Surprise because of the bad rap El Salvador receives from all and sundry, a deep-rooted prejudice I played-up with all the subtlety of a pantomime dame in ‘that’ post in the hope that readers would see both sides of the coin.

Perhaps irony and blogging are mutually exclusive, or perhaps we’re are so used to hearing El Salvador maligned that negative asssumptions were made – making an ass out of u and me.

I write this in a high-back Chesterfield chair in the heart of the astoundingly beautiful Sussex countryside as I try (and so far fail) to acclimatise to the voracious consumption-driven society of modern Britain – if you’re not spending then you’re asleep – and The Saviour’s absence makes my heart grow even fonder.

God, I’m missing those waves, those people, those avocados and the most valuable commodity of all, that delicious, engulfing, luxuriant time. Precious time. Even though this is, in essence, just the UK leg of another trip before we head back to post-monsoon India to open the Soul & Surf House in Kerala, there is something about this society that rips the hours and minutes from your grasp.

How on earth I ever managed to hold down a job as well as jumping through all of the hoops it takes to exist here I will never know.

Oh, for the simple life – simple pleasures.

Good food.
Good company.
Good health.
Good heart.
Good waves.

Now how do I integrate that into life back home?

Answers on a postcard please (or by mail to hello@edtempleton.net).

The cheery old yank on Ometepe joyfully assured us our bus would be stopped and ransacked by gangsters with AK47s as soon as we crossed the border from Honduras, and you know he was right, damn him – travel is mind-numbingly slow as you negotiate one set of gangsters after another, each gang taking a little more of your stuff and a little more of your time until the A23/Croydon route into London, with its intricately mistimed traffic lights, seems like a breeze.

Arriving in the La Libertad area, the beginning of the Ruta del Surf, penniless, possesion-less, naked and late was disappointing beyond comprehension. The succession of famed, long, clean right hand point-break waves are a mere fabrication — give me ‘hotpipes’, the power station outlet pipe near Shoreham harbour, any day.

Sunzal point is an inconsistent, short right that’s hardly worth the three-mile paddle out and it doesn’t hold any size at all — I don’t remember witnessing a succession of double-overhead days in the space of a fortnight. Punta Roca, the jewel in Central America’s point breaks, is worse. A muddy dribble of an excuse. It wasn’t fast, shallow or remotely exhilarating and the chance of getting there and back with your board and shorts are pretty slim in this crime-ridden area. KM59? Don’t even bother. Ugly, dull and lifeless with locals who’ll stab you in the back as soon as look at you.

We stayed in a dreary, drab hotel on the  El Tunco riverbank. With no swimming pool, no wifi and no kitchen, the $15 a night we paid was extortionate. We stayed for a month.

And the people! Don’t get me started on the people. There was never a good atmosphere in the water, the locals never smiled, never waved ‘Hola’ as you paddled out, they never gave you a wave or beamed ‘No problem’ if you accidently dropped in. The travelling surfers were worse, the Brazilians were mean and unsmiling, the Aussies and NZers their usual dour-faced misery-guts, the Canadians lived up to their billing of the most unpleasant, hostile people on Earth and the Americans, particularly those from Utah, were  closed-minded, humourless people. We didn’t hang out with any of them and we certainly didn’t have a really good party one night with Vinny, Luis, Jay & Eric involving tequila and swimming pools.

Papusas? Poo-poo-sas more like. The 35¢ maize-flour patties filled with combinations of pollo, cheese, frijoles, an unidentified green vegetable and pork, made to order and griddled on road-side stoves, were only marginally better than the burritos we were forced to endure. Packed with ripe avocados, beans, rice and chicken, forcing one down was a real strength of will over wisdom.

So if you’re planning a surf trip to El Salvador, do yourself a favour, don’t do it.

Honestly.

Even if I wanted to risk bringing my D200 on that trip I wouldn’t have like to hide it in the bushes whilst we surfed… So in nearly three weeks of Nica-surfing I’ve not got a single photograph. Which begs a peculiarly 21st-century question: ‘If I didn’t photograph it, did it really happen?’. With almost every appliance we own boasting an 11.1 mega-pixel digital camera, red, green and blue pixels have replaced memory and story-telling as our primary means of recounting our experiences.

So let me tell you this.

The waves in the Popoyo area are good. Popoyo reef, the area’s main attraction is great but too crowded, if you aren’t local and you don’t rip then expect to bob more than you surf. Lance’s Left was huge, scary and with regular clean-up sets, long hold-downs, murky brown water and a rip-from-hell it doesn’t sound much like fun – but it was. I survived, I caught some great waves and the rides were 100m+ leg-burners.

The rocks are sharp and often shallow and took chunks out of my board, costing $15 in excellent ding repair.

The weather was often stormy as we caught the periphery of Agatha, the tropical storm that wreaked havoc on Guatemala, turning the ocean into frothing chocolate milk.

The isolated surf outpost of Popoyo – a 30-minute low-tide wade through a mangrove estuary and across salt flats to the nearest shop, a two-hour odyssey to the nearest super-mercado – was galvanised by a blitz-spirit community. The power failed regularly and toward the end of our stay we were left sans-electricity for a day or more, so the few surf devotees dotted around the river-mouth congregated at the place we called home, Vaca Loca, a guest-house and pizza/pasta joint run by a wonderful Italian couple. Chess was played, guitars were strummed, rum was produced, ice was found, beers were cooled so by the time the power returned after dusk we were primed and raring to go, culminating in a midnight mass skinny-dip, which only Sofie and I translated as a ‘skinny’ dip.

But the waves are lefts and I’m a regular-foot surfer and we’ve been surfing lefts, lefts and more lefts since November, so the draw of El Salvador’s right points within spitting distance to the north was too much for me. We packed, again, and lugged our boards, bags and gadgets first to Ometepe, a magical island formed from two volcanoes peeking out of Lago de Nicaragua for a few days of culture, fresh-spring dips, some hiking, some bug-battling and some monkey wrangling. Then back to the featurelss, grim and downright dangerous city of Managua for our cross-border ride to San Salvador, and the rights, the rights, the rights…

Since I last dispatched a month ago the grand tour has taken in Lombok; Bali again; excitement and fury directed at Singapore Airlines as they refused to allow us to board our flight to Brisbane due to a ticketing error; family and friends’ time in Australia as we rediscovered sofas, TV and booze (and realised we’re pretty good at all three); a stopover in New Zealand and a week’s breather here in Tonga before our assault on Nicaragua, a country where our meagre budget will allow us to blossom again. During this time I’ve tried (and infuriatingly failed) to buy a shipment of Kush Kush caps from India to sell back in the UK, I’ve been developing and planning an e-commerce idea and designed and launched an early-bird website for our winter venture in Kerala, Soul&Surf/India while continuing to worki on the main marketing site. Whew.

The expectation is that, on an extended trip like this, we leave all cares and worries behind, and that through the absence of a job all problems cease. Not the case I’m afraid. I know I won’t be attracting much in the way of sympathy from those folk working 50-hour weeks back home, but what I’ve learned is that our usual character traits come with us. We find new ways to be busy, stressed and anxious – or at least I do. Personal projects, travel arrangements, budget concerns and existential angst fill the shoes of the mundane home-life triggers that continue to swirl around the maelstrom-mind. It’s the character traits we need to work on, not their location, detail or circumstances.

But enough guff, it’s our time in Lombok that I wish to recount.

I was enthralled by this wild, rugged, beautiful land. Yes, it’s well known as a destination, easy to get to and sprinkled with resorts, but in most parts its raw charms prevail and, unlike its Westernised tarnished neighbour, it feels like Indonesia proper. The roads are horrific; trees sprout from the centre of the cracked tarmac south-coast road, yet traffic is almost non-existent. Villages of traditional thatched bamboo huts fleck the rolling hills, which meet the ocean in dramatic crescent-shaped bays; people smile and wave with genuine warmth as you approach, rather than as a ploy to extract your tourist buck.

Visiting, as we did, at the end of the rainy season, showed the oft-arid south coast off at its verdant best. The grass was green, the rivers full, and the roaming livestock fat and contented. And the surf… The south coast is indented and scalloped by bay after bay, creating breaks of numerous variety… Except beach-break. The easiest wave in the area at Inside-Grupuk attracted 90% of the travelling surfers, despite the boat-ride access, leaving empty line-ups elsewhere for the more adventurous. Inside-Grupuk also attracted groups of Japanese surfers who pay locals to snake, block and drop-in in order to clear the wave for themselves. Is this the future of colonial-style surf travel in increasingly busy global line-ups? I hope not.

Yet despite my natural affinity with Lombok, its lack of beach-break beginner’s waves left Sofie a frustrated observer for much of the time, so with an egalitarian spirit we headed back to Bali.

Until next time…

Sofie really wanted to visit, so in an admirable act of generosity and compromise I consented to the trip. My lips, burnt to a crisp from over-zealous midday surfing in Bali, were raw and cracked, so a few days out of the water wouldn’t hurt anyway. We chose the quieter of the three islands, Gili Meno, and from the moment we waded ashore from the shuttle boat the serene seclusion of this tropical idyll enveloped us. Time warped and heart beats slowed and, in stark contrast to its near neighbour, Bali, the sound of silence generated by an absolute absence of motorised vehicles was deafening.

Sandy tracks circumnavigate and criss-cross this 2km-long island. The only transport is shank’s pony or bell-jangling pony-and-trap cidomos. It’s fringed with white sand beaches, protected from the surf by coral reefs, and the pure, clear water reflects blues of every hue imaginable as the tropical sky evolves and transforms throughout the day. The sun rises over the active volcano Gunung Rinjani on Lombok; tropical squalls pass as quickly as they appear; and azure clear skies give way to firey sunsets over Bali’s extinct volcano Gunung Agung. Snaffling a coconut-infused carrot-and-bean salad-like lunch of urap urap one stiflingly hot lunchtime, we watched as the awesome Rinjani coughed and spluttered into life, sending an immense plume of thick grey smoke into the atmosphere. Not a bad digestif actually.

A tempting right-hand reef point reels down the southwest coast of the island, an even better-looking one off Gili Trawanagan, yet my ravaged lips thwarted all but the briefest forays into the salt water. As it happened though, slowing down for a while – getting up with the sunrise and sleeping not long after sunset, and doing very little in between besides snorkelling the teeming outer reefs, lolling, lounging and sprawling sprinkled with delcious cheap local Sasak food – was enough to make me fall in love with this as-yet unspoiled tropical Eden.

The inordinately long time between posts is testament to the surf-rich Bali lifestyle. We left India a month ago now and have been squeezing two or three surfs in a day, cowering from the oppressive heat in between.

Yesterday was Nyepi, marking the end of the Balinese year: the whole country banishes demons from the land on Nyepi eve and then on the day everything stops. Everything. No cars, no planes, no electricity, no cooking, no leaving the house… And absolutely no surfing. Government officials stalk the land, blowing whistles, enforcing the silence. Hence I’ve written this blog!

Bali’s long been a favourite destination of mine, but I must admit that this time the romance has dulled somewhat. The pace of development all over the island is inexorable, but special attention is being paid to the Bukit Peninsula – where the surf is. The thatched, irreverent shanty-town of Dreamlands has been bulldozed and an already crumbling, rusting steel and concrete Javanese monstrosity of a holiday resort replaced it. Every clifftop or small patch of beach around the entire Bukit coast already has or is in the process of having villas, housing estates, hotels, resorts and golf courses. And the gridlock  on the roads in the southern half of Bali is witness to the hordes of tourists being ferried very slowly around the areas sights and beaches.

But the area still has a certain charm. Bingin is a great collection of wooden and thatched guesthouses clinging to the cliffs with higher-class – yet tasteful – plunge-pooled hotels lining the clifftop, and Balangan, where we are staying, is a wonderful bay lined with affordable beach-front warungs, but it always feels like the bulldozers and tarmac-ers aren’t far away.

What they can’t develop (yet) is the dramatic rocky coastline and the obscenely wave-rich reefs fringing this prime hunk of real estate. We’re here in the off-season yet the surf has been relentless. Not the cutting edge, life-threatening 12ft barrels of the ‘on’ season, but that’s not for me anyhow. The waves have been consistently shoulder-high at worst and we’ve had a good few days of well overhead surf. I’ve been lazy in my wave-hunting, mainly surfing Balangan. A quick check from my beachfront bedroom window and the 20ft walk across the beach to begin the paddle out is too tempting to refuse, but on occasion I have ventured further afield, adding Bingin, Padang Padang and Keramas to my surf knowledge. The crowds and an overwrought irreverence has so far kept me from Uluwatu. I was intending to go there tomorrow morning, but the swell’s picked up and I persuaded myself it will be too big/crowded/scary for little old me, so I’m going to stumble out the front door to Balangan again… Maybe next time.

We’ve made forays inland when the surf’s dropped a little and become enchanted by the volcano-crammed central region with its huge ancient calderas filled with lakes and new-growth volcanoes. This preposterously fertile and dramatic landscape is home to less Westernised and more friendly Balinese villages, and the relief from the oppressive heat of the coast that altitude provides is invigorating. I never knew you could get so much joy from wearing socks and trousers!

They’ve woken me up, filled me with vigour, charged me with positivity, put some lead into this jaded writer’s pencil. Since NYE the swell dropped. It’s been waist high at best for over three weeks — January is the smallest season — and although it’s been rideable everyday the waves have been breaking shallow and fast, too fast for me to beat the curl as section after section after section dumps tantalisingly just ahead on most waves. It’s been fun on my fish – it’s always good to be in the water and it’s still great to be the only one out – but I needed something more.

Then it came.

A 3.5-4ft south-westerly swell with a 14 second period, which on this coastline produces a 6-8ft face on the sets. Much of the main beach here closes out, but I hadn’t been idle. Time spent on GoogleEarth and scouting missions on my scooter threw up some spots with potential. A potential now converted into head high reeling lefts from some rocky point headlands. I’ve been fizzing with excitement to be surfing these powerful lefts on my own, an excitement ready to burst out of me in a squeal as I arrived at a small muslim fishing hamlet on my scooter, my board shabbily strapped with frayed coconut-rope to the side. Walking down past the mosque to the beach I could see that the potential I had noted from one of my scouting trips had been realised as beautiful, rumbling lefts broke just ahead of the rocky outcrop, peeling into the scimitar shaped bay. There was a gaggle of local boys playing in the shallows on the inside, and fisherman snoozing in the shade of their boats after a night at sea, but not another single tourist for miles and miles. No resorts, no hotels, no foreigners. As I paddled out the boys became interested, and as I picked off wave after wave my backhand surfing momentously and significantly came of age, whilst the boys clapped and cheered my every ride. Some of the boys moved to stand on the rocky prominentary and whistled as sets approached. One team calling me in to waves, another team onshore applauding those rides.

Team Surf. No – Team Ed.

Surfing lefts had, until this day, been ungainly, like writing with my left hand, yet today it became almost fluid, almost dextrous, natural and joyful. Yet above and beyond even this rapture was the germination of a thought, a quiet voice from within. ‘Has anyone ever surfed here before?’ it whispered. Of course there’s every chance that a wandering surfer has snagged  a few here, but this is the first time that I have ever gone completely off-piste. The Surfing Swamis and their guide to surf in India didn’t mention this spot, the Stormrider Guide’s new India section doesn’t refer to it. None of the websites, forums, books or guides I consulted before surfing here name this place. The thought crept over my mind that there was a possibility, however slight, that I might just have made a discovery. My very own surf spot discovery.

Hmmmmm…. Deep in thought between sets, knowing that my lookouts would warn me of approaching waves I set my mind to the task in hand. What will I call this break?

Could I just call it “Ed’s Wave”? Probably not, there must be some convention to this break naming business. “Ed’s Left”? Still too egocentric for an awakened being like me. Perhaps “Templeton’s”? It gives it a certain respectability don’t you think? Does anybody know what the rules are for this kind of thing? Does it have to relate to the surrounding environment? I could call it Poop Point after the squatting, smoking fishermen amidst the rocky outcrops that I initially mistook for spectators, or is humour not allowed? Seriously, does anyone know about spot naming? In fact if anyone has any good ideas, message me on this blog and I’ll decide which is the best before I have the brass plaque engraved.

Team Ed soon got bored of my gaudy display, or had to go to school or watch a freshly painted wall or something, but I soldiered on alone. I surfed it all morning until my shoulders ached, until the on-shores began and blew for four days on the trot and the swell dropped. And in the afternoons I started writing again. And at night I slept a deep contented sleep.

“Where is Ed’s Wave?” I hear you cry. That would be telling now wouldn’t it… But perhaps I’ll take you to it if you come to my surf and yoga retreat here next season…

Last night we ate Butterfish Tikka and Tibetan Momos while I watched Arsenal play Villa in a clifftop restaurant, yet the evening before we nipped into town on the scooter and ate delicious Masala Dosas and Vegetable Subji for 30p in a local joint. The large, three-day Hindu festival being assembled in town promises to be a riot of noise, colour and spectacle, yet we’ve slipped easily into the evening ritual of meeting friends at the beach as the sun heads for the horizon for a swim as the scorching heat subsides and the reddening sun seeps into the sea, its pigment bleeding into the sky.

Our two nearest neighbours maintain the homogeneous polarity. Below us live our landlords, the most wonderfully warm and welcoming local family. We share little common language but through gestures, smiles, head waggles and regular gifts of coconuts, eggs and bananas we are made to feel welcome and completely at ease here. Behind us, across cobra and funnel-web infested scrubland and shouting distance from our terrace, is a household of assorted Europeans who have been equally welcoming and accommodating, helping us with the myriad idiosyncrasies of Indian living and extending invites to us whenever they “make party on the roof!” With each friendship – Sadji at the local shop, Umesh and his son Abhi at the Juice Shack, Zoe and her twin boys Jem & Jelly – we feel less like holiday-makers and more like residents, which was always our intention before setting off on this expedition. We would much rather get a taste of real-life in a handful of places across the globe than have ticked-off a hundred ‘sights’ before our return.

Mornings begin early with a solitary surf session in the silky smooth Arabian sea. I’ve picked the smallest surf season (December/January) to be here, but there have been waves every day ranging from waist- to head-high, and looking south from Varkala cliff the mass of sand-banks and small coves creates break after break – almost reminiscent of the view south down the western Bukkit peninsular – producing small almond-eyed curls up to proper lip-pitching barrels depending on swell size and direction. These super-fast lefts are exposing my backhand weakness as I struggle to race ahead of the crashing lip. When a bank produces a rare right the dissonant capability of my left and right side becomes jarringly obvious as I have the speed, balance and technique to make a quick bottom turn and to snake, for speed, up and down the sinuous mirrored walls before pitching back off the brink as it finally breaks down in knee-deep water. As our next destination is Indonesia, the land of lefts, the next few weeks’ practice in the forgiving sand-bottomed waves of India will, I’m sure, pay dividends as the sand becomes knife-edged coral and the power, size and speed of the waves intensifies.

We breakfast on porridge laced with coconut shavings, bananas and wild mountain honey from our friend Sadji, washed down with a spicy aromatic herbal masala tea, and either begin work on one of our many plots and schemes in the offing or just laze on the terrace with a good book and contemplate lunch, or a swim or a pootle down-coast on the scooter. The heat of the day produces a languid tropical malaise by about 2pm but my Northern-European-trained bodyclock doesn’t usually allow me the orthodox afternoon doze. Instead I tend to slow to a crawl and wait for the relief of the receding sun and for the onshore breeze to dissipate before heading beach-ward once more.

There’s interest among some locals in this surfing game, but none here can actually do it. I’ve promised to give lessons to a couple of lifeguards and our friend Abhi before I go, but the scarcity of decent learner-boards is a problem, as is my inexperience in teaching! I’ve begun practising for my new-found role with Jake and Lisa, our friends from Brighton who, to our delight, leapt upon the offer of our spare room and a tropical festive sojourn, yet the bruises on Lisa’s head and thigh and my egocentric tendency to nip off to catch waves leaving my pupils floundering in the impact zone exposes my early shortcomings as a wannabe surf guru.

History will show that my global wanderings during the early 21st century had some divine fiscal purpose that until now I didn’t fully comprehend. Basing myself in Brighton, the pioneering commerce centre of this New World Order was a fortuitous hand dealt to me by mother fate.

Spending time straddling this dozing tiger, India, the world’s next supreme economy, this catnapping giant has turned a light on in my mind, first illuminating stray, presumed forgotten, facts and thoughts that I’ve gathered as I’ve wandered this magnificent globe and left deep in the recesses of my mind. Then with this lights guiding, tropical warmth these thoughts have coalesced and fused into, an admittedly unexpected, global economic theory that blessed with a revelationery zeal I know to be true.

As the economic drivers of the great Capitalist era fade, dwindle then implode like a white dwarf star on its final yet glorious death knell, as the oil runs dry, as minerals are purged, steel becomes leaden, porky bellies slim, foodstuffs once again become localized, and the exotic lure of spices are tarnished, many are placing their economic eggs in the digital basket. Bangalore and Trivandrum have established themselves as centres of the pixel economy, hence most pundits back India as the future. Well, these so-called experts have their geography right but are speculating in the wrong sector my friends. My economic theory, already living and breathing in Brighton, a city fuelled almost entirely for a decade on this financial model which has established it as a centre of hope for humanity’s pecuniary fate has found its match in India, and in particular the future seats of power, Kovalam, Varkala and Baga.

The phenomenon I’m about to expound, like an historical cycle, once again has its nucleii in coastal towns. Towns which will no doubt rise to usurp the cumbersome authority of the country in which they reside to become independent city states reminiscent of 15th century city Republics like Venice, yet this time around the power centres will be chosen not for the quality of their anchorage but for the magnetism of their beaches, thereby destroying our existing, already decaying models of governmenth. Merchants will accumulate unimaginable wealth and the Republics hof Brighton, Varkala, Phuket, Kovalam, Kuta, Byron Bay and Santa Cruz will be centres of a florid decadence that our epoch has yet to encounter. The nouveau riche vulgarians will raise grotesque Palazzos to host their bacchanalian orgies in honour of the source of their wealth and the globe’s new currency.

The future is Nick-Nacks. The future is Now.

Indian beaches and the towns at their peripheries are rife with Nick-Nacks, most of which have over the last decade migrated to Brighton to be sold in the greatest Nick-Nack bazaar the world has ever known. Yet as many of the world’s Nick-Nack suppliers economically develop, India being a case in point, their population will begin to travel and will, of course, demand Nick-Nacks as proof of their excursion. The suppliers will become the demanders, and therefore the hitherto demanders will naturally supply creating a thriving, burgeoning, proliferating cyclic trade. Nick-Nack barons will control the circumnavigation of Nick-Nackery and with it the will of the people. Nick-Nacks as the opiate of the people? You bet.

Those with a knack for crafting a Nick into a Nack, or carving a Nack out of a Nick, those who can weave and fuse a Nack through a Nick will surely inherit the earth.

Liquidate your assets and invest in all that is Nick-Nack-esque.

The last weeks have been a blur, we’ve surfed small but beautiful Arabian waves at an Ashram in Karnataka and spent several exhausting days scooting about Kerala in search of a house to rent and a base to settle in for a good while. We’ve moved in to a hip pink house with a large first floor terrace overlooking a tangle of palms, betelnut and banana trees and almost immediately upped-sticks and indulged ourselves with a languid, sedate houseboat ride through Kerala’s maze of backwaters and canals to celebrate Sofie’s birthday.

They kindly display their renunciation of Babylon – the fascist-capitalist west – and their individuality by wearing a nifty uniform of head-to-toe Ethnic Tat® branded gear. The muted orange-brown roughly woven baggy trousers in either stripes or excessive patterns or – for the executive hippy – an orange lunghi, well-worn OM© t-shirt and brown-orange coconut-fibre shoulder bag are ethnic in that they aren’t western clothes. Yet neither are they Indian; no locals sport this garb. These hippies buy their ProppaTraveller attire from the many tourist stalls that mingle with the bakeries, grocery stalls and paan vendors. The upper echelon of this fashionable brigade are ceremonially awarded, after many years dedicated service, with full military pomp, a crown of Dreadlocks®TM©2009. In full battle dress these seekers of love, peace and harmony attain a spiritual ego the size of Tel Aviv and Dusseldorf combined and become so enlightened that they lose the ability to even see western scum any more as they gaze vacantly beyond attempts at good-natured communication. These holier-than-thous are enlightened only in their own ego-driven, judgmental minds, which unfortunately is the one place enlightenment cannot be attained… Bless ‘em.

Despite this peculiar tribes bad vibes (man), Gokarna is a wonderfully bustling Hindu pilgrimage town cluttered and jumbled with temples, holy bathing lakes, revered lingams and towering ceremonial chariots adorned with hundreds of flags poking outward to form a red and white fluttering globe. A hike south leads to one beautiful crescent bay after another, temporarily populated by hippies and travelers from around the world, each one becoming more secluded and therefore less busy than the last. Roads now connect the first two, Kudle and Om respectively, yet they still retain an idyllic tropical charm even if the residents of the more remote retreats farther south tend to sneer at those of us nearer town. This strictly hierarchical ‘one love’ society becomes amusing after a while and days spent practicing yoga, swimming, dozing and reading whilst staying at a £2 a night guest-house right on the beach do wonders for raising one’s tolerance of the groovy gang, even if they are banging out insipid trance and belching and spluttering chillum smoke from the hut net door till way past our bedtimes (admittedly that’s only about 10.30pm).

Our route to Gokarna began in the overwhelming chaos of Delhi. The red-eye flight and overpriced taxi deposited us right in the thick of it near the main bazaar. The booked hotel had un-booked itself during the flight and we were lead to their filthy ‘sister’ hotel down the road. Too tired, and laden with 85kg of laptops, camera, clothes, boards and paraphernalia we took what we were given and snatched forty winks before stumbling like rabbits caught in the headlights into the heaving throng on our doorstep, all aspects of life being lived in high contrast, maximum volume and top speed. The streets appear like a single, living, pulsating organism whose defining principle is Chaos Theory. Buildings seem to grow from the dusty earth whilst simultaneously being consumed, crumbling back into the earth, tangled webs of electric cables swamp and threaten to engulf the flimsy poles carrying them in every direction, shrouding dark alleyways with the glimmer of private candlelit shrines deep within. Every millimetre of this enthralling tableau is teeming with life; beggars, merchants, rickshaws, children, cows, packs of wild dogs, chickens, goats, a smattering of westerners, teenage boys and elderly couples holding hands…. There were too many senses being engaged and too few active brain cells to engage in speech so Sofie and I ate our 25p thali in silence trying to acclimatise to such a culturally different environment.

We flew to Goa the following morning from the glass & metal gleaming new domestic terminal, the antithesis of Delhi’s bazaar. This is new India, the super-power de jour, the progressive, economically booming India. A 24-hour education in India’s cultural dichotomy.

Goa was a nice place to unwind after the flight and the hectic preparations before leaving England, but the distinct lack of waves and preponderance of elderly European sun worshippers had us packing our bags and heaving our caravan of equipment aboard a rickshaw, a bus and then a train, causing a kerfuffle at each juncture and befuddlement at why we’d be carrying a surf board with us in India. A befuddlement I currently share…