the wanderer returns

Well I'm back, and not exactly happy about it. The cold and pouring rain are only making it worse. I've spent the past four weeks travelling down through south-west India, from Mumbai to the Keralan town of Varkala. I've seen some fascinating places and met some fascinating people. It's my second visit to India and has only made me more obsessed with the place. But rather than bore people with my ramblings I'm just going to post a selection of photos that sum up my experiences, plus a few brief thoughts.

The first thing that hits you in Mumbai is the chaos; the second is the poverty. Sixty per cent of its 16m inhabitants live in slums, the largest of which, Dharavi is home to more than a million. Perverse as it sounds, its residents are the lucky ones. There are of course destitute people everywhere in India, but there is way more visible homelessness in Mumbai than in Delhi or Calcutta, both of which I visited three years ago. In our 40-minute drive from the airport, at 2am, we must have passed thousands of people sleeping on the streets - either out in the open, lying on the pavements, or under pathetic makeshift shelters made of plastic and anything else they can find. Every day we saw tiny children alone and begging. What makes this all the more shocking is that the affluence and consumerism of modern India coexists with such misery.

We got up early one morning to watch these fishermen bring in their catch. It was back-breaking work - they started pulling in their nets at 5.30am and didn't finish until around 9am. They asked anyone who was passing - us included - to help them pull. We lasted about 10 minutes before our arms hurt too much and our hands were raw. This, above, was all they caught - 800 rupees (£8) worth of fish, between 30 men. It made me realise how easy we have it.