21st march. kochi.

After a 3 hour flight from Delhi, we arrived to the palm tree surrounded airport. We expected, as with all of our port of arrivals for thousands of tuk tuk drivers to be shouting for us to go with them. There was none of this. It was amazing! Maybe the south is as chilled as they say! We made our way to the bus stop and caught the local bus to Fort Kochi. 45 rupees for a 2 hour journey. We arrived in Fort kochi rather sweaty, its very humid down here, and checked into our hostel. We hadnt eaten since breakfast and we had been travelling for 2 days. We were starving! We sat down at the plastic tables of a street cafe and ordered the south's speciality of Dosa. Boy was the 30p worth it!

22nd march

As per usual our first day in a new place involves walking round and finding the sights and our bearings. We were desperate to see the sea after 5 weeks in the north and so headed in that direction. Well at least thats what i thought. After 10 minutes of walking we were nowhere except now we were just sweaty messes! We hopped into a tuktuk who had offered us a day tour for 50 rupees. Bargain except it came with a catch of him taking us to visit government shops so he could claim his free litre of fuel. After haggling him down to only 2 shops, he took us on a whirlwind tour of Kochi including the Portuguese style churches, jewish quarters and the washing ghats.
Jayne, who we had met in Delhi and again in Pushkar was on her way with her friend Rachel to meet us at the hostel. We were headed to Alleppy in the morning to rent a houseboat for a night, apparently the highlight of any south indian visit. Excited!

23rd march
Breakfast at a quaint little tea shop called teapot before we caught the local bus to Alleppy today. However, our plans were to change slightly when the tuk tuk driver who arrived in a rather new and pimped up tuk mobile made a bargain with us. He would take us to Alleppy for 100 ruppes each if we visited 4 shops for him to collect his fuel tokens. We have recently found out that the government here pay tuk tuk and taxi drivers 1 litre of fuel for every group they bring to the government shops selling ornaments, jewellery and fabrics. We agreed and made two teams up. If we had to do this we were making it fun for ourselves. For every shop one team would go inside. The other team would time them to see who could spend the least amount of time in each shop... Of course we won, even if it meant carly holding me by the wrist and dragging me away from pretty scarves...
The rest of the journey to Alleppy was in style, and we rocked out to our ipods plugged into the speakers only being interrupted by the driver occasionally offering us joints. Only we could pick the high tuktuk driver...
Alleppy was a small town based on a river and we spent the rest of the day hunting for houseboat tours after haggling with a hotel to let us have the room for 2.50 each. We're getting good at that! It was a Sunday so of course everywhere was closed so we gave up for the day and decided to wake up early to resume our search.
The next day, we again split up into teams to find the best houseboat. We were taken off on motorbikes to visit countless number of boats until we settled on one, a brand new state of the art boat. It was gorgeous! We were promised a tour of the backwaters and to moor at a village away from Alleppy. We excitedly jumped onboard. The backwaters were truly beautiful lined with swaying palm trees we enjoyed the view from the top of the boat with sangrias in hand. All was peachy until the staff on board decided to get a little bit familiar. The owner of the boat thought himself as a bit of a playboy, and helped himself to our drinks. Towards the evening, the boat came to a stop at the edge of the backwaters, literally as tones throw away from our boarding point at Alleppy. We were told this was where we were mooring for the night (conveniently right outside the owners friends house) where groups of people were stood laughing and joking with the staff onboard. We complained that this wasnt part of the deal. We had paid over £80 (extortionate for india prices) and had been promised so much more. Eventually, after battling with the arrogant 20 something boat owner who thought it was ok to laugh at us 'below him women' the driver finally moved the boat to the village promised. We think. The men then came upstairs to join us as they expressed how bored they were and after they had seen us drinking, 'invited' us to dance for them. At this point we retreated to our rooms for games of cards in an air conditioned room with locked doors. What a disappointment.
The next day the owner of the boat was nowhere to be seen and we disembarked the boat as quickly as possible. We had all decided to move further south into Kerola and Carly and I headed towards the train reservation office to find out the times of trains. We were again out of luck with all trains being full but a quick enquiry at the bus station told us that there was a bus to varkala in 15 minutes! We walked back to where jayne and rachel were guarding the bags and informed them of our findings. Jayne being as proactive as she is jumped up and exclaimed we could make it! Cue to us throwing our 16kg bags on and running towards the bus station in 40 degree heat. Carly bare footed as once again she had broken another pair of flip flops. We made it, just. Sweaty is not the word... Down to varkala now for some long awaited beach time! We cant wait!