Thursday 7th February - Wednesday 13th February.
… I am sitting in the Chill-Out Bar. Surprise Surprise. Tonight there is a live music evening with sitar players. The place is packed. We have grabbed a table right at the front. It is so busy we have to share with a couple. They turn out to be an aging Italian Casanova with a grey pony-tail and a pretty young American girl with dredds. We engage in polite conversation. It seems they have just met. The girl is very
chatty. The guy gets a right mood-on. I think he has one plan in mind for this evening. He really starts to sulk when we all have a smoke. I shrug at the girl and she pulls a sorry face. Polite conversation ends round about there. The sitar players are pretty good. One is Indian, the other Scandinavian. We all sit and enjoy the music. Later on, Bradley, the American guy, who is a regular here, will have his guitar out and we’ll be bombarding him with requests. Anyone who chances in on the place will be dragged into the warm group of lovable hedonists. There is Steve, from Essex, who is constantly stoned of his nut. His voice is a mix between Michael Caine and Johnny Depp (doing Cap’n Jack Sparrow) He’s got a fantastic sense of humour and keeps everyone in stitches. Then there is Veronica the Swedish girl, Manesh the owner of a nearby hotel. Also we have the two Spanish girls and the Spanish guy who is partner to one of the girls. All constantly stoned. There is the French girl, who has just started seeing Bradley. She has become his singing muse. There are the several guys who work here; one of them has fallen asleep. And then there is Marcus and I, who pop in every night for a quick beer, and never leave. The sitar evening has finished and the usual suspe
cts – us – are gathered around a table laughing and drinking and running out of beer. Steve grabs a load of newcomers that have made the mistake of stopping for in for a drink. Our number increases to over twenty. Bradley is cajoled into singing for us all. I check my watch and realise it has gone 3am. There is an ancient looking guy at the top of the table. He looks like Keith Richards older brother. He is dressed like an Indian holy man but he looks like he is from Germany. He lights up a chillum. A big one. He hands it slowly around the table. Everyone takes a turn on it. “Would you like some?” The girl next to me asks.
“Mmm…no thanks” I say.
“Don’t insult the Father.” She admonishes. I am not sure if she is talking about the huge phallic thing in her hand or the scarecrow at the top of the table…
… I am chatting to one of the two German guys staying next door to us. They have coming here fifteen years in a row. They are huge stoners. He tells us that they smuggle their own hash into India. This is news to me [Marijuana grows here on the side of the road. Everyone here is stoned. The café owners are all stoned off their faces. All day. That’s why food takes so long to arrive. Even the cooks are stoned. In the evenings the police stop by and do random raids on the cafes to check for the illegal selling of alcohol. They don’t care a toss that all the staff and punters are skinning up and smoking. They usually then turn a blind eye to the selling of alcohol to tourists. Personally, from what I can observe, they mainly pop in for a smoke. Alcohol is served surreptitiously under the table. You then drink it from huge tea mugs. It’s all good weird fun] The German guys are real connoisseurs of the ‘erb. They have brought in three different types: “One to get you really high. One to bring you down again, and one to help you sleep,” Karl explains to us. I note he must have smoked too much of the third type as he fell asleep on the beach and now his head is bright red. He keeps it shaved and usually wears a hat. He must have forgotten today. There are huge blisters bubbling up on his crown…
…It is late in the night and I am swimming on Varkarla beach. Marcus and I are skinny-dipping. We have been out for the evening and got back to the room and were bored and pretty merry. We took some baileys and vodka down to the beach. Well I did. There is something fundamentally liberating about getting down to your nuts and bolts and going swimming. We are making like Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams in the Fisher King: Letting it all hang out. Except instead of parading around central park in the moonlight we are going swimming [There are lots of hypotheses as to how we have come to evolve in the way we have. Our relatively hairless bodies; the reason why we walk on two legs; our predilection to omega-acids in the food from fish; our love of water. Bruce Chatwin wrote a wonderful book called the Song Lines. (he actually wrote several wonderful books, and would have continued to write many more had he not died at an early age). It explores with great eclectic insight some of the origins of these aspects of our condition and behaviour.] Regardless. Skinny dipping is great fun. It’s much better fun with several members of the opposite sex. But as long as you observe the code of man and don’t get anywhere near, nor look at, naked male friends. It’s acceptable behaviour. There is relatively no light on the beach save from the moon. Tonight there is no moon. The swells are the size of bungalows. The waves are crashing onto the shore with ferocity. We are ignorant of the fact at this time, but in the near future we will learn that the current at Varkarla beach is deadly. It has been known to pull swimmers out to sea and drown them. For now though, we are both blissfully unaware of this. Marcus is so far away he is a white dot in a mountain of swells and dips. He keeps disappearing far out to sea. I suddenly realise that the algae in the water is bioluminescent. Everywhere I move my arms and legs I leave a trail of glowing clouds. The water is alive with microscopic stars, swirling amid the turbulence of the waves. I try to shout out to Marcus but he is busy being hurled upside-down by a massive breaker he has rode into shore. He is going to have a sore head in the morning…
…I am at an all-night party someway along Varkarla beach. It is around 2am and it hasn’t started going yet. I have a feeling it is not going to either. The venue is a tiered area of grass back from the beach. Lights hang from coconut trees and music thumps from a pretty powerful sound system. However, it is coming to the end of the season and most of the party people have either headed home or headed to Goa. The barman is from Norway. He is quite a cool old codger. He is working the bars here. He is nearly ready to go home himself. I have got chatting a young couple, the girl knows the organisers. She is explaining why it is so quiet. The number at the bar increases as people congregate around the sole place of conversation. A Icelandic aircrew turn up. They have just come off duty and start getting very, 
very drunk, very quickly. I make a mental note to try not to fly with Icelandair…
…Chill out night in the chill out bar again. What night? Who knows. I’ve lost track of what date it is. Steve has managed to acquire three joints at the same time. He is a happy camper…
… I am preparing my craft for its maiden voyage. I bought it from one of the many helicopter sellers that peddle their wares along the cliff-top. You can see them every evening. They have these ingenious little plastic helicopters they fire high into the night-sky. They have tiny little magenta LEDs under the blades that light the craft up beautifully as it arcs into the night sky. I had to buy one. I dubbed it fuckwit 1. Marcus has annoyingly – and quite rightly - pointed out that the one isn’t apropos until the second craft is launched. The LED has already fallen off but I have taped it back on. We do a T-10s countdown to launch. I put back the elastic band and fire it high into the evening air. The light doesn’t come on and the blades don’t release. It hits the ground somewhere with a dull thud…
…A wedding is taking place on the beach. The couple are European. English, to be precise. I am sitting above the beach, upstairs in a café having lunch. Marcus has gone down to film it. The bride and groom are making their way along the shore atop of two elephants. The elephants are adorned with gold and very bright coloured material. Ahead of them are 4 young lads, naked from the waist up, hammering out a beat on large drums strapped to their torsos…
…I am sitting outside of the police station. I have had my bag stolen earlier on today. I have been to the police station three times today. All I want to do is get a police report number, or acknowledgement of some sort that the crime took place. This is not proving easy to do. I have been told to wait for the Police Commissioner. He is busy out on his rounds. I have been waiting this time for two hours. It is nearly 10pm. Suddenly all the lights start going off. Everyone is going home. I try to ask the desk sergeant what is going on. He says they are closing. Come back tomorrow. I am leaving Varkarla at 6am the next morning…
…Marcus and I are doing a cooking course. We have chosen five meals from the m
enu and we are learning how each is cooked. We have hot and sour soup. Fish Tikka Masala. Vegetarian Curry. Vegetarian Bhryiani. And paratha bread. The two chefs are a right pair of Casanovas. By the sounds of it, they are boffing most of the female customers they have on the course. They spend most of the evening sms’ing their many girlfriends. One of them is so focused on his txt’ng he nearly cuts his finger off. The food tastes great though…
It was somewhat smaller than I was expecting and we had to share a room. We spent the rest of the day cruising around these beautiful canal waters. I must say, we could have done the whole thing in an afternoon and not stayed over for a fraction of the cost. It was nice enough though. The food was in abundance and was very good. After the sun went down that evening we sat and drank beer and played cards amidst a cloud of insects that descended on the boat. It wasn’t the most romantic Valentine’s day I have ever had. Marcus’s beard was now reaching epic proportions and try as I might, he just wasn’t my type. My type was over 2,000 miles away in 
o much it had swelled up like a football. Well a pair of footballs to be exact. Over 40 times I could count. I couldn’t sit down, and I couldn’t stop scratching. We did get to see a beautiful sunrise on the canal that morning, although I was more concerned with the contents of my pants for most of it.
