Chennai and Madurai, two cities in the South East, didn't hold that much appeal (and were so hot, it was uncomfortable), so we were glad when we made it to Kerala and the beach at Varkala. It was interesting getting overnight trains ourselves (whereas in the North the tour guide organised everything). As with the rest of India, nothing here relates to common sense or logic and the amount of bureaucracy would be amusing, if it wasn't so exhausting. Rather than going to the ticket counter to buy a ticket, you go to the Reservation Office, fill out a form, then reserve a seat (and pay for it), before going back an hour before your journey to be told your seat number. Though this process changed for every train journey we did, so we just gave up trying to understand!

Anyway, Kerala is beautiful - we stayed on a quiet end of Varkala beach, with only about 5 other people on our stretch which was so nice and relaxing. Unfortunately we only had a day there, but our next stop, Allepey, was probably my favourite of the lot. Its the main town where you go to visit the backwaters of Kerala. This is a rural part with loads of wetlands and canals, with little villages dotted around. We managed to stay in a guesthouse in a village, where there were no other tourists, just locals, a cook and a canoeist. We went for a wander around the village and it was beautiful. Again we saw the locals using the rivers practically, as if nothing had changed for hundreds of years (despite the introduction of electricity on the islands), and before we headed off the next day, we went on a dugout canoe trip around the islands. I'd be looking forward to this part the most for the Southern India bit, and again it didn't disappoint at all.

Our final stop in Kerala was Kochi, a famous fishing town which is apparently Kerala's top tourist destination. Unfortunately we didn't really like it - there were huge Chinese fishing nets which were interesting (and the main attraction of the town), but apart from that, there was nothing really there. We also had the worst hotel experience I've ever had - we came back from dinner to find that the front doors were locked and no-one was inside, plus there was no notice anywhere. We went round to the neighbours house to ask if they could contact them, and after 20 minutes, someone came to open up. The employee (and the Manager) were incredulous that we were rather unhappy at being locked out and had a go at us for complaining! Argh yet another reason why I generally just don't like the people of India (there are some lovely people here, but on the whole, its a nightmare!).

Yet another drama was our train from Kochi to Goa. We were told that there were no first class/sleeper tickets available for a couple of days, and as we didn't fancy staying in Kochi for any longer (and wanted to visit Goa), we were advised to buy cattle class tickets for the 12 hour overnight train journey. We'd travelled in cattle class before, but only for a 3 hour journey, and our experience wasn't overly pleasant, but we were told that we could just buy a general ticket and bribe the ticket inspector (or pretend we were French and so couldn't understand anything). So along we went to the train station and devised our plan...Suzanne would go and find the ticket inspector and I would go to cattle class to reserve the best possible seats (on our previous journey we had sat in the corridor and didn't want a repeat). After waiting nearly 20 minutes for her, I was finally able to remove myself from second class and enter into the wonderful world of a/c sleeper carriages. We were still unsure of how secure our seats were, so made friends with the two lovely elderly Indian couples in our section, who shooed away random Indians who thought we were in their seats! All pretty stressful, but Goa made it worthwhile...