After recovering (almost - Charlotte's hair is still pink) from the Holi celebrations we then embarked on our two day journey in the quest for a beach in Goa. We had to get a night train from Udaipur to Ahemadebhad, a day train from there to Mumbai which was horrendous due to us having unreserved tickets which meant we were sat for 10hrs on hard wooden benches squashed together with so many other people, not pleasant! After reaching Mumbai we then caught a night bus to Mapusa in Goa. We evntually arrived in Anjuna, a small beachside village in the north of Goa and breathed a huge sigh of relief!!

We spent 3 nights in Anjuna right on the beach, it was really nice here and nice to relax and chill for a bit. There were quite a few hippies here in love with their trance music!! Aswell as working on our tans and sampling the Goan tipple of Feni we went to the famous flea market on Wednesday which was huge!!

We left the beach on the friday :-( to head for Panaji which is the state capital of Goa. This is a small Portuguese town so had a nice Mediterranean feel to it. We stayed in someone's house as they had a room free, it was a little bit bizarre and felt like we were imposing but it was only for 2 nights. On the saturday we hired rickety old bicycles for 30p each to cycle along the Mandovi River into Old Goa. This was really good fun and thankfuly no hills. Old Goa once apparently rivalled Lisbon in size and importance but ther isn't much there now apart from some churches and a tomb of some dead Christian guy - just our thing!!!....... So as you probably gathered the cycling was better than the sight seeing!!!

Sunday night we caught the sleeper bus to Hampi in search of some boulders!! We mildly prefer the sleeper buses to the trains although the toliet thing does pose a bit of a problem as you have no idea when or how often they are going to stop! These stoips normally involve pulling over on the side of a busy road for you to pee in a hedge! Its just way to easy for men - far too difficult for women!! If only women drove the buses!!! We arrived in Hampi on the Monday and found a really nice room for 1 pound 10 each! There were lots of other backpackers here so it was really nice to get talking to some other people and finding out what they have been up to! Hampi is a crazy palce, just like The Land Before Time!! There are literally boulders strewn everywhere like it has been raining rocks! Becky just lazed around and boulder-watched whilst Charlotte spewed her guts out!! Not very nice but on the mend now - fingers crossed!! We found a really nice place to eat/drink - only soft drinks as alcohol is banned here but often restaurant owners will bribe the police and so sell it under the table or in a tea pot!! called the mango tree. To get to it you walk along the ghats and then through a banana plantation - very idyllic with amazing views and really chilled out! Becky said the food was good!! Charlotte was too busy drinking coconut water and trying to keep down small mouthfuls of rice and curd - yum!! From here we head further south to Kerala.... we'll update you all soon.

Thanks for all your messages, its really nice to hear from you all and we love reading them! Keep them coming!!!

Lots of love us xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx