We arrived in the beautiful state of Kerala, we stayed in a beachside town called Varkala. Kerala is known for its tranquil and mesmerising backwaters and the harmonious villages that live between them. A must see if you're in the South of India and the whole reason we went there.

It felt like we were in a different country when we drove through the town on our taxi ride from the station. All the houses were painted in elaborate bright colours, all different to the next one with fun architecture, lining the streets. Women were wearing Saree's with lovely patterns, hypnotising us when they walked in packs of 4 or 5. The cars were designed like old white New York City taxis. It all had a Caribbean feel to it but then I saw the cows and knew we were still in our India. We reached our new home for the next few days, it was a lovely white painted cottage with four beds and a bathroom. Basically our own little house; it was perfect!! We gave ourselves 6 whole days in Varkala to use as a bit of chill time after the two crazy weeks we just had, travelling non stop around the North - plus the girls wanted a little relax before they go home. It was early evening by the time we managed to shower and get out the room. We walked to the restaurants on the 'cliff top' and were greeted by the sound of waves lapping onto the beach and the stunning view of the sun starting to set behind the palm trees on the cliff cove. Instantly relaxed, the stress from the journey here was slowly fading away. We headed to a rooftop restaurant and chilled out while watching the sky turn from orangey tones to a starry night.

The next day we had an inevitable lay in (although the bed were pretty solid so it was impossible to sleep well), headed to the cliff top and stopped off for breakfast in The Juice Shack, which over looked the beach. The staff were so so helpful and sat down with us to organise all our train tickets for the rest of our time in India - big weight off our minds. Down we went to the beach, laid out our towels and ran straight in the sea, by the time we came back our towels and bags were completely covered in sand, due to the strong winds. Which made it impossible to lay there, luckily a man soon came over offering us the option of sun loungers. There was no question about it, it was a must! The beaches were a different experience there, although its a tourist driven coastline, its still a big Muslim area. Meaning the beaches are divided into two areas; locals and westerners. Very odd to have a security guard, blowing his whistle at the local men trying to sneak their way onto our part of the beach. It didn't feel right though, we were in their town and they were being told where to go because of us. Later in the day, our beach time was ended by a monsoon rain storm so we hibernated in a cafe and watched the torrential rain come down. Nelen and Liv went to a beauty place to get some lavish treatments done, while Kate and I went back to the room to catch up on odd bits. Sadly this meant that we was now stuck in a prisoned room due to another bad lightening storm outside, you imagine how much us two were crawling the walls. The power had gone so no fan and no food. It was some sort of torture process. The girls came back around 4 hours later, after eating their dinner under candle light, apparently the whole area was out of power.

Mine and Kate's grumbling bellies woke us the next morning so we hurried down to Cafe Del Mar for a BIIIIG eggs and toast breakfast, while we waited for the other two. We were all pretty addicted to our books at this point so there wasn't much chat that day on the beach. I managed to finished my one called 'Wonder' so I got restless on the beach and headed back to the cliff top, to go to the book shop. Choose 'The Lovely Bones', after a previous recommendation from Liv and Nelen. Back to Cafe Del Mar for an early pizza dinner. Followed by a quick shower and various things. Liv found out that her bank card got triple charged in our expense Mumbai hotel so she was pretty pee'd off about that, only answer to that situation was cocktails. Now listen, it's not an easy thing to find a place that sells alcohol in Varkala. We went past a good few restaurants before finally finding one that secretly sold alcohol; and when I mean secret, I mean secret. Menus hidden in bottom draws, alcohol nicknamed as pop, or beer poured into mug for disguise. They clearly didn't have a drinks license so this was the only way they could get away with it, worked for us, except they took about thirty minutes to serve anything.

The following morning we had alot of boring jobs, cash point, sorting more trains and booking our trip on the Kollam backwaters trip. Another Cafe Del Mar brekkie, filled our stomachs up ready for our walk to one of the posh hotels in the area because they had a swimming pool and we fancied to mix it up from the beach. Turns out the walk was longer then we thought, sweating so much we needed window wipers for our face, we crawled our way to the entrance, we arrived at the fanciest place in town and let's just say the conversation was short. Turned out we couldn't afford the £7 they wanted for us to use their pool, off we went into the distance in search of cheaper waters. On our wonder, we stumbled across a random elephant that was in someone's garden, it was huge!! Amazing to see an elephant in India, its the big guy in the blog photo. We ended up landing in a hotel that was £3 to use the pool, it was the best deal we could do. The day was ended with dinner at an Italian restaurant then cocktails and cards at Abba restaurant; which only played the same four Abba songs.

Day 5 in Kerala was our trip to Kollam for our tour of backwaters. Kate was poorly this morning so she stayed in bed to recoup. We caught the train to Kollam and made our way to the backwaters; a tuk tuk, a mini ferry across the main river and another tuk tuk to our canoe boat, I took a deep breathe and climbed onto yet another vessel. Trying to ignore the fact that I was on a boat; it was really peaceful looking out onto the calm river, with no one else around. We floated past people's houses, watching them washing their clothes, cooking meals or chopping up firewood. As we were going down the tiny rivers, we came across very low bridges that we had to duck under to be able to fit through; we had to lay on the floor of the boat to be able to fit through some of them. We stopped off a few times, once to go to a rope farm, where they literally did that; farmed rope. A group of local women twining the coconut string from old coconut shells and making them into metres and metres of rope, I think they were just as fascinated with us as we were with them. We then went past an underwater fish farm, where they breed king prawns. I'm sure you can probably guess I didn't find that bit very interesting. Next was lunch, we went to a lady's house and she prepared us some rice and curry dishes, served on a banana leaf. I was starving because we didn't have any breakfast, the challenging part was, no cutlery. We had to eat with our hands, very messy work and a bit disgusting because we had no where to wash our hands before we ate; it was a struggle but we managed it. The rest of the afternoon was spent cruising around the tranquil river links, enjoying the peace and quiet, sweating in the beaming sun. After a journey back to Varkala. We met back up with the sick one and took her to a Abba restaurant for some din dins. I was crawling the walls for food at this point, using cards as a distraction but it wasn't enough, my eyes were stuck, starring at the kitchen door. The wait was worth it, had a lovely mushroom pasta, nom nom nom.

Our nights sleep in the little cottage was never a good one so I was awake early, went to the main house to catch up on Internet jobs, mainly panicking about work when I'm home so decided to research what to do during my time in Bali instead to cheer me up. When I returned to the room, Liv was rousing from her slumber so we headed back to The Juice Shack for peanut butter on toast. Wow, I missed peanut butter, mmm sunpat!! We all went our own way to sort our own stuff then Liv went to the beach and I met Nelen and Kate back at the hotel that had the swimming pool. After a few texts with the girls back home and swimming a few lengths in the pool, we all regrouped at the Abba restaurant. Kate and Nelen had previously gone to the cash point but ended up coming back with a cardboard box full of alcohol; including three beers, two bottles of dark rum and a bottle of gin. The cab driver apparently took them on a detour. The restaurant wouldn't let us drink our own drink the restaurant so we just sat with the box next to our table while we ate and played cards. The rest of the night was spent partying in our room, having a drunken slumber party, blaring songs from our iPods. Lets just say we 'rockstar'd' the hell out of that room. To say it was a mess would be a huge understatement (sorry cleaners).

I spent my final day in Varkala nursing my hangover, either I'm not used to feeling this way because I haven't properly drunk in a month or this was one of the worst hangovers of my life. I ate breakfast and had to go back to bed, watched a bit of EatPrayLove (for the millionth time) and just laid there. Annoyingly there was a power cut so there wasn't a working fan in the room, showering cooled me down for about 3 minutes then I was instantly soaked through with sweat again. The girls came back to the room, we packed up and tackled another hotel bill. Rushing to the station to prevent us from missing our train, we made it with just a few minutes to spare, the train was hot and smelt of urine - the usual. We arrived at Kollam station and had a 90 minutes wait until our 16 hour train to Bangalore. My body took the break in the journey as a good opportunity for me to get rid of some of the alcohol from the night before and turned my stomach upset down, resulting in my making use of a plastic bag on the station platform. Lovely experience, nearly fitted in with the locals!! I got some bread to settle my stomach and just sat on a bench with my head in my hands, praying for the time to pass. Finally got on the train, climbed up to one of the top bed benches, curled up in my big scarf and watched The Wire. Can you believe I am nearly at the end of series 5, meaning no more Wire. At least it's lasted most of the trip. We then watched 'The Dark Knight' on Nelen's laptop and drooled over Christian Bale's lovely face. After a rough night sleep on the bench, our second to last Indian train was over... We had arrived in Bangalore!! 12 hour break until our next train *shudder*.