So we woke up at 6am to go on a jungle trek which turned out to be not so much fun...It was a 3 hour walk through the forest and wetlands. We saw monkeys... the endangered giant squirrel (which was the size of a cat)..spiders...dears...lizards...and leaches, lots and lots of leaches. I had at one time about 15 of these little leaches trying to get in each of my shoes...Thankfully me and Bonnie had long trousers and socks tucked in and trainers as these little leaches were soooo fast and were getting everywhere. On the floor everywhere were these little leaches. One girl was wearing flip-flops and she had about 10 bites by the end of the walk and was bleeding! We didnt see any, but there are also pythons and cobras in the park!! As ... read more

We left the coast area after some awful haggling on my side - almost causing us to have to walk to the station. We took the train to Alleppey in Kerala's famous backwaters, where we went to stay the night in someones house, Thomas, Matthew, Maria, and grandma on an island in the backwaters. After a auto and short boot trip, we arrived at their house and were immediately given a huge delicious lunch, which had at least 6 different types of curries. Matthew then took us for a nature/local info walk where he explained the history and local environment, including Toddy ( the alcohol produced from banana tree flowers ) which I had never seen before, they were huge! We then went on a canoe trip through the back waters and flooded rice fields, there ... read more

Awoke at 730am, deliberately this time, had a curry breakfast and checked out, made our way to the main station by getting a tuk-tuk/auto to one station then a local train, then another tuk-tuk where the fat driver not only tried to rip us off but fitted 7 people in one tuk-tuk! we only just made it in time as the station was packed. The train, the famous konkan railway was transport for the next 31hours all the way down to the south of india. It was supposed to be 27 but we decided to stay on longer and go to Varkala beach first. The food on the train (which is also well known) was quite good. The toilets however got quite smelly after a while After a sleep and more food we made it to ... read more

Flight with the ba was great, curry already!! it was a night flight so we woke up in Mumbai, we took various public buses to the Colaba area, it was only 10 rs ( 15p ) each . We found the ymca for girls, ywca, really easily and checked into a 4 dorm room which was really clean. We dumped our bags and walked towards the "gate of India" it was really hot and humid. We saw the Taj hotel where all the attacks were, and then we to the Leopold cafe, which was a bit scary as there were bullet holes all over the place from the November attacks. It was really nice to have a kingfisher as it was sooo hot, we also ate a tika related paneer at Leopolds. We then met some ... read more