drink or if I had to leave.
Always time for one more, I thought, so I stayed.
The guys, a certain Vinod and Manoj, according to my subtly scrawled and hard to read notes from that evening, were pretty cool. We chatted for maybe an hour, drunk 3 small bottles of rum between us, got downstairs by some hidden (i.e. blindingly obvious) doorway and found the street, then found the various motorbikes of Manoj and Vinod in different lockups and garages nearby and we raced through the streets for what must have been several kilometres, because we ended up at a festival and elephant parade in Fort Kochi and we started off 4km away by road in the mainland city of Ernakulam, unless that restaurant was even larger than I gave it credit.
Anyway these guys had procurred a larger (very large) bottle of rum from, quite literally, a hole in the wall: there was an illicit night-time trade in booze through a slit in a rollover lockup door - you know the steel shutter doors that roll down to protect shop fronts? Well one enterprising soul thought that about a square foot of his shop front was worth leaving unprotected for the sake of all the business he could do after hours.
It was a fair bit less than a square foot in size actually; the bottle had to come out sideways and wasn't much smaller, but it's hard to fit a more precise description into a neat sentence
We went back to someone's house - I have no idea whose - and sat up, finished off the bottle amid much drunkenness and I learned, at one point, that an Indian man, one of these two anyway, could happily dedicate his entire salary and spare time to a hobby, one could say Obsession and make a half-witty joke, of collecting cologne.
Never before have I seen such a thing - and this I do remember; an entire large standalone cupboard, fronted with glass, every part of at least 6 shelves decked out with expensive aftershaves and fragrances such as is not seen outside of an airport's Duty Free. Must have cost him every spare Ruppe for the last couple of years, I guessed at, because cologne is one of the things not so drastically affected by the exchange rate; it's a serious fucking luxury to have a bottle, and this guys had about a hundred or more, easily. I've spent more than 5 years approximating large quantities of similar items at a quick glance (thanks to y mysterious job... 
) and he had a LOT.
Indian men, I came to realise, can get seriously devoted in their attempts to attract Western women, and some of these are anything but sinister. Just a little misguided maybe, that's all - although that arsenal can hardly have harmed his efforts.
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We made it back to the elephant parade and this is where things went a bit wrong. It was hugely, I mean hugely lit all over with a million bulbs of many colours (mostly yellow for some reason) and the whole place inside the parade area seemd to be about as bright as day. Everything was festooned and lit, everything was laced with streamers. The riders and elephants and many of the watchers (who you can't easily distinguish from active particpants to be honest) were dolled-up to the nines. It was pretty and cheerful and completely over the top.
I seperated myself from those guys to march next to the elephants as more came down the road and into the parade area, and was getting a little disturbed by all the whippings and apparent stabbing that the mahouts, the elephant trainers, were giving the creatures; I've got a bit of a fascination and love of elephants for some reason, and seeing all that being done to them didn't exactly improve my humour; regrettably this made me enter the stage generally known as `weepy drunk` when one of the loveable giants didn't want to back into the allotted stall while his big brother was trotted out around the front, and the little mahout with his little sharp stick stabbed it right into the elephant's hide what seemed about six inches and I hope that was just the skin giving way, to its obvious and immediate distress. Not cool 
I spent the next 10 minutes next to the open-sided stalls feeding that elephant and others bits of bambee and leaves that they were collecting in tiny amounts from the flat floor with their trunks, but which I could scoop up in big, healthy bundles and give to them straight.
After that I wandered off down the road somewhere, and managed to somehoe focus my irritation on the ridiculous party lights and gaudy decorations, and passing a low wall strung with a long stream of them, kicked a bulb in. I may have kicked more than one in, in fact.
Someone saw me, and they appeared to own the bulbs: they were NOT happy, and I soon had a large crowd of shouty angry people, really quite amazingly large, what seemed to be maybe 15 people without exaggeration, and the front couple screaming at me in Malayalam, a language which, perhaps for the best, I do not speak a word of.
Some other person must have headr me when I said "I don't understand" a few dozen times anf they spoke pretty much perfect English, and thankfully seemd not to own any lightbulbs in the vicinity because he tried reason, instead of shouting.
Yes, I agree that it wasn't right to disrespect their culture in their country as the sensible man said, but all that I could manage was something along the lines of respecting - and not stabbing up - the welfare of the elephants, which are supposed to be sacred, after all.
As I said, hardly my finest moment, but still - after all the fuss and the English-speaking guy placating the crowd somehow, I slipped away using my stealth ninja I-don't-wanna-get-knifed-just-now-and-I-see-an-opening skills, and legged it quietly but rapidly down an alley, into a road, jumped over something and crossed a bit of wasteground and got around the corner as quick as I could. Well, you never know, they're not gonna be able to find me that quickly if they wanted blood and all I needed was a rickshaw. Easy! Millions of rickshaws!
They all wanted to wait until the elephant goading sacred and important and not-at-all-thoughtless festival was over though, and I had to try and wake them up; they sleep in their rickshaws largely anyway, but especially now when there is something going on, they cluster in the surrounding streets until later in the morning, I think this thing was due to go on until almost sunrise.
Eventually I found someone awake, after only trying to steal one unguarded rickshaw in my drunken haze (well, you never know) and he didn't even rip me off ont he fare back to my hotel and back to mainland Ernakulam.
That was when I knocked up the poor staff of the hotel at something around 5 in the morning, and this completes my sorry tale.
The whole of which - the embarrassment at being so bloody stupid and, yes totally fair enough, extremely inconsiderate not to mention ill-advised, coupled with a fear of going across to Fort Kochi or even leaving the hotel, were what started my productive little stint here, which has caused ouright alarm amongst some of the guests at how little I have left. I stayed on because I was enjoying it, and yesterday I bit the bullet and risked lfe and limb (well, actually I'm more afraid of having to pay for anything) and wspent the day in Fort Kochi and saw and did a bunch of cool stuff.
I didn't disrepsect anyone's culture or anythign - far fro it in fcat as you'll soon see.
I just thought you might like to know that 
PLus I felt I had to share, my embarrassment having gone down enough after 10 days for me to do so
*** Ooh, I would also say that the cause of my embarassment is the fact I let it get to me, and the fact that I went and trashed something that belonged to someone else in a situtation I didn't understand and should only ever have been a spectator to, if I was to respect the cultural norms. That last point is up for debate philosophically, but in someone else's place (country, house or whatever) you usually do what they demand. Or you leave. I'm leaving after Cochin, because I can't really stand the attitudes to many things any longer
This is still not cause enough for me to go and make amends, though, for the sake of being scrupulously and thoroughly decent. I couple of poxy light bulbs out of possibly half a million or more are next to nothing, and the whole thing is probably funded by the Communist party who are massively popular around here so the cost of a few rupees goes to the league of tens of thousands who spread the load of all payments, allegedly - I'm sure that in truth the driving reason behind people taking offence so quickly, and it didn't take long for the to ask for money, as my translator told me they were doing, was an open opportunity.
An obvious tourist, an obvious (if minor) crime, and there was no way I could know anything of the value of these things myself so I could hardly repudiate any figures they attached to them, and they would willingly taken full advantage of a drunk as well, I am sure.
Culturally, I'm not happy I pissed anyone off. But they can go hang if they want some crazy amount of money for their lightbulbs - exactly how much does it cost to go into the forests and capture wild elephants, I wonder?
End of rant!!!!! Sorry!! Thank you!!
I just needed to get that off my chest. Phew.
