Meeting the boys

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December 25th 2008

Published: January 3rd 2009

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Wed

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We arrived in Allepey a day before we were due to meet the boys, Nick and Chirstian. We spent the evening drinking beer in the guesthouse and the next morning we watched the owners feed their pet eagle. Yeah, we thought it was a bit odd as well. As it turns out, the eagle fell from a coconut tree and broke it's wing. The poor thing. It was only a chick. It's been there for three months, still too weak to fly away but getting stronger each day. We watch them feed it fish and omelette. Mmm, yummy!

After breakfast we ventured out in Alleypey. We had already pre-booked a houseboat with a chap called Roy George. Still unsure if that's his real name. After calling him we found that Roy had given his boat to another party and didn't think to inform us. Thanks Roy! Great help. It worked out ok because we found another boat that would be much better anyway, with an upper deck. So I guess these things happen, and in this case, it worked out in our favour.

After looking at several boats, we decided to go with one company that had 5 boats

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and two of which were the traditional, natural boat. That basically means that the boat has no TV on it, and this wasn't anything that we were interested in anyway. We arranged to meet the company the following day at 9:30am.

Looking at boats is hungry business so we popped into a cafe for three masala dhosas! We watched some Indians eat this on the train from Tamil Nadu and they looked so good, we were on a hunt to find a restaurant ever since! They were just as good to taste. Yummy. It's sort of like a pancake with a dry potato curry in the middle of it. It doesn't sound like much but the cafe was busy with Indians eating the stuff as a snack.

After fesating on the dhosas we headed for the beach where we found our two friends. Fresh off the plane and it wasn't hard to spot them! Despite the fact that he beach was rather large it only took us a couple of minutes to locate them. Not only were they surrounded by little Indian boys, but also their solar opposites in skin colour helped too, from Nick being the whitest

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person on the beach and Christian the blackest! I realise this sounds racists of me but they are the first to admit it was the case. :D

Christian told us his lucky escape from almost being captured and imprisioned in an Abu Dhabi prison. Somehow he managed to get a stanley knife past airport security in Heathrow and only noticed it was in the bottom of his bag when he landed at Abu Dhabi. Knowing it was incredible that he got this far with it, the chances of getting through Abu Dhabi's meticulous security checks was slim to none! He went to the toilet and disposed of it immediately. Silly boy. He's very lucky.

After hearing that tale we proceeded to the bar, where we drank for a few hours and then went on to yet another Temple festival, this one seemed more Indian than the one in Varkala. The colours were bold and bright and everything on sale in the streets were geared towards the Hindi faith. We were, once again, accosted at every turn but we took this opportunity to photograph more smiling Indian faces.

Enjoy!

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