On my very last night in India, I was walking around looking for an interesting last meal when I heard my name spoken. I turned around and it was Ella, who I first met in Pushkar over a pot of beer, and last bumped into in Goa. She and her friend Victoria had bought two fresh snapper from the fishmongers along the sea front, and were waiting for them to be grilled at a street-side cafe. Since they had way too much fish for two, they invited me to join them,...

As my train pulls away from a small station in a small town in the Western Ghats, I look out at the dawn light creeping up over the Indian countryside knowing that this will be my last view of it, at least for some time. This is a 3-hour journey to my final destination, and having last night witnessed the fourth full moon since my arrival in Varanasi, I am about to leave a country that has begun to feel like home. Three young men greeted me on the platfo...

A policeman kept pushing back the men who were standing in rows along the inside walls of a huge temple, the religion of which I could not decipher as it was very different to any other temple I have seen. The women had been separated, and were standing in rows along the opposite wall. A row of five or six men wearing only a dhoti (a loose loin-cloth pulled up between the legs, and still commonly worn by a large proportion of southern men) thrashed o...

Workmen were drilling and banging as they fitted new glass cabinets to the walls. The contents of the old shelves were scattered all over the floor. Nothing odd about this situation so far until I tell you that the shelf contents were medicines, syringes and sterile hospital equipment, and the setting was a doctor's surgery where I was awaiting my fifth and final rabies jab and trying hard to explain to the lady doctor about the pains in my knee, whilst plaster d...

The modern name means "virgin Kumari" since this is the site of temple where the legendary goddess Kumari is worshipped. Even the ancient Greeks had heard of her ability to conquer demons single-handedly and came here to visit a couple of millennia ago. Men must remove their shirts to enter this temple which is full of the sacred glow of oil fires, the smoke from which the men are keen to waft over their heads and bodies. This also happens in the street of an eve...