Day 235 Kovalam - Nagercoil

Cycling in India is much much easier than expected. I was prepared for utter chaos but todays ride was actually very smooth, pretty enjoyable: not too bad traffic, not too bad road, not even many people staring at me. I am wondering why it all is very different from my last visit to India more than 8 years ago. Maybe India has changed, maybe I just got more relaxed because I am much more travelled now, maybe it is just because the very south of India has always been very much different from the northwest that I know.
The only traffic challenge I faced were unmarked speedbumps - a particularly malicious multiple specimen of which struck me by surprise and wobbled off my back pannier.
Just as the Sri Lankan coast this here seems to be Christian country - many huge churches around, neogothic in shape, ridiculous in colour. When I was just photographing one I got coloured myself. One guy approached me, shouting ' India, Friend' repeatedly and poured purple ink all over me. Hö, I thought the festival of Holi will be somewhen in a couple of weeks only?! At that first colour attack I was still too surprised, but when I encountered several more ink-pourers on the way I started to fight back which turned out to be great fun for me and the Indian guys (except for the attacker who had not reckoned that half of his ink-bottle would end up being drained all over his very own head, gnihihi). I still have no idea why today was a colouring-random-bypassers-day. Many people also did not know as I was asked several times about the origin of the purple marks on my face, arms and clothes. I was able to clean myself, I only hope I will also manage the same with my laundry.
I had planned to cycle all the way to the southernmost point of India today but some gearshift problems made me end the day before that. Whenever I went up a steep hill in a very low gear one of the shift cables would come off. I could easily reattach it, but this behaviour kept continuing. Eventually I got tired of reattaching the cable and just cycled on in one gear. I still don't have any idea what this problem is about. I hope this is not connected to yesterdays oil change. This problem made me end up in Nagercoil, which does not look very remarkable but has an awesome name.