Colour is not confined to clothes and shops.  Houses are painted in vivid patterns too; their details picked out in contrasting shades.  Does purple really go with green, yellow and pink?  Anywhere else it would be garish and tasteless but here the colours blend with the surroundings and complement the dark green of the coconut trees that are so abundant in this area.
We need to get out and savour our surroundings, so we ask our driver to stop at a roadside shack selling chai.  Chai is made by straining black tea from what looks like an old sock into a jug which is then filled with hot milk and sugar.  The chai is mixed by holding the jug high in the air and pouring it into another repeatedly and with great flourish.  It is then served in small glasses, sweet, delicious and refreshing.
While we are there the milkman arrives on his rusty motorbike with churns of fresh, un-pasteurised milk strapped to the back.  He sells the milk by the jug which he dips into the creamy liquid.  No money changes hands and we wonder how he can remember who has had what and how much they owe.  We pay for our chai, three cups, 21 rupees, which is less than 20 pence, so we give him 50.  He grins and insists on shaking our hands.

“Where from?” he asks.

“England,” we tell him.

His smile widens. 

“Great country,” he says, “God Save the Queen.”

We are almost at the end of our transfer now and near our hotel is a Temple which is over 2,000 years old.  Part of the beach here is considered sacred.  Brahmins, Hindu holy men, sit under large, coloured umbrellas on mounds of sand to say ‘Poojah’; prayers for departed loved ones.  The Brahmins are daubed with white ash and bright yellow turmeric from the Temple and they incongruously display large posters with their mobile phone numbers for funeral bookings.  Jasmine and frangipani blooms adorn their stands and smoke from their small fires, heavy with incense and camphor, hangs like mist in the early sunlight.  Despite the air conditioning the fragrance penetrates the car and we breathe deeply savouring the exotic aroma. 
Are the senses the pathway to the soul?  If so we surrender to the sights, sounds and smells of this country and allow ourselves to be captured by the magic that is India.

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