Namaste

It was a 7.30 start yesterday to take the bus from Palolem beach back to Margao for our train further South to Thivandrum. I was not feeling too well but as luck would have it as soon as we got to the road the bus turned up and we jumped on. I got my Rs50 ready to pay the ticket guy and he started rattling on about luggage charges, I was not in a mood to argue and handed over another Rs10 but Mel was and when he came back later wanting even more money he got "Go away and stop trying to rip us off because we are tourists" it seemed to work as he never came back till it was time to drop us off.

We were stood on the road not sure where we were, when I asked a local guy he said the train station was 2km away, so a rickshaw was hailed and off we went. As usual we got to the train station early and had 3 hours to wait for the train before it departed, it was choc chip cookies for breakfast washed down with pepsi and water, marvellous!!!

I stretched out for a lie down and Mel kept checking the train time and platform, as we had been bitten before. At 11.30 we found out it had been delayed 2 hours so we sat some more with an awful pungent smell wafting around the station that even made the Indians cover their noses.

At 2.45pm the Radjhani express rolled into Margao on platform 2 and we boarded for the train south to Thrivandrum. I went straight to bed and within an hour Mel woke me up to say lunch had arrived it was 3 small trays with cold rice, paneer (cottage cheese) curry and a liquid. We ate 2 chappattis and the rice, I went back to bed and Mel read.

Our evening meal arrived and the packaging looked very familiar with the addition of soup, when we peeled back the foil it was exactly the same meal.

We ate 1 chappatti and some rice then went to bed!!!

The train was running 2 hours late so we thought that it would get in around 8am, but we were wrong it actually got in 30 minutes early at 5.30 this morning but we knew we had a nice hotel waiting for us only 5 minutes walk away.

Wrong, the hotel had no record of my booking and the guy just stared blankly at us offering no solution. Mel did her usual human firework display, putting it down to incompetence while I told them how much of a pain in the ass it is turning up somewhere early morning and expecting a room and it isn't available.

Luckily we found a room right across the street and apart from the leaky toilet (a common problem in India) it is OK and the bed is quite comfortable!!!

I think tomorrow we will leave here and head back up the coast to Allepey for a few days, will be in touch.

Lots of Love

M & M

xx