Hi Everyone,
Since we last wrote anything we've travelled quite a long way. From Palolem to Gokarna and then to Kerela. Gokarna is a holy town and full of temples and religous sites. We actually stayed at Om beach where there aren't any temples but there were a couple of Germans who bored us to death! We were lucky enough to meet them in Calangute and then they turned up in Palolem and joy of joys they were on the same train to Gokarna. We were pretty stuck with them but thought we could have a few drinks and have a good night anyway. Turns out they don't serve alcohol at Om beach and we spent dinner desperately trying to keep the conversation going by saying things like ' I wonder if it'll rain tomorrow?' What's Munich like?' Have you been to London?' 'Yes, I spent 4 hours at Heathrow once, nice airport' .....awkward silence. Thankfully they left in the morning.
After a few days chilling out there (finally found some beer!)we took the train to Cochin and then a ferry to Fort Cochin. It's probably the least Indian feeling place we've been to yet. They can't serve beer legally in most places so we drank special tea which suspiciuosly tasted a lot like beer, in fact it is beer but served in a teapot. We also went to see a traditional Kathakali performance. The commentator/singer/triangle player was probably the campest man we've ever seen (an Indian Dale Winton) and he was pretty pissed off that he wasn't performing. The whole way through the show he was shooting daggers at the performers. When he burst into very enthusiastic singing/wailing we had to hold in hysterical laughter while everyone else lapped up the spirituality. You find there are a lot of wannabe gurus around who wear patchwork trousers and go on about how it's all a different world, totally alien, peace. We have to stop ourselves from hitting them.
After Cochin we headed by rickshaw (our driver took pleasure in driving the wrong way up a busy bypass while we were screaming in terror!) to Allepey, the lonely Planet describes it as 'a slice of Venice in India' Turns out it's a pretty shitty, dusty and dirty place with two stagnant canals running through it. Still this was the place to go on a Keralan Houseboat. It has to be one of the most relaxing ways to spend 24hrs. You have your own palace floating through the backwaters whilst being cooked the most delicious keralan food. We bought massive prawns from a local fisherman and had them for dinner. Only downside was when they moored the boat for the night next to the house of the local nutter. But it was fine once he'd stopped shouting and talking about five little boats at seven o'clock in the river sea time machine.
We had the biggest meal ever on that boat and our chef was brilliant.We haven't really talked that much about the food and it's usually fantastic. Everything is so cheap, breakfast is usually 2 omlettes, coffee and toast and it costs 75p. Lunch we try to have curry with rice, a vegetable dish and a roti or naan bread and that's about 1.50. Dinner we might splash out and spend 2 quid for both of us. It's incredible and you rarely get bad meal. (harri's worst was a lasagne completely made out of cheese, Laurie's was a chicken curry decorated with a random assortment of bones!)
We have just arrived in the Periyar national park and we're off to do some trekking (might involve some collapsing and coronaries as well!)
We'll try and write more soon if we don't get eaten by tigers, trampled on by elephants or Laurie dies of shock after seeing a small to medium sized spider.
Hope everything's good in the motherland!
