Hello all, well we eventually persuaded oursleves to leave Goa and headed to a hill station called Matheran. Unfortunately to get there we had to stop in Pune which was not much fun at all, and we both think we saw a dead body in the street. We took a walk around the city and were quite shocked by the conditions some of the people had to live in. There are entire communities who live under bits of tarpaulin at the side of the road, cooking, playing cards and sleeping. We also had fun trying to send a parcel at the post office which took about 2 hours!

Leaving Pune the next day was a bit of a relief. We took a tiny toy train up the mountain which gave us some really stunning views. The town itself is really quiet, there are no cars or bikes, but lots of really healthy looking horses. They only get electricity in the town once every three days!

Our first venture out was to take an evening walk to watch the sunset at porcupine Point. We arrived just in time, settled oursleves on the grass to watch the view and eat some chikki, when we heard two people shouting at us. Looking the other way we saw a huge monkey was running towards us. He snatched the food out of our hands and was about to come back when a local guide scared him away for us.

Fortunately however the inicdent caused us to meet an American girl called Stephanie, who we decided to have a couple of beers with (in order to recover of course). We had so much fun we spent the next night doing the same, after spending the day walking around the area hungry because we were to scared to eat anything incase of monkey attack!

Regretably we had to leave the town and our new friend the next day, and headed off to Aurangabad which involved 2 trains, 2 buses and 2 rickshaw rides. Not much to say about the place really. apart from don't stay at Ashoka Executive hotel. The translation of executive must mean ridden with bed bugs, as Sarah now looks as if she has the measles due to the little creatures eating her for dinner.