Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Malabar Caves

I only had one bad day on holiday. We were offered two hours in a jeep, seeing a waterfall and the nearby caves. It actually took two hours to get to the waterfall, another two hours to get to the caves, and then two hours to get back.

Six incredibly bumpy hours. The waterfall was fine – but the caves were awful. For a start, we had to climb up a hill. A very steep, tall hill. At the top of that, we had to climb even further. And then, once we’d paid, we crawled into the caves. Which looked oddly like even more mountainside. We scrambled through these open air caves to the Main Chambers. They turned out to be a space between two rocks, about the size of a teashop, almost completely open to the elements.

“Come over and see the carvings!” a guide enthused.

“It’ll turn out to be pictures of lady bits,” said Rick. And he was right.

The sad walk back down the hill was miserable beyond words. Except for the little monkeys, who were great and didn’t spend any time either masturbating or throwing faeces. They just stood around, looking neat and graceful, and a little like WH Auden.

No comments: