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In the true spirit of adventure we set off on the bike this morning in search of something. We didn’t know what we were looking for becasue it wasn’t on the map. That is becasue the map of Pai we have is useless and the clearest thing on it is the bold writing ‘NOT TO SCALE’. There is a superior map of Pai which can normally be bought but unfortunately it is out of print. Unperturbed we headed north towards what we thought were a set of caves or another waterfall. The road was pretty good and wound through little villages and past a large army barracks. There weren’t many people around and the roads were empty. This may have been becasue the road soon became a dirt track and then nothing much at all. We stopped at this point, took a photo and turned back towards Pai.

On the way back we passed the waterfall we had swum in a couple of days ago so we decided to stop off and cool down. We spent an hour or so splashing about and enjoying the water. All of a sudden a gang of young children appeared. The oldest must have been six or seven and the youngest barely three. The rocks the water ran over were smooth and slippy and the children had the most enormous fun sliding down them. They threw themselves forwards, backwards, sideways and even in groups down the rocks ending up in a pool at the bottom. Their confidence was incredible. They clambered over wet rocks with a thirty foot drop next to them without a seconds thought. Even the youngest was not in the slightest bit afraid of rushing into the pool even though he couldn’t get out without someones help. The undisputed queen of the falls was a little girl we nicknmed the bare bottom slider. She was without a doubt the bravest and most confident and had perfected the sliding technique. It involved whipping down her trousers and sliding down the rocks on her bare bottom. Highly effective but not copied by Tash and I. It became clear that the children were there in order to sell some fruit which they carried around in a huge sack. It took three of them to lift it and they managed it without a cross word or any guidance from an adult. Truly independent. The other interesting thing about watching them was that pretty quickly they were shivering and their lips were turning blue. This would normally be the cue for a frantic parent to wrap them in towels and warm them up. It was different here though. Without noticing who instigated it the children stopped sliding and went and sat on a large flat rock (with a forty foot drop beside it) in the sun to warm up. It was a most amusing morning and we reluctantly left the waterfall in search of food but not before watching five children climb onto a moped and drive off. The oldest of whom was definetly younger than ten.

Somehow we had got our dates muddled up and thought it was a day later than it really was. This is quite fortunate really becasue we are loving Pai so will spend the extra day here. We booked bus tickets from here to Chang Kong on the first of May. Chang Kong is the northern most border crossing point with Laos. We will probably have to spend the night in Chang Kong and cross into Laos the following morning. After that we plan to head north to a place called Luang Nam Tha . The journey from here to there will probably take three or four days and sounds pretty tough. It means we need to relax as much as we can now!

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On Tuesday I was overcome by the joys of washing in a hot shower. Yesterday it was the icy waterfall that got me clean and today the theme is washing again, this time with elephants. Hopefully the photos in the gallery should speak for themselves. We have had a truly magical morning.

On arrival at the elephant camp it was breakfast time and we both had great fun feeding the four elephants bananas and watching them tearing huge trunks of bamboo and sugar cane into bite sized pieces. There were six of us on the trek and we were in pairs on the back of an elephant without a saddle. There was just a rope around the elephants stomach that we could hold onto. Our elephant was the largest of the three and was called ‘Annom’. We assumed that she must have been the most placid and well behaved of the group because our elephant driver walked beside us whilst the other two had the driver sitting on the neck of the elephant. We plodded off into the forest and it soon became clear that Annom had not had enough breakfast. It is dry season here and there is not a lot of greenery around, even less now as Annom didn’t miss a leaf. She would stubbornly refuse to move until she had stripped every last bit of life from a plant then charge off to the next morsel she had seen. This was a pattern that was to continue throughout the trek.

The first ten minutes were spent getting used to the movement of the elephant and making ourselves comfortable. It took a while to appreciate how enormous and powerful Annom was. As she walked she gently rolled from side to side and we could feel her enormous spine wobbling. As long as we wobbled in time it was pretty comfortable. The walk through the forest was great fun but even better was to come as we approached the river.

Annom loved the water and plodded straight in. I had moved onto her neck by now and my feet were dangling down near her mouth. With the tips of my toes I could just feel the river below me. With one shout the driver ordered Annom to squirt us with water. We spent the next forty five minutes in hysterics as Annom dived and rolled in the water frequently squirting us and trying to play with the other elephants. At one time she managed to dislodge me from her back and I slipped forward off her head into the water. She dived at the same moment and we surfaced together. As I stood up and opened my eyes Annom stood up as well and our faces were inches apart. The sight of her huge head and trunk emerging from the water and then towering over me was amazing.

At the side of the river there were two or three Thai families sifting the silt from the river bed and collecting it to use as building materials. I would guess that they have seen the sight of westerners playing with elephants plenty of times before but they stopped work and watched us. There is a word in the Thai language ’sanuk’ which kind of means that something isn’t worth doing unless there is fun attatched to it. This means that given any opportunity to laugh and have a good time Thais will take it. Our audience seemed to genuinely enjoy watching us playing with the elephants and it only added to our enjoyment. The elephant drivers were also in hysterics and were easily having as much fun as us, possibly more becasue they were in control.

This approach to life means that there is always someone nearby laughing and having a good time. It also meant that riding on the elephants didn’t make me feel like some old colonialist. There is no hiding or escaping the fact that we are well off compared to many of the people in the countries we visit and sometimes it feels awkward to spend money and do things that are beyond the reach of local people. The elephant trek definetly felt as though we were sharing the fun and joining in with the sanuk! I think this is a part of the reason that Thailand is such a fun and easy place to travel.

Having written yesterday about how great it was to have a hot shower again it seems a bit daft to report that we spent the morning sitting in icy pools at a waterfall eight kilometres from Pai. The falls stretched for about a hundred metres and were dotted with little plunge pools and smooth rock that you could slide down. Very refreshing and a great way to pass a scorchingly hot morning!

We have booked a trip tomorrow on an elephant. It is going to take us on a trek through the jungle then we will spend an hour ‘frolicking’ (the guides description) in the river whilst we wash the elephant and he washes us. Tash has not stopped grinning since we organised it.

Right now we are off on the bike to a canyon a few kilometres south of town where there is supposed to be an impressive sunset.

After an uneventful bus journey over the hills north of Chang Mai we arrived safely in the small town of Pai. It was a sleepy crossroad town until hippies discovered it a few years ago. In many ways it is still a sleepy town just full of hippes and the associated services. I have never seen so many cafes with cushions on the floor instead of chairs. Hippies aside it seems the perfect place to spend a few days doing nothing much. We have been travelling pretty hard for a month now and I kind of need a break.

There are two small rivers that run through Pai and we have found a place to stay on the far side of one at the north of the town. Our room is a hut built on stilts with a small balcony. There are shaded areas by the side of the river to sit in and the gardens around the hut are well maintained and full of flowers and birds. Not bad for five dollars a night.

After settling in to our new home we hired a scooter and went in search of some hot springs about eight kilometres outside of town. They were tucked away in some woods that were a protected area and we found them without too much trouble. The slight dissapointment was that they were too shallow to swim in. It was a pleasant trip though and riding the bike on deserted roads was good fun.

Back at our hut we enjoyed a beer on the balcony before having a shower. Normally writing about a shower would not really be appropriate but todays was different. You see we have been away for over a month now and today was the first hot shower we had in all that time. It was an unbelievably great experience. I didn’t have to grit my teeth and inhale sharply as cold water nearly killed me. Washing no longer made me feel like a public school boy! It is pure coincidence that we have access to a hot shower and didn’t influence our choice of accommodation in the slightest. I just hope that in the future I will be able to get used to cold showers again.

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The alarm went off at a very unhealthy 5:45 and before I knew what was happening we were tearing down Highway 108 at seventy kilometres an hour on our way to Don Inthanon national park. After about twenty kilometres we stopped at a set of traffic lights and Tash suggested that I might like to slow down a little bit. It then dawned on me that maybe overtaking cars meant I was going a little fast. It turned out that at fifty kilometres an hour I didn’t have to hold on so tightly, the ride was smoother and Tash could open her eyes.

The roads were very good and well signposted and other drivers are for the most part law abiding and considerate. So many people ride scooters here that there is a kind of unoffical scooter lane on nearly all roads. The main highway was two lanes with a dotted white line separating them and then a third smaller lane with a solid white line marking it. This is used by scooters although they tend to weave in and out at will. On some parts of the road this scooter lane was wide and smooth but it also tended to be the dirtiest part of the road and often there was loose gravel lying about. It also served as a car park, pavement, dog patrol area and chicken run. At times the driving was quite difficult.

On the way we stopped for breakfast at what appeared to be a roadside cafe type place. We were a bit early though and all that was on offer was two tins of iced coffee. The sweet old lady running the place could obviously see our hunger though and she produced a dunch of what looked like fat grapes coverd in a hard shell. She showed us how to crack the shell with your teeth and then suck the fruit off the stone inside. They were a little bit like lychees and quite tasty. She then came over with her breakfast and shared a handful of sticky rice and a bowl of stir fried veg with us. Luckily we have extended our Thai vocabulary to one word and were able to say thank you to her (and of course bow).

We arrived safely at the entrance to the national park after about an hour and a half. The park itself covers the entire mountain and there was a gate at the bottom where we paid our entrance fee. After that we were free to roam wherever we wanted. As we began the ascent we spotted a sign post for a cave so we turned off to investigate. We never did find the cave but discovered a narrow valley with a river running through the bottom of it. The air was absolutley thick with different types of butterflies. Plus there was no one to be seen. I knew at once that I was going to enjoy myself.

We carried on up the mountain and stopped at the first waterfall which we explored for a while. As it was still early in the morning we decided to head to the summit becasue the mist and cloud often forms later in the day. This way we could also make a note of places that looked worth investigating on the way back down. The ride up to the top was great fun and the road was pretty much deserted. Much more relaxing than the highway. Just below the summit is a temple complex built by the Thai Airforce. It was built recently and was really interesting to explore. The view was okay, not too cloudy but the best bit was the gardens. They were huge and immaculately maintained. There were literally hundreds of different types of fuscias and other flowers that I recognised but couldn’t name! Reluctant to leave we decided to press on to the summit only to notcie that the fule gauge was close to empty. We were told in Chang Mai that there was no petrol within the national park so we opted to roll back down to a village we had spotted on the way up to see if that was the case. It was our extreme good fortune that there was a small petrol type place, kind of a shed really, in one of the villages. It took some finding and was must have asked at least ten people but we had a full tank again.

Our descent continued amid a rainstorm but it stopped as quickly as it started and we were sweating buckets again pretty soon. By following side roads we found two more waterfalls, one of which was totally deserted. Unfortunately we couldn’t swim becasue the pools were a bit too shallow. We consoled ourselves with delicious ice cream instead.

The journey back to Chang Mai was uneventful apart from a pick up truck reversing out in front of me. Our little trip enatiled us driving over two hundred kilometers which was probably a little bit too far (we are both suffering from bottom fatigue). Nevertheless this was an excellent day and definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

Tomorrow we are going to take a bus to Pai where we will stay for a few days. I think we have used up all our bike riding luck. You could say we rode it!

We went back to school today to study the art of Thai cooking. A strange thing to do on a Sunday but fortunately it is not a day of rest in Thailand. It was an interesting day only slightly spoilt by my first bout of Delhi belly. Strange as we left India over a week ago. I find it hard to believe that the delicious Thai food could possibly upset my delicate stomach.

Our cooking course involved us choosing five dishes that we would like to cook. We then went to a market where most of the fresh ingredients were bought. The market was fantastic and given the time and opportunity I would far rather shop there than at Tesco’s. Once we had bought the ingredients and investigated some rather strange looking fruits we were driven to the chef’s house which was in a village about twenty minutes outside Chang Mai. The setting was absolutely stunning. The house was a single story spread over a large area and bordered on three sides by fields and gardens. The mountains surrounding Chang Mai formed a perfect backdrop. In the gardens was a large building that housed the cooking school. There were plenty of preparation areas and in the middle a worktop with gas rings on for the cooking. Outisde was a large bamboo roof that provided shade for a patio and eating area. The gardens themselves were both functional and attractive. There was a large area that was cultivated and had all sorts of things growing in it including spring onions and lemongrass. As well as this there were large grassy areas with mango and other fruit trees growing not to mention an area put aside for pineapple plants.

I have gone to some length to explain the setting because it was without doubt the highlight of the day. The food was fun to cook and very tasty but Mr Thai Food (our teacher) was not really a teacher. He may have just about qualified as a demonstrator but certianly not a teacher. He explained what to put where and when to chop what but sometimes we had to ask him what certain ingredients were. He didn’t really have a great passion for food, or if I’m honest a great deal of knowledge. It was a worthwhile day but it’s a bit of a shame that it wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Tommorrow we are embarking on our biggest adventure to date. We have hired a small motorbike and plan to ride to Don Inthanon national park. It is about one hundred kilometres from here so we are going to set off at about 6:00 and see how long it takes. We should be able to get there and back in one day without any problem. The national park is home to Thailands highest peak and there is a road that runs all the way to the summit. There are three waterfalls on the way up, hill tribe villages and over three hundred species of bird. I’m not expecting stunning views becasue at this time of year the top half is usually above the cloud line but it should be interesting anyway.

If this trip is successful we will keep the bike and head on to Pai, which is north of Chang Mai, and stay there for a few days.

We have spent the morning walking all over the old centre of Chang Mai. The old quarter is surrounded by a moat and in places the remains of the old city walls. There is also a noisy ring road that runs by the moat. As soon as you venture off the walls of the city and explore inside the noise of the road dissappears and it is like a different world. Chang Mai has a huge number of wats (temples) and all of them are open to the public and free to explore. I managed three this morning before I became immune to their beauty. They were all spectacular for thier own reasons. One was a huge teak building and the architecture was very impressive. In another there was a huge stupa with elephants carved around the edges.

As usual the food is forming a key part of my day and lunch was no exception. We had steamed fish balls with noodles, bean sprouts and other tasty things. The meal for both of us with an iced tea and coffee was less than a pound. Just as well really becasue there is so much to do here that you could never have enough money! Tommorrow we have booked a cookery course which involves a visit to the market and then a days cooking of various Thai dishes. I just hope I have a big enough appetite to make it worth while.

It is difficult to say exactly how long we will stay here becasue of all the things we can do. There are hundreds of places that rent motorbikes for as little as 100 baht a day and it seems that this is the bst way for us to get out of the city and explore the surrounding areas. I would like to visit a national park to the south west of here. It is home to Thailands highest mountain and it sounds like an interesting day out. There is also rock climbing, kayaking, rafting, elephant trekking and many other things on offer. Some of these we will be able to do elsewhere if we want so I think we will probably try and only do what is unavailable elsewhere.

Today we took a ten hour bus ride from Bangkok to Chang Mai in the north of Thailand. The trip was comfortable and uneventful apart from a scorchingly hot red curry I ate for lunch. I survived the slow burn that took over my mouth afterwards though and we are safely ensconsed in a great little guest house tucked in the corner of the town. We are not entirely sure where we are as we arrived after dark and kind of stumbled across the place. Looking forward to tommorrow and getting my bearings!

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We are still finding Bangkok a very pleasant place to stay and have made a good effort at exploring the city. The region we are styaing in is close to the river and I had heard about the ferries that run cheaply and frequently all day. It seemed like an ideal way to see some more of the city and sitting on a moving boat in 35 degrees means that you at least have a breeze. We easily located a ferry stop on the side of the river and consulted our map. We decided that we would get on the first boat that arrived as we didn’t mind if we went north or south along the river. The first boat that came along roared out into the middle of the river and began to spin around. Our excitment grew as we tried to predict whihc direction we were going. The engine roared again and the boat straightened up and plowed ahead to the opposite bank of the river. We had successfully boarded the river crossing boat. Unperturbed we found a ferry stop that handled boats going up and down the river, not just across it. The first boat we found took us south and we decided we would get off at the stop nearest the business district of Bangkok so we would get a different flavour of the city. Slight problem was that we missed this stop and by the time we realised we were two stops further down on the edge of the city. We jumped off and decided to have a look around. It was a bit of a strange place to say the least. There seemed to be some sort of temple type place so we got our cameras out and struck some beautiful poses. We then noticed a large concrete cylinder that had pictures of people stuck all over it, closer inspection revealed that they had all recently passed away. Further inspection revealed a coffin on a large stone plinth and a small room with a chimney on top, possibly a a crematorium? The cameras were hastily holstered and we scurried away hoping that we hadn’t deeply offended anyone.

The evening was spent at the Lumphini Kick Boxing Stadium watching people try and kill each other. Once again we experienced Thai public transport, this time in the form of a bus. The journey took over an hour and covered around six kilometers. It was our fault for getting on a bus during rush hour and the infamous Bangkok gridlock. The bus was extremely cheap though and very easy to find, the return journey was much quicker and painless. The boxing itself was an interesting experience. Each fight lasted for five three minute rounds and there were twelve fights on the card. It wasn’t as brutal as I imagined and a lot of the fighting was close up and involved kness to the ribs and elbows to the head. There was only one fight stopped and the rest ended on points decisions. Watching and listening to the Thai crowd was good fun and plenty of money was changing hands over the outcome of the fights.

Our passports are currently with the Laos consulate hopefully being endorsed with visas. We plan to leave here on Friday and will head north probably to Chang Mai but it depends a bit on where we can get a bus to. We will then spend another eight to ten days in Thailand before crossing into Laos. Well that’s the plan for now anyway.

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Our flight arrived at Bangkok just about on time and we had no problems getting a taxi to the area of the city where all the guest houses are. I was immediately surprised by the huge difference between India and Thailand. People had told me that Thailand was much more laid back and it is known as the land of smiles. Despite this it still came as a surprise.

In the taxi from the airport it was clear that we were in avery different country. The cars used indicators, the streets were litter free and there weren’t people living under road bridges. The guesthouse we asked the taxi driver to take us to was full so we walked up the street to find somewhere else. I was expecting to be mugged by hotel owners or touts trying to get us to stay in places they got commission from. Imagine my surprise when we walked along hassle free without being approached from anyone. It began to sink in that we had left India behind. The guest house we decided to stay in offered us a bedroom just larger than the double bed inside it but it has a ceiling fan and best of all it is cheap!

Today we met up with two friends from university (Neil and Ben) who are on a similar journey to ourselves. We had an extremely leisurely breakfast then headed off to the Thai Royal Palace which is home to the King of Thailand and it’s most visited shrine to Buddha. The place was breathtaking and I have uploaded some photos to the gallery. What was even more surprising was the attitiude of the people. Taxi drivers asked once if you wanted a taxi but didn’t pester you anymore when you politely declined, guides took no for an answer and there were women working alongside men. India was great fun I just wasn’t expecting Thailand to be so different. Everything is just so much easier!

It is our last morning in India and as is ofren the way when travelling we have a couple of hours to kill. Fortunately we have been able to leave our bags at the hotel we stayed in last night so although we are homeless we don’t have to carry our bags everywhere.

I am not in a position to make any judgements or generalisations about India but I am both pleased to be leaving and reluctant to at the same time. Our journey has taken us to eight towns in four states. We hugged the coast with the exception of a trip to Hampi and twelve hours in Bangalore. Mumbai was as crazy as I remembered it especially as it was Holi when we arrived. Goa was totally different from anywhere else I have visited in India partly due to the strong and recent Portugese influence but mainly because of the number of foregin and domestic tourists that visit each year. Fort Cochin was a great town to spend a few days in and it was the longest that we stayed in one place for which made it feel very familiar. Kerala was probably the most beautiful part of India I have visited and it seemed pretty relaxed. Well as relaxed as anywhere in India can be. Finishing our trip in a big city is unavoidable becasue that’s where airports are and although Chennai is not my favourite place in the world I can put up with it for a day or two!

It has amazed me how my perceptions of places have changed in really short periods of time. When you arrive in a new town or city you have no idea about the layout or geography of the place. I have generally looked at a map before we arrived to get some idea of where we are and where we want to go but nothing is concrete. The first experience of a place can so often be misleading and I have constantly surprised myself with the way my opinions have changed. I have also realised that my familiarity with an area has a huge bearing on my feeling of security. The minute I get my bearings and know how to find my way around I feel more confident and secure. It is something of a contradiction that our journey is intended to broaden our horizons yet we often find ourselves living in an area of a few streets. In many ways my world has shrunk!!!

India has been great fun and we are happily settled into the routine of travelling. We are setting something of a frenetic pace and we may need to slow down at some point but right now we are enjoying it. Thailand here we come!!!!

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I don’t like cities in any country I have been in and Chennai hasn’t changed my opinion. It is Indias fourth laegest city and supposedly home to the countries finest thinkers and artists. I won’t dispute that but my brief experience has left me with the usual thick layer of dirt and dust and thats just on the outside, I hate to think what I have inhaled today.

We arrived by train this morning and made our way to a hotel. We are staying by one of the cities train stations and transport hubs are rarely attractive areas. The problem we had was that we turned up at 6:30 and all the hotels enforce a twenty four hour check out rule. We didn’t fancy getting up at 6:30 tomorrow to check out. The owner of the first place virtually chased us our the door when I said we would only take the room he had shown us if we could have it until 11:00.

In the end we had breakfast in a little cafe and managed to kill a couple of hours so we now have to check out at 8:00 tommorrow. We decided we would take in a bit of the culture seeing as we were in the cultural capital. With the trusty Lonely Planet map in hand we set off to the old fort of the city where there was supposed to be a museum all about the colonial era. We faithfully followed the map which was a mistake. According to the scale it was about two kilometres. We arrived an hour and a half later having run the gauntlet of rush hour traffic and its pollution. Our path also took us under the railway bridges which is home to the most desperate of Indias citizens. You are never far from poverty but these people really were living on the edge of existence. The final leg of our journey took us through an Indian naval base which the Lonely Planet helpfully omitted from their map. Most of the sailors were very helpful as we wandered through their top security base and we eventually found the museum. Of course by now all we wanted to do was sit down and have a rest. Inside the museum this was easily arranged as half the exhibits had been removed for cleaning and the labels for the remaining exhibits had been taken away to be retyped. They had thoughtfully left a couple of old benches that we were very grateful for.

The afternoon was spent in another museum which was all about southern Indian history. It was very interesting and some of it was air conditioned which is always a bonus. The site also housed the Chennai equivalent of the Natural History museum and had intersting things like lizards in formaldehyde and Emu feet.

Bangkok tommorrow and another big city, hooray!!!

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We have just returned from our backwater cruise and now have about five hours to kill before catching our overnight train to Chennai. Killing time is one of the unavoidable snags of travelling. We have arranged our transport pretty well but we still need to amuse ourselves for a while.

The overnight cruise was simply stunning. I’m not going to write in detail because I couldn’t do it justice. The scenery was amazing and the gentle pace of the boat was incredibly relaxing. We had a cabin with bathroom, downstairs seating area with a large external double bed at the bow of the boat and an upstairs sun deck. We were waited on hand and foot and the food was superb. It was something of a shock to disembark back in the noisy smelly centre of Allepphuza.

A lot is said about the state of roads and the quality of driving in foreign countries, most of which is true. Today we took a bus from Kochi to Allepphuza and the journey brought the true wonder of the Indian highway system to the forefront of my thoughts. I have decided that by having ancient and dilapidated buses running on unsurfaced roads the Indian government is not trying to save money. It is in fact experimenting with the laws of physics and allowing all of it’s citizens to fleetingly experience weightlessness. Let me explain. As a bus pulls away from a stop it hits the first pothole or lump in the road. You are sent skywards at an alarming rate and are instantly more comfortable. For a split second you defy gravity as you are catapulted into the air. Then the terrible realisation dawns on you that you have reached the peak of your journey skywards, gravity has regained control and you are back on the way down to your seat. As a defence you tense your body waiting for the impact which only makes the resulting crunch more painful. Now a lot depends on what sort of bus you are on. If it is a basic state bus with wooden seats you take the force of the landing through gritted teeth and wait for the next time you are sent skywards. If however you are on a ‘luxury’ bus with padded seats your fate can be far worse. You see the padded seat is meant to cushion you against the lumps and bumps and inevitable sorties into Indian airspace. However if your landing in that soft trampoline like seat happens to coincide with another lump in the road you are this time catapulted twice as high, firstly by the fact the bus has no suspension and now also by your padded ‘luxury’ seat (or trampoline). If you are unlucky enough to come across a stretch of road with lots of bumps and happen to be travelling on a bus with padded seats you can very easily spend more time in the air than in your seat.

Having survived the bus journey to Allepphuza we found a guest house and set about booking a twenty four hour backwater tour. We spent the whole afternoon looking at boats and dealing with various agents and boat owners. We were shown the same boat twice by two people who claimed to own it and I was ferried about on the back of a scooter through the heaving traffic of the town. Finally we found a boat we really liked and will set sail tommorrow for a cruise. The boat has a double bedroom with an attached toilet and shower. There is a deck area immediately in fromt of the cabin with table and chairs and then there is a ladder up to an upper deck which also has chairs on it. We will be fed and watered throughout our cruise but we have to bring our own beer! I’m sure I will take loads of photos so I will let them describe the boat in more detail.

We have also managed to book train tickets from Allepphuza to Chennai on the 15th, the day we come back from the cruise. That means we will have twenty four hours in Chennai before our flights to Bangkok.

It has been an interesting day in which we have experienced the true wonder of India. Our search for airline tickets to Bangkok lead us to journey all over Kochi and talk to many helpful people. Some of whom new what they were talking about. We enquired at travel agents here on Fort Cochi but they told us the days we wanted to fly on were fully booked and suggested that we went to Calcutta or Delhi. Unperterbed we headed to the mainland and found Indian Airlines. We registered our names here and were told to come back three hours later. I was reluctant to spend my money with a company that made me wait three hours, spoilt I guess. It was now we discovered two crucial things. Firstly the guide book map showed Indian Airlines in the wrong place and secondly, some would say more importantly, there is Indian Airlines and Air India. Two completely differerent companies. This had added to our confusion about where we were, where the airlines flew to and if they had seats available. After sitting in a few more travel agents being quoted expensive prices or told that seats were unavailable we found a place that could help. We have secured reasonably priced tickets on the seventeenth of April, five days from now. That means that we will head south to Allephuza for a twenty four hour house boat tour before crossing the country to Chennai for our flights to Thailand.

I will be sorry to leave Fort Cochin. It has been really relaxing and a good place to rest my mosquito ravaged feet (which are on the mend). The other great thing about here is that the hotel actually has a soft bed. This is the first soft bed I have come across in India and I have been waking up in the morning without feeling like I rolled down a concrete mountain.

Today we had our first taste of Keralas famous backwaters. There are about 900km of waterways connected to the sea that make up the backwaters. They are tidal and the water is brackish. People live on the spits and islands that make up the banks of the backwaters.

Our tour took as an hour south of Fort Kochin by minibus where we met up with our boat, two punters and the guide. The only other person on the trip was an Irishman called Michael who turned out to be pretty good company. The boat was fantastic (there is a picture in the gallery). We had a large shady area to sit in and were supported very comfortably by large wooden arm chairs. We spent the morning being punted along a section of the backwaters stopping twice to see the ‘cottage industry’. At the first stop we saw how lime was made from the shells of clams which had been collected from the backwater. The entire area around the factory was coated in a thick layer of the lime powder. To make the lime the shells are burnt at five thousand degrees. It’s not a job I would fancy in this heat. Later we stopped at a place where they were spinning coconut fibres into rope. The most interesting thing about this stop was looking at all the delicious foods that the guide pointed out to us in the families garden. There were pineapples, chillis, bannanas, coconuts, cashew nuts, curry leaves and all sorts of other things that I have forgotten the names of!

Lunch was an unexpected highlight of the day. We stopped on an unihabited island where a local lady had prepared a traditional Kerlalan lunch. I knew it would be vegeterian and was preparing myself to dispose of it discreetly. To my utter astonishment it was delicious. I even ate the cabbage, in fact it was my favourite part!

The rest of the afternoon was spent on the boat floating quietly around the backwaters. It almost put the madness of India out of my mind. We are definetly going to head further south and spend a night on a similar boat.

My feet are showing some slight improvement. The swelling is on the way down and I can now make out each individual bite. They have gone big and purple which is a little alarming. On a more positive note they now seem to itch individually rather than en masse which makes them easier to deal with. The guide on the boat also assured me that there was no malaria in Kerala, it was just people arriving from other states that could be affected!

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As the title of the post suggests I am having a bit of a tough time with my unfortunate feet. It seems that the evening spent in Bangalore in sandals and DEET free left my feet to the mercy of mosquitoes. My right foot has swolen to the size of my kne, particularly around my ankle and bridge of the foot. It is difficult to make out the location of the bites due to the swelling. My sandals rub across the swelling and send shooting shivery pains up my legs which reach as far as my armpits. On the plus side this only happens when I move!

I bit the bullet with regards to the feet and we set off this morning to catch a ferry to the mainland so we could visit the India Airlines office and try and book our flights to Bangkok. Only slight problem is that it is Sunday and everything is closed. Back on Fort Cochin we visited the old Dutch palace which was interesting enough.

Tonight we are going to visit a theatre where they do Kathkali dancing. It is a ‘world famous’ Keralan art form. The performacve starts at 6:30 but you can go up to an hour earlier and watch the performers putting on their makeup which is a big part of the performace. After that we plan on visitng the fish market again and getting one of the shacks on the beach to cook us up some dinner. Last night we had a kilo of grilled prawns washed down with a couple of beers. All to the backdrop of the sun setting behind one of the fishing nets (as the photo above shows).

Tommorrow we are probably going to go on a backwater tour but haven’t booked anything yet.

Things normally turn out alright in the end and yesterday was no exception. We spent an enjoyable day roaming around Bangalore and in the evening we got tickets on the train we wanted. Amazingly it wasn’t full after all and our standby tickets magically turned into valid ones. Albeit after a few rounds of form filling and visits to various railway officals offices. The journey to Kochi was almost painless. The train left at 22:00 and arrived thirteen hours later. We both slept soundly enough and although a little bit grubby after two nights and three days without a hotel room we feel fine.

Kochi is a city of over a million people but it is spread across three islands and the main land. The island we are staying on is called Fort Cochin and has a distinctly Portugese feel to it. As with much of this coast the Portugese had a large trading port here and it is still active today (although now controlled by Indians). Fort Cochin is a weird blend of hotels, souvenir stalls and a very active fishing industry. We have just walked across the northern part of the island which took us past restaurants, churches, temples, beach and fishing boats. There was a large park area kind of like a village green I suppose. The football pitch had been converted into a cricket pitch but that is something you just have to put up with in India. The highlight of the walk took us along the beach at the very north of the island. They have large fishing nets suspended from a kind of trebuchet that lowers the net into the water. It is left there a while then a team of men haul on ropes which raises the net from the sea. The net reaches no further than five metres into the sea and yet they catch wonderful seafood. Small shacks sell what is caught right next to the nets. You can then take what you have bought to a whole host of cafes where they will fry, grill or boil your selection. A kilo of prawns costs 200 rupees which is about two pounds fifty. They also have tiger prawns caught from the deep sea and they are about five pounds a kilo. Whilst we were investigating this gastronomic delight we saw a dolphin swimming about a metre past the fishing net. This is a very relaxing place and I think we could easily spend three nights here. We will just have to check how long we have left in India and what else we plan to do here.

I should also mention that our hotel room is absolutely perfect. After so long without a bed or shower anything would do (even Mr Charas’s ‘hotel’) but I had in my mind something with cool stone walls, clean bed sheets and a decent shower. To my absolute delight we have this plus a balcony and incredibly cool marble floor. All for just 200 rupees a night. We are on the fourth floor which is fifty rupees less than the first floor. I guess becasue there is no lift but the balcony has a better view and there is more of a breeze!

The only slight downer on Kochi and Kerala in general are the mosquitoes. I had been so pleased up until now that I had only been bitten a couple of times. I even convinced myself that I wasn’t reacting so badly to their bites anymore. Unfortunately Kerala has set me straight. On my right foot alone I have over twenty bites and it feels as though I have pins and needles in my foot when I walk. I hadn’t taken any precautions and obviously last night I paid the price. I am now covered in DEET and am going to string up the mosquito net when I get back to our room. Hopefully I will be able to stop it from spoiling what seems to be a very enjoyable part of India.

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This morning we arrived in Bangalore on the overnight bus from Gokarna. It was a bumpy ride to say the least and we didn’t mange much sleep. We were dropped by the side of the road and managed to find our way to the train station without having to pay for a rickshaw. Our plan was to stay here for a night before moving on to Kocjin tommorrow. However we decided that if we could get an overnight train this evening we would sepnd the day looking round the city and then leave this evening.

On enquiring we discovered that there was a train leaving at 21:45 which seemed perfect. Unfortunately it is fully booked and there is not tourist quota available. We have had to buy a standby ticket and fill in more forms. If a space on the train becomes available we will be issued with a ticket. We have to go back sometime this afternoon to see if we are lucky.

In the meantime we have wandered around the city and I have just found this internet cafe which has an extremely quick connection so I have uploaded some more photos.

Banaglore is a pleasant city. I think that is the strongest adjective I can use to describe it. As far as cities in India go it is probably the most bearable I have been to. There is the usual smog in the air, packed roads and even more packed pavements but it feels quite calm. The first on our list of things to do was try and buy tickets for the flight to Bangkok. We found Thomas Cook and plenty of airline offices. Unfortunaely they have decided to go on strike so it doesn’t look like we will be buying anything today. We walked through the city to the large botanical gardens which at first were incredibly dissapointing. There was rubbish everywhere and it looked like a big toilet. On further investigation though we discovered that the other half of the park was really rather beautiful. It was neat and tidy and had a staggering array of trees. Some where hundreds of years old and provided some great shade.

We are now back in the centre of the city and are planning what we might do if we can’t get on the train tonight. We have a few other options so it is not the end of the world if we don’t make it. The only problem will be tiredness. We are beginning to flag a bit now and it’s only 13:30 the train is not for hours yet so we will have to keep ourselves amused somehow. There are a few ciemas around the corner so we can always go there and have a rest!!!

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Def:-
Charas
A form of the drug cannabis.

Chillum
A stone pipe for smoking charas.

The last couple of days have been highly entertaining thanks largely to two gentlemen we have met.

We left Hampi and just about survived the bus journey towards Gokarna. I say towards becasue we were dumped at a roadside at 3:30 and told that another bus would be along to pick us up. We had met another English guy called Ollie and the three of us amused ourselves for the next hour whilst we waited for the second bus. It eventually arrived and took us to the seaside town of Gokarna. When we arrived it was pitch black and we weren’t sure where to go. We knew that it was a twenty minute walk from the sea front to the nearest beach. The path would take us up a cliff and over a headland. First though we needed to find the seafront. We set off in high spirits relishing the idea of a beach. After about a kilometre a rickshaw screeched to a halt beside us and an agitated French man popped his head out and asked us if we had seen a guesthouse open. We couldn’t help him but he was able to point us in the right direction for the seafront and the path to the beach.

We arrived at the sea front and it was still dark so we decided to sit in a little cafe (the owner had woken up) and have a cup of chai. Whilst we were waiting the Frenchman appeared again and asked if he could join us. He introduced himself as Juan although he then admitted that he was really called Jean. He was short and skinny with dreadlocks and extremely suntanned skin. We chatted for a while and he knew the area well. He decided that he would come with us and guide us to the beach. As the sun began to rise we set off up the steep path over the headland. I should explain at this point that Gokaran is the name of a town and the four beaches to the south of it are called Kugli, Om, ??????, and paradise. Each is about a half hour walk from the other and there are no roads joining them together. Basically they are isolated and idyllic. We were glad for Juan’s knowledge of the route and his entertaining company. Just as the full sun appeared we descended onto Kugli beach and it was a beautiful site to behold. Golden sand, palm fringed, you can imagine I’m sure.

Juan said that he had stayed on the beach before and knew one of the bamboo guest house owners well. His place was about halfway down the beach and was basic to say the least. I quess it was originally a small farmstead that he had built some bamboo huts on for tourists. Our room must have been the old grain store or something becasue it had mud walls and a thick thatched roof. As we settled in and began to ‘unpack’ I heard a peculiar sound from outisde. A man had just shouted “bam” in a deep almost Jamaican voice.

I walked out the hut to see what was going on and was immediately blinded by a thick cloud of sweet smelling smoke. As the haze cleared in front of me I could make out the shape of Juan and the guesthouse owner. I’m going to call him Mr Charas. Mr Charas had just had his first smoke of the morning and it turned out that his shout of “bam” always preceeded his chillum smoking. It was a noise we were to hear many times over the rest of the day.

We spent the day swimming in the warm sea and lounging around in the shade. Every now and again we would hear “bam” and a loud bout of coughing. The beach had fish eagles swooping over head and a pod of dolphins appeared some way off shore. Not a bad spot really. In the afternoon we walked back to Gorkana and bought bus tickets to Bangalore for Thursday evening. The walk in the heat nearly killed us. We will have to learn to time things better!

In honour of Tash’s birthday we decided to make a fire on the beach and try and find a couple of beers from somwhere. Charas was the drug of choice on this beach but we managed to find beer in one of the cafes tucked away in the palm trees. We bagan collecting wood for the fire and Mr Charas appeared from somwhere and offered to get us some wood. He promised us “big fire, good fire” and a whole host of other mutterings. We left him to it and went to find some food further up the beach (we didn’t really trust Mr Charas to provide food for us). Juan had appeared again from his latest round of chillum smoking and he joined us for dinner. He had entertained us all day with his amusing stories and peculiar outlook on life. I’ll share one with you now. We were talking about the heat and Juan recalled the summer in France two years ago when thousands of elderly people died. He explained that it was a very decadent summer for him. His apartment in Paris has a large terrace and he had met a beautiful girl who liked champagne. Without a trace of bravado he told us how he spent the summer drinking champagne, smoking the chillum and making love. All without helping ze old people! It was tricky to keep a straight face.

After dinner we returned to the beach in front of where we were staying and set about making a fire. Mr Charas was nowhere to be seen so we scraped a hollow in the sand and started to light the fire. We heard the now familiar shout of “bam” and Mr Charas magically appeared. He took control of the fire and soon we had a roaring blaze. It was a great success and a perfect way to celebrate Tash’s birthday. Mr Charas had disappeared but rejoined us later in a strange drug induced psychosis. He was talking to himself, to us and singing all at the same time. An unusal experience to say the least.

Around 22:00 it started to rain great big drops that got harder and harder. At first it was pleasant to be cooled by rain but it soon became a torrential downpour and we sought shelter in our hut. Fortunatley the roof was sound and we settled down to sleep. The following morning we arranged for a boat to pick us up and take us to the next beach down. It is slightly more developed and we have a room in a concrete block. It is much busier and the facilities are much better. That said the bed is hard and there is an unpleasant smell wafting around. It makes Mr Charas’s place seem perfectly acceptable!

We have booked bus tickets to Bangalore and are off there tonight on another overnight bus. I’m quite excited about going there becasue it is supposed to be one of the most modern and forward thinking Indian cities. It should make a good comparison to some of the other places we have visited. We have also mapped out a rough plan for the rest of our time in India. After Bangalore we will head to Kerala and go on a house boat cruise around the backwaters. After that we hope to visit Periyar wildlife sanctuary which is also in Kerala. Then we will need to find our way to Chennai for a flight to Bangkok. Hopefully we can buy tickets in Bangalore. If not we will have to wait unitl we reach Chennai.

Tash has asked me to say thankyou for all the birthday messages. She did pretty well in the end. Her birthday stretched from last Wednesday in Anjuna market right up to Tueday which was the offical day!

Just a quick post, mostly for the benefit of my dear mother. I thought that I should let you know that yesterday afternoon we did hire a motorbike and we went and looked at some of the sites a bit further afield. It was an interesting trip and I didn’t crash! We did lose the keys to the bike at one point. There were three key rings joined together and somehow the one with the key on worked its way loose from the other two. By some miracle we retraced our steps and I found it lying on the ground. We have been visiting an awful lot of religious sites so maybe one of the many different Gods was smiling at us. Probably not the Catholic God though, he’s a bit busy right now!!

Off to Gokarna tonight on another over night bus. We are scheduled to arrive at 4:30 when it would still be dark. I’m hoping that the usual Indian dramas occur and we are delayed by a couple of hours so the sun has started to rise by the time we arrive. We are hoping to stay in a hut on the beach which is a half hour walk from the bus stand. I’m sure it will be easier in daylight!

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It took a while for Hampi to make a positive impression on me but it finally has. When we arrived we were hot, tired and I was being eaten by mosquitoes. Sleep was easy to come by last night and today there has been a gentle breeze which has made everything much more bearable. As for the mosquitoes, well I am covered in near 100% deet and they seem to be staying away.

We got up at half past six this morning so we could do some site seeing before it got too hot. We have visited temples and ruins galore. The best bit for me was getting to the places though. We have been rowed up a river in a coracle, walked across bamboo bridges and climbed over two thousand steps to reach the summit of a hill where there was a temple to Hanuman. We have walked over eight kilometers and our trek took us through banana plantations and rice paddies, through the odd village and along dusty roads.

At the Hanuman temple there were loads of very clever monkeys who watched us intently. We had bought some bananas from a guy at the bottom of the steps up to the temple. The minute we touched our bags they moved towards us hoping we would produce the bananas. We tried to give them to the young monkeys or the mothers with children as we were told to by one of the temple men. It wasn’t so easy though and Tash managed to incite a monkey riot. She bravely (or foolishly) held a banana away from one of the big angry males and thrust it towards a youngster who managed to escape and eat it before the bigger one could catch it.

We covered a lot of ground and managed to see an awul lot. We got back to the hotel by midday when the sun is at its hottest. We are now going to wait a couple of hours and then hire a moped and go to another section of the ruins. They include the old elephant stables which Tash is delighted about although I don’t suppose there will still be elepahnts there.

Last night we went to the most fantastic restaurant. It has outside terraced seating under the canopy of an enormous mango tree. The canopy must be close to twenty metres across. There is a swing on huge long ropes that goes out over banana tress below. The food is all vegeterian (like most of Hampi) but I have to say it was delicious, not to mention dirt cheap. We are going to go back tonight and I think I’ll probably have a vegeterian thali! One thing I won’t repeat though is the mistake I made with chillis. We sampled some of the food from the street stalls last night. We had potato cakes which were deep fried and incredibly tasty. Feeling brave Tash tried a deep fried chilli. They were long green ones much the same (in appearance) as ones we buy in Tesco. Tash took a big bite and declared “not too bad". Needless to say I followed suit. For the next twenty minutes my mouth was on fire and the back of my head was sweating. I must have drunk a litre of water and finally I could think straight again!

Tommorrow we head back to the coast to Gokarna. I’m looking forward to the sea again but Hampi has been great fun.

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Things have changed a fair bit since my last post. We are now in a place called Hampi in the state of Karnataka. We had planned to head south through Goa stopping at a couple more beaches on the way. When we mapped out roughly how long our planned route would take we realised that we didn’t have enough time in India to do everything we wanted. I liked Goa fine but sitting on a beach for another week was not going to keep me sufficently amused. In the end we decided to leave Goa and head to Hampi.

Getting to Hampi was a real pain in the neck. We planned to use the state busses to get us to Margao in Goa where we could get a bus to Hampi. We didn’t even come close to acheiving this aim. The first part of the trip to Margao was to involve three buses. The first bus was fine but after that a evil conductor lied to us to get us on his bus. He then dropped us at Calangute and told us we had to get a bus to Vasco da Gama. We ended up in Panaji which is the capital of Goa. As it turned out this suited us okay becasue we could get a bus from there to Hampi. It didn’t leave until 20:00 though so we had to spend a whole day kicking our heels. We got on another bus (we were getting used to them now) to Old Goa which was the old Portugese capital of Goa. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering round Roman Catholic Cathedrals pretending to be interested. It was finally time to go back to Panaji and board our bus to Hampi.

Hampi was once the capital of the Hindu empire in southern India. To the north was a group of powerful Muslim states and the two powers were at war for many years. In the end the Muslims destroyed the Hindus and Hampi was left deserted. It is now a ruined city spread over a huge area some of which is cultivated with rice or bananas. You can see huge temples seemingly sprouting from rice paddies.

We arrived at 07:30 this morning and found a room easily enough. It was hot, dusty, full of flies and people trying to sell you stuff. I was also bitten by mosquitoes three times in five minutes. One on my bottom when i was taking a shower. Needless to say first impressions have left me a bit unimpressed. We visited the main temple in the centre of the site. Tash was blessed by an elephant much to her delight. We then decided to go for a walk. It was about 11:30 and this was a huge mistake. The ruins of Hampi are spread over a huge area (i guess it is Indias Angkor Wat) and you really need a bike to explore them properly. Our efforts on foot in the near 40 degree heat were a little fruitless. We staggered back to the hotel hot, tired and sweaty. Further explorations will need a bit more planning I think. I’m now sitting in the internet cafe becasue it is underground and cool!

We have booked bus tickets for Gorkana (a beach in the north of this state) for Monday evening so we have a couple more days here to explore properly.