Munnar should be a holy place of pilgrimage for all English people. Forget swimming with dolphins or skydiving over the Egyptian pyramids. This place is where it's at. There is tea. Lots of tea. But in our caffeine-fueled ecstasy we're getting ahead of ourselves.

When we last left you we were in a state of enlightenment, reaching new levels of consciousness and realigning our chakras through a strict one-day regime of yoga, meditation and massage. Have no fear, an evening visit to a local cocktail bar with some fellow travellers soon put an end to all that. We counter-acted all that natural healthiness and our blood / alcohol levels have been restored to their normal balance. We're back. Seriously though, some of the people in Varkala are definately stuck in a by-gone age. We heard one man say to his wife "I've just come over here babe, and you know, i'm just getting a really negative vibe. I just don't trust the internet, OK?" Unfortunately, we couldn't sit and laugh at the hippies forever, and a rice barge awaited (Lisa you're right, it is definately the done thing here). We got a train to Alleppey - rice barge capital of the world, in search of a worthy vessel. However, this was not as simple-a task as it would first seem. After a brief encounter with the Alleppey Rickshaw Mafia, who were intent on taking us to a hotel run by their Godfather - Johnson, we found a nice little hotel near to the canal. Now, you would expect that this would be the canal where the boats would be, as was implied by Lonely Planet. You would be wrong. And so were we. After three hours of faffing around, confused as to the distinct lack of boats, where we definitely expected there to be boats, we finally realised we were in the complete wrong place, and got a non-mafia rickshaw to the real dock. Here, we were greeted with open arms by the Rice Barge Mafia, who relentlessly followed us up and down the dock, attempting to shove us in any old rust bucket at a ridiculous price. "But sir" (they wouldn't talk to Fern, women can't be involved in decision making here, too complex) "It is the weekend. It is twice the price." Upon the point of near despair, we were saved by another English couple, who were looking to fill a room on the boat they had arranged. At last a piece of luck. We inspected the boat, and got the beers in.

We were sharing our ship with two other English couples, an on-board chef, a captain and another guy who we're not really sure what he was supposed to be doing, but he did it damn well nonetheless. The trip envolved cruising around for a few hours, admiring the backwaters and its flora and fauna, between meals cooked up by the chef. Heaven. Basically lazing around and eating alot. It is (according to lonley planet) one of the top ten things to do before you die, and while we're not sure we can praise it this highly, you would be hard pushed to think of a better way to spend a day and a night. We had a good laugh with the others, who we ended up getting the bus with to Kochi the next day.

Kochi is in many ways a tale of two cities. It is divided into different islands with two main parts. The mainland part (which is slightly reminiscent of an industrial estate in Swindon) and the largest island 'Fort Cochi' which is where all the Jews, Portuguese and Artisans hung out. Sweet. We stayed with the Artisans in the fort part, having had enough of the Swindon section just passing through. We stayed here for a couple of nights and soaked up the bohemian atmosphere. We particularly enjoyed hearing christmas carols. As an ex portuguese colony, christianity is pretty big here. Its quite surreal to here "white christmas" sung in 35 Degree heat.

Now seems an appropriate moment to take a brief time out and answer Garreth's burning question on how hot it is. It must have been on all of your lips for weeks now "Is it mental hot, or just hot hot?" I would say it's probably not quite mental hot, only 4 chillies out of 5. It is mental humid though (to use Garreth's learned terminology) and so you sweat a bucketload just by turning around. However we have since retreated to higher ground, and it is much cooler here, and it rains too. Its quite like England actually.

Munnar (the higher ground just mentioned) is the main tea growing region in south India, and tea spans in every direction as far as the eye can see. It's amazing. We visited a tea museum yesterday where we saw how they make the tea, and then got to try the tea. It was tea-tastic. We tried about 30 different teas, ranging from the delicious to the quick pass me the spitoon (don't worry we only spat the horrible stuff). A caffieine high ensued. Today we went on a large tour of the region, seeing the tea being picked (we were dissapointed to learn that monkeys are envolved at no point of the process). We also saw coffee plants for those of you who are that way enclined. Lunch was at the worst restaurant in India (we haven't tried them all, but there is no need), before our final stop in a wildlife park. We were hoping to see wild elephants, though we knew this was unlikely. This was made even more unlikely by the sudden torrential downpour that greeted us, and put off our fellow Indian sightseers who being from Rajasthan had likely never seen rain and fled from the scene. We being English, with our stiff upper lips, laughed in the face of this "spitting" and set off on the elephants heels. We didn't see an elephant. Being indian too they obviously had also fled from the scene, as had every other animal in the park. Even the 'wild cow' that our guide kept referring to, eluded us. We saw plenty of animal tracks so they must have been there at some point, but we saw nothing. The only actual animal we saw turned out to be a domestic goat which was about a mile off up a cliff. It was a very pretty goat though...The walk did us good, although it was the longest 2.5 Km in history, and we felt better for it.

Tomorrow we return to Cochi, before a night train to Goa where we will become re-aquainted with the beaches and the hippies.

Hope you are all getting into the festive spirit!

Alex and Fern