Hello! We have retreated back to the safety of the beautiful Palolem after several stressful bus and train rides. We traveled south to Kerela and visited Cochin and Ernakulam, then went off on a 7 hour bus ride to the village of Kumily, by the Periyar wildlife sanctuary. We had a lovely elephant ride and watched both a Kathakali dance and a demonstration of the Keralan martial art 'Kalari'. We got the same bus back to Ernakulam, stayed another night then caught ...

We're still in Palolem, but not for much longer. Tomorrow we go to Cochin then down the Kerelan backwaters. We've been trying not to do nothing all day but it's hard work leaving the beach! We've met some really lovely people, a couple of whom rented a jeep and blew it up, took it back and were offered the owners jeep without his knowledge, took it for a test drive 5 days ago and still have it! They lent it to a waiter in the huts and didn't see it for a couple o...

On Thursday we went to Hampi on a sleeper bus, the trip there wasn't too bad but coming back I could have very easily killed the driver. Doing 10mph along straight easy roads, then 40 over speed bumps to send everyone flying up to hit their heads on the bunk above! Hampi itself was interesting, although we didn't stay long enough to get into the traveller scene and enjoy it. We were thrown against the side of the bus as soon as we departed by rickshaw drivers off...

We're still in Palolem - once you're here it's not easy to leave, but we're going to Hampi tonight on a sleeper bus and spending a day there, then back here for more sea sun and swimming. We've finally found an Internet place that has a reasonably fast connection, so we'll be able to do more uploading and updating when we get back from Hampi. We are both steadily improving our tans, although the number of mozzy bites is always rising too. The people here are lov...

We met some lovely people on the train to Goa, Mark from Guildford, Isa and Sara from Sweden and a chap from Japan who wasn't very talkative. We enjoyed chatting about normal things rather than continually telling people where we are from and what our names are. We played cards for a few hours and by the time we finished we had about 30 Indians trying to help us out and watching our game although they had their own cards too! I didn't think I had gotten much sl...