off to kerala

well i left baga,goa on the 11th at around 10pm and arrived 21 hours later in trivandrum, southern kerala. it was a long but beautiful (during the day) train ride, the scenery was amazing, so green lots of coconut trees and water. trivandrum is a larger town, it's very hot and noisy and after 3 days i'm ready to move on. i was waiting for my friend who i met last month to arrive from the north, she arrived late last night flew to cochi from delhi then took a bus which was supposed to be 5 hours but turned into 8 as it had an accident with a rickshaw. so we are leaving today for kovalam which is just 15km south and on the coast, so it should be a bit cooler and hopefully we can do some swimming. i've just been wondering around here, i went to the zooalogical gardens yesterday, it's a huge park with a zoo some gardens and a natural history museum and an art museum. the zoo was a nice to walk through, very green and cool, but i was very sad for the animals. i haven't been to a zoo since stanley park had animals and this one was not so clean, there were 13 crocodiles in one little area with dirty water to chill in. the 2 elephants were both chained up and the loin and leopards were in small cages. as well there were tons of birds, big vultures, pheasants, storks all in small cages. i guess they don't really have animal rights activists here. or maybe they should charge more, then they could use the money to spruce up the place a bit, the entrance fee was 10 rupees, 0.25 cents. the gardens were really nice to just relax and read my book in and the museums were great as well. not much else to report from here, just that its hot! hot! hot!