James was feeling much better after having some antibiotics we got last night, he took another this morning and hopefully that will be it.
We packed the rest of our things and went upstairs to wait for our taxi, there was a slight problem with the taxi but it just meant we set off at 9.30am instead of 8.30am. We asked the driver if we could visit a couple of places on the way to Thurvoor, he said that was fine. He stopped at a couple of places which had great views of the landscape for us to take pictures and then we had asked if we could stop at a place called Dreamland which had elephants and camels. We stopped there, it also had a spice garden which went went round. This spice garden was better than the one we visited in Goa as we got a tour guide to ourselves and he explained things really well. During the walk round we saw two white horses and a camel that people could ride, we also saw the elephants. When we'd finished on the tour we went down to where the elephants were, they were so big up close! We had a ride on the back of one, it took us through part of the tea plantation they had at the place and back. The ride was great! Afterwards we fed the elephant some bananas and felt him. His skin was so hard! The experience was amazing! So glad we managed to fit this in on the way! We got back in our taxi and set off for Thurvoor, he stopped whenever there was anything interesting that we could look at including a couple of waterfalls. We also saw a family of monkeys again. After getting to Thurvoor it took some time to find the farmhouse that we were stopping in tonight. But we got there, the views were great from here as it was right next to the river. We got our room and settled down in our chairs outside, they asked if we had eaten we'd said no and they said they would make us some lunch. They produced a huge meal of curry, rice and side dishes. It was tasty but way too much food for us. We went back to our room and read our books for a while, it was so peaceful. They served dinner at 8.30pm and had set two big tables for all of the guests. There were only nine of us staying in the farmhouse so it was nice to have a meal with others. Again it was enormous with loads to choose from, and we were quite full from our late lunch we'd had. There was a retired English couple opposite us who had travelled to loads of countries and they would be going on the other houseboat tomorrow like us. After dinner we said our good nights and sat outside our room until it was too bad with Mosquitos.