The bus to Munnar reminded me again why I hate travelling by bus in this country. Apparently there was a strike with the tourist bus drivers, which meant there was only the local bus. Actually the roads in Kerala aren't all that bad, and for the most part the state seems quite well-off, no doubt thanks to the burgeoning tourist industry. But the heat is the real killer. Packed into a rickety old bus with the intermingled sweat of a hundred other people pressed up...

It's the day before Christmas, I'm in India, and everyone is sick except for me. South India is hot. It's f***ing hot. And they say this is the cool part of the year. It's hot and everywhere there are crows. At the beach there are no seagulls, only more crows. I saw a pack of crows like vultures trying to kill one of their injured to eat it. So yeah, it's hot, there are crows. people are sick. In the state of Kerala there are daily power outages, like clockwo...

I AM ON A BUS. I haven't showered in days and my hair feels like straw. I'm sitting next to the grubby window and leaning out of it with my scarf over my nose and mouth so I don't have to smell the burning leaf and tobacco from the old man sitting directly behind me, or catch whatever it is that the lady in front of me is hawking up, but that just means I have to put up with the clouds of dust kicked up from passing trucks and the black exhaust fumes spewing f...

You meet the most interesting people and see the strangest things on Indian trains. Grannies squatting next to the tracks, saris hiked right up and a little brown turtle head poking out; kids playing in dirty water in their birthday suits and having the time of their lives; and that's just stuff you see out the window. Inside it can be a real circus at times, with a constant procession of sellers, hawkers, and beggars, trying to sell everything from toy guns to c...

Well here I am in sunny Orccha, chugging down the electrolytes after more than a week of Delhi belly. Having the runs in a country where you are expected to clean your ass with your hand and a bucket of water isn't exactly my idea of fun. But Ganesha and friends be praised, they sell toilet paper in this town! Never in my life have I been so unabashedly overjoyed at the sight of a roll of toilet paper. I now take it with me everywhere and clutch it to my breast a...