Palm trees and Jaffa Cakes.

The chocolately smooth roads leading south from Pune proved deceiving as I entered the Karnarkatha state below Goa. Whilst the scenery was among the most idyllic that I had seen in quite some time, the roads degraded to a level that I hadn't experienced since Kazakhstan. The only differences are that India is far from being a remote country and that most of the other drivers acquired their driving licenses by driving for more than a hundred metres and having been lucky enough to avoid bumping into a cow (which is better than I had managed in the north). This spicy concoction made for some of the toughest riding that I had had to do. The roads were pot-holed and covered in gravel. Around every corner (and even along every straight), a bus or coach driver could be found on the wrong side of the road, hurtling towards me. They travel at such a speed that they could not possibly stop or even pull back onto their side of the road. As you can imagine, this didn't make for an enjoyable journey.
Despite the roads and the psychotic driving, Karnarkatha is stunning. I stopped for breakfast one day by a beach simply marked from the main highway as 'Palm Grove Resort'. I ventured down a narrow lane and found myself in a village, fronting the beach. They were simple people, living simple lives. When I got to the tiny resort, unfortunately, they were unable to make breakfast for me as I wasn't a guest, so I sat on the beach and ate some Jaffa Cakes that a friend of mine had brought of Pune for me. Not a worry in the world, and this is how the locals live - just without the Jaffa Cakes!
It was around a thousand miles to get down to Kerala, where I was due to meet up with Jim. The day times had the contrast of the beauty and the miserable riding and the evenings were merely stopover points.
On one of the days, my gears became gradually harder to change. It was almost as if the clutch was not disengaging properly. Some simple diagnosis found that the clutch cable wire was starting to break. Whilst I had a replacement, I wanted somewhere comfortable to change it, so pressed on for the evening. Fortunately, it held out, although it was holding on by a single thread of wire by the time that I changed it.
The next day, the bad roads continued. Just before lunch time, I went over a big bump and then found oil all the way down my left leg. This did not seem good, so I pulled over and immediately, my audience amassed. I quickly found that my oil filler cap had fallen out and this was the source of the boiling hot brown liquid. Obviously, when I had taken the bike to bits to change the clutch cable, I had failed to properly tighten it. I called over the police, who were dealing with my crowd control and asked them to keep an eye on the bike, whilst I found a local and asked him to give me a ride back for a kilometre or so, so that I could see if I could find it. To no avail, though. I was in the middle of nowhere and the part that I would need was a very specific size. I started to think of temporary fixes that I could make. One of the policemen came back with a piece of bamboo shoot, but I wasn't terrible comfortable with that in case it seeped sap or debris into my engine. His next suggestion was to put a condom over the top! Not the wisest idea given that the oil temperature runs at 95 degrees! Finally, on of the policemen sent a crowd member off somewhere. Twenty minutes later, he reappeared with an oil cap for another bike. It wasn't a direct replacement and the thread was a little short, but it would do the trick.
Finally, I completed my ride into Cochin, arriving a little later than I had hoped and found a suitable hotel. Fort Cochin is a quiet area of the city, right on the sea front. It was quite badly impacted by the Tsunami of 2005 but had recovered well. After 4 long days, it was time to relax and take a cursory glance at the Chinese fishing nets, churches and the synagogue, which is one of the oldest in this part of the world.
On the final day on my way down to meet Jim at the beach, I decided to do an overnight cruise on a houseboat on the Kerala backwaters. Here, I chartered what seemed to be a massive boat for one person, to take me along the waterways. It was serenely peaceful and in the evening, my three crewmembers and I moored by some palm trees lining the canals. Here, I was served an Indian feast. In the morning, we continued exploring the area before heading back to where I had parked my bike before I completed the 50 or so miles down to Varkala Beach, a small, slightly touristy place that would be my recluse for the next 5 days. It was time to properly relax after the long ride down and to unwind before the next step of the journey - shipping the bike to Malaysia, which was not expected to be a simple thing to arrange in bureaucratic India.