go go gokarna

ok hello everyone! here are promised pix. i think. boy is it hard to upload pictures from india...

ok, that's all you get this time. it takes soooo long. next time you get another one... there are a lot of nice pix -- when i get home i will upload the motherload!

we have landed in gokarna. it was quite a journey... i got sick (as i am told, it is a rite of passage here -- the junior woodchuck guide, aka lonely planet, says it happens to 70% of travelers. but yuck!) for a couple of days and so didn't see much of thrissur, where we were last, tho aaron's wonderful friend murali and his wife radhika were wonderful to us, put us up and fed me lime tea and coconut water and rice water, the local cures for, uh, what ailed me...

ANYway. right now i am typing this from a grass hut on the beach. this has got to be the most laid back place i have ever been. ever. i am too relaxed to even hit the shift key. kudle beach is a cove on the arabian sea, surrounded by coconut groves. the ubiquitous holy cows wander the beach here, along with the ubiquitous dogs and lots of little crabs. the water is warm and super salty, so you can float and float. at night the stars are so bright they're loud, as aaron says. we are staying in a grove of coconut palms... the whole place is basically a grove of coconut palms. there is a part of the beach that is all lined with big red volcanic rocks, very soft and porous. the dirt is very red here, and there are birds you've only dreamed of... electric blue kingfishers, and birds i have no idea the name of. little green woodpeckers, white storky wading birds, ginormous butterflies. we also have a little gecko in our room who eats the mosquitos.

we will stay here till we return to delhi to fly home on the 28th. can you blame us?