Breakfast was superb again, though eaten to the tune of Martin grizzling. His arm was stiff and aching, his foot was blistered and cut from his cheap sandals and he hadn’t slept a wink on his hard torture bed.
We later discovered that the staff of the Shangri-La used their squat toilet (hole in the ground) to empty their bowels then cleaned their bottoms with their hands and a jug of water, before drying them on a tea towel and continuing with food preparation and cooking. This explained why a lot of their customers left the café with an impending dose of diarrhoea and vomiting.
On our slow progression across Europe and Asia George and I had acclimatised to gradually deteriorating food hygiene standards and had built up some immunity to bugs, but Martin, having flown direct from London to Delhi, had not. Martin wanted to go into town to book his train ticket to Delhi, so I went with him sensing that George wanted to be on his own for a while (needed some “space” from Martin). There was a bit of personality clash between George and Martin.
We flagged down the bus which passed us while we were walking inland towards Kovalum village. The rock breakers were hard at work as usual, all along the road to Trivandrum, beneath an overcast sky. We reached the bus station after a detour due to road works (fare 1.20 Indian Rupees) and our first call was at a chemists (pharmacy).
Martin managed to buy a bottle of Dettol disinfectant despite him referring to it as TCP (TCP is a mild antiseptic, produced in France by Laboratoires Chemineau in Vouvray and sold in the United Kingdom by Omega Pharma. TCP was introduced in 1918. The brand name comes from its original chemical name, which was trichlorophenylmethyliodosalicyl.
Trichlorophenylmethyliodosalicyl was replaced as the active ingredient by a mixture of phenol and halogenated phenols in the 1950s. The liquid form of TCP is one of the best-known brands of antiseptic in the UK, and its distinctively strong medicinal odour can be identified by many as a generic antiseptic smell.), and following an animated discussion with the pharmacist and his assistants he added more nondescript pills to those he had taken this morning.
This morning’s medical cocktail included anti-malarial pills, pain killers, and penicillin tablets. What a hypochondriac! We continued through the grubby, hooting, chaotic traffic and the shouting curly-haired, dark-skinned crowd to the railway station. Martin discovered that the train that he wanted to book for 30th December 1983 was fully booked, so we returned to the Tourist Office in the hope of getting a seat reserved by the Tourist Quota.
They redirected Martin to the Railway Superintendent in another part of town, who offered to put him on the waiting list in case of a cancellation. Martin argued and cursed, especially when the Indian official asked him if he could speak English!
We wandered back to the Reservations Office with Martin muttering something about a desire to initiate saturation bombing of the Indian Sub-Continent (Much along the lines of the American Foreign Policy of turning the Middle East into a Parking Lot).
In the end he had to settle for a seat on the 26th December 1983 train and parted with the large sum of 175 Indian Rupees for the dubious pleasure of a 51-hour Indian train journey.
Google research today reveals that “Trivandrum to Delhi train timings and fare are the two main factors that compel travellers to opt for Trivandrum to Delhi Trains for a hassle-free journey. Rajdhani Express is the fastest among the Trivandrum to Delhi Trains. It departs from Trivandrum Central Railway Station at 19:15 hrs. and arrives at Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station at 12:40 hrs., covering the distance in just 1 day 17 hours and 25 minutes.”
Our next quest was the search for Christmas alcoholic beverages. We did the rounds of the Wine Merchants on the way up to the Post Office where I bought some aerogrammes. Wine was 50 Indian Rupees per bottle! We eventually settled on a bottle of rum each, at 35 Indian Rupees a pop, which we could drink with Thums Up cola as a mixer.
Thums Up is a brand of cola in India. The logo is a red thumbs up. It was introduced in 1977 to offset the withdrawal of The Coca-Cola Company from India. The brand was later bought by Coca-Cola who re-launched it in order to compete against Pepsi.
For good measure we bought 3 bottles of beer each, at 13 Indian Rupees a throw (39Rs for the trio). Weighed down with our plonk we trudged wearily back to the bus stop. The traffic continued to throw up sand and expel black exhaust clouds from poorly combusted fuel as we battled along, expelled from the pavement by stalls and myriad obstructions.
A respectable looking gentleman tried to organise the crowd into an orderly queue and had just about succeeded when a bus pulled up. The “queue” went mad, every man for himself, jostling, tugging and pushing to get aboard. The small wiry locals were no match for us burly Westerners who had adopted the “when in Rome” approach with gusto and several of us had surged aboard when we discovered that it was the wrong bus.
As we forced our way off Martin quipped “well it’s all good practice”, which was quite witty for our Mart. The next bus followed shortly, and we crashed against the single door like a tidal wave. Martin and I got up to the front and sat down as the rain started outside. Luckily, it had stopped by the time we got to Kovalum Junction, where we had to walk down to the beach passed the quarry.
No machinery was in use. Rock was flaked off from the face by driving wedges into cracks and the subsequent lumps passed along a “production line” of workers wielding decreasing sized hammers, from sledgehammers to tack hammers with long homemade handles. The resulting rubble was carried away in head-borne baskets.
Back at base at 16:00 hrs. I went down to the beach for a swim with George, leaving Martin to pore over his guidebooks and maps in search of trips to occupy his unplanned extra time in Northern India (between 27/12/1983 when he arrived back in Delhi and 31/12/1983 when he flew back to Blighty).
The swim was the best yet. We wallowed in the surf for 2 hours, body surfing in the bigger breakers under a leaden cloudy sky. We were joined by the English chap who we’d met on the Varanasi to Kathmandu minibus. He was flying to Nairobi in Africa after Christmas.
As usual, the sea seemed to wash away all our troubles as we cavorted and rolled in the turbulence, although by body surfing you were frequently carried aloft by a powerful wave and crashed down on the gravelly beach with resultant grazing. Martin blamed this dumping by the sea for the malady in his arm.
We clambered erect after riding a good wave with brine and sand streaming from our nostrils, grinning inanely and waiting for the next biggie. We returned for the usual culinary delights of the Shangri-La kitchen, hungrily devouring egg curry and fruit laden rice pudding. Sadly, we were soon forced to flee as an English-speaking crowd (Aussies & Yanks) started on the old “where have you been? I’ve been everywhere“, one-upmanship tack. A trip to the beach confirmed that all the cafés were packed with wallies (A person who's company is found to be undesirable or uninspiring, a nerd, geek or loser), so we returned to the lodge with the intention of calling it a night.
We had a brief chat with the Sarge and George suggested that we start on the Christmas rum. It was not too difficult for him to persuade me that it was a good idea and in the twinkling of an eye we were in the Shangri-La armed with two glasses, several cold Thums Up’s and our bottle of Haywoods XXX Indian rum, which appeared to be some sort of industrial solvent flavoured with rum essence.
The Cindys (Two Danish girls unkindly nicknamed after Cinderella’s ugly sisters) came over to twitter before leaving us to the serious business of emptying the bottles. The B52’s came on the cassette player and we had a field day.
There ensued a naked midnight swim, an argument on music and a singing session, much to Martin’s disgust. We went to bed and as we settled down to sleep Martin retaliated by turning on the light to “read”. We were drunk enough to sleep anyway so he had to concede and turn of the dim bulb after a short while.
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