Back From Kerala

Am just back from a longish visit to Kerala. The weather there was consistently unpleasant and one couldn't do much local traveling. On the way back by train ('Purna express'), things got more interesting.

- the night sky over north-central Kerala, at least as seen from the train, revealed a lot more stars than I am used to seeing.

- Pallikere is a small station in far north Kerala. Here, the train runs for about 4 kilometers along a beach with an uninterrupted view of the sea - to my knowledge, the only such stretch between the Cape and Bombay. At one end of the beach stands the Bekal fort. It was early morning and partly cloudy and a full semi-circle of a rainbow, with both ends touching the sea ("full semi-circle"? Perhaps from an airplane, a rainbow might appear close to a full circle, a 'rainring'?)) painted up the western sky.

- At Karwar, one saw a wide river flow into the sea in the distance and several dozen Brahmini kites gliding around (never seen so many of them together since a visit to Rameswaram a quarter of a century ago). A massive road bridge straddles the mouth of the river; sea waves were battering a rocky islet...

- The greenery of the ghat between Madgaon and Londa was immensely refreshing (especially after all those smoky tunnels) as was the daybreak today morning as we approached Pune.

Note: 'Purna Express' is the best name for a train that I know of - 'Purna' is apparently the Sanskrit(ized) name of the Periyar river in Kerala where it begins its run; better, the name combines the first and second syllables of the destination and origin respectively, 'Pune' and 'Ernakulam', in an interesting way.