The train, with us riding in Second Class/Air Conditioned, piloted us for three days and two nights through continuous change. We flowed from duns to greens, then even greener greens until green became hallucinatory. Dry rivers transformed to those with bulging banks, Brahma cows to black water buffalos, whites and grays to shocking green and red saris, pines to lazy palms! We went from paces fast to slow, as if someone had pulled a switch, from noisy to quiet, from crowded to accommodating, and from the depressing (stench and filth of the north) to a relative Paradise in Kerala at the ancient spice port of Cochin....