Happy New Year to you all!
Having spent a very enjoyable and very unusual Christmas in Pondicherry we have come down to the southern tip of the subcontinent to the beaches around Trivananthapuram (try saying that after a couple of beers, or in fact before a couple of beers!). We stopped off in Madurai on the way to see the large, and very interesting Sri Menakshi temple where pilgrims flock to see the goddess and have their unborn children blessed. It was very interesting and gave us the opportunity to stay in one of the most utterly awful hotels in the whole world. At least the cockroaches and rats left us alone; it would seem that even they found it too depressing.
We are now in Kovalam, where we met up with Sam's friends Katie and Mal who are here on holiday. Unfortunately the day before Sam's birthday we both got extremely unpleasant food poisoning and spent the whole of Sam's birthday stumbling from bed to toilet and back again. We are OK now and the dull pain in my kidneys has almost subsided. We are feeling very weak so missed NYE completely, choosing instead to have a dinner of boiled rice and mineral water followed by an early night! Oh dear.
Tomorrow we fly up to Delhi for Prerna's wedding, which we are both really looking forward to. We both have a variety of traditional indian party outfits, so we'll make sure we put some pictures up for you to see as soon as we can.
Hope you are all well and that your bowel movements are regular and solid.
Tim and Sam x
