Land of Contrasts? Tell me about it. Yesterday we trained from Cochin, a local second class stopper laughably called the Parasuram Express, which hugs the Keralan coast for eight hours of swaying hell as an army of shouting hawkers march the aisle with chai, coffee, curries, fried bananas, dodgy torches, Hindu fiction and religious tracts, all of which could be optimistically described as colourful – but not the toilets. These squatting hole-in-the-floors offer nothing but nothing to grip for support and though I was able to brace my head against a wall Alex had no such luxury, so a real toilet in our beach cottage last night proved heaven – until pressing the flush button revealed too late I was sitting on a state-of-the-art Toto Eco-Washer and my scream, as a freezing burst of water intruded off the Richter, had Alex rushing in lest I’d discovered non-brochure wildlife.
While accepting the maker’s claim the saving of paper contributes to preserving the rainforests, I’d sooner be lashed to the top of a mahogany tree as Brazilian loggers circle with buzzsaws than experience that again.
