Karnataka: Jan 30 - Feb 2

Mangalore – Udupi - Gokarna (by train)

Indian Doppelganger

Here’s a fun game if you visit the subcontinent: Indian Doppelgänger.

It’s easy to play and easily adapted. The key aim is to spot someone who closely resembles someone else. Beyond that, the rules are yours. You can search for all doppelgangers or only those of certain categories: friends, family and acquaintances or celebrities; the living or the dead. A points system encourages group games but it’s still a good solitary pursuit.

You don’t need to worry about getting bored. We didn't.

The silver-lining of overpopulation is an abundance of candidates. By  Karnataka, our third state in India, we were racking up the points.

From the dark Tamil faces of our first two weeks through to the lighter-skinned possibilities along the West Coast, we had found many look-alikes.

There was the waiter who looked like a university lecturer, a grinning truckdriver with the face of an old school friend. There was even the impatiently-tapping businessman who looked just like Ryan Gossling, down to the raked hair and slim-fitting jacket.

Sometimes we hit the motherlode, as in the hilly streets of Udupi where, given the impossible task of regulating Indian intersections, a series of four traffic police – each wearing white uniforms, angled hats and tremendous moustaches – seemed to have settled on resembling Freddie Mercury.

Whether they fronted a classic rock-opera group or not, it didn't take long to see recurring features in the faces we recognised. They were Caucasian mostly, usually men, and moustaches featured heavily. Unsurprsingly, Ben and I scored higher for friends and family than Dheiu did.

It’s a good game but it does have a shelf life.

It's an easy way to pass hours until the first time you see the face of someone you know where you wouldn’t want them to be.

Like your father, mouth for mouth, nose for nose, looking out of from the sun-darkened face of a shirtless labourer pulling a cigarette from beneath the folds of his skirt-like vaetti in front of ribs like stacked twigs, as he walks barefoot down the road, a mute shadow with a 1,000-yard stare.

That's when the game usually stops; when simpleminded fun becomes too much of a thought exercise.