Gopalpur-on-Sea

The view from our balcony.

What you can't see, are the two men behind us, covered in cream paint, slapping it on the walls in an attempt to cover them for another 6 months. Not alot of attention to detail exists, and there is alot of wet paint on the tiled floor.

This is the lighthouse that you are not allowed to photograph from. It seems to be a theme in this part of India.

Fishermen line the beach and sleep during the peak sun.

Some come back with huge fish. However, trying to find fresh fish in town is impossible unless you want a pre-cooked slab of something that looked like it died several weeks ago and could give you stomach problems for a long time.

The fishermen still make their nets by hand, or at the very least fix them by hand.

Old buildings crumble.

The festival starts with this band during the afternoon.

Boat races are part of the activities.

A band and dancers appear on stage, but all we can see are Indians who are too selfish to think of the person behind. If they can see with their five stacked chairs what does it matter?

Those who don't, stack their chairs up, face towards us, to watch us rather than the show. They don't say anything. They just stare.

Minutes later, the police arrive and start wallopping the backs of the stacked chairs with truncheons causing a flurry of activity that makes it even harder to see the traditional dancing on stage.

Police, people watching us, truncheons... we leave now.

We didn't go in but thought it was funny. There is a huge fairground, but we really did not think here would be a good place to sample the big wheel, particularly as about three times an hour it seemed to have a technical fault with passengers dangling from their chairs looking baffled.

There was a lot of welding during the day so Jason thought climbing Everest would be safer.

Jason sampled the local doughnuts, and fired at balloons cause it was safer than most things in the fairground.

The rather guilty looking stall owner, insists on loading the gun, and rarely puts a pellet in it. Jason sprung him and loaded his own gun from then on. Amazingly, once Jason loaded his own gun, 10 balloons in a row where shot, and the prize was declined.

We had an excellent anniversary night.

There is nothing like a five year anniversary meal in a small town, with roadside food, and lots of interested young men watching you eat?! Behind Jason sat an equal number of men. It was a memorable evening complete with no privacy what-so-ever.

A romantic dinner of us, and a crowd of 20 teenage boys around our table watching us.

The very bumpy tuk tuk ride to our train, was worth it for the rural life that went about its day.