The day had arrived…we were leaving Goa a month after we arrived (give or take 5 days in Hampi!). We felt ready to move on, although this was probably more excitement about a hot shower and staying in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai - not sure if you've heard of it?? First we had to dispose of the boxes of pressies…of course, even that wasn't simple! We thought we'd done a great job of packaging up the boxes and clearly labelling the addresses, but ...

Brr, it's cold in Hampi at 5.30am! After a bit of a nervous wait, our tuk tuk driver turned up to take us to the station. Ah, don't you just love an early start? Especailly when you get to the train station and find that you could have had an extra hour in bed!! Oh well, we got to see a pretty sunrise and we met a lovely Portuguese girl who was travelling for a month by herself. She wasn't feeling very well, so was glad of some company while we waited. Eventual...

We needed to break up the beach time and get a bit of culture so we hopped on the train 7 hours (ish) inland to Hampi. We seem to have a good routine when we get on long journeys now - James generally gets on the top bunk and falls asleep and I somehow manage to pass the time! However at one point in the journey, we both ended up on the top bunk after my seat got taken over by a very large family!...it was cosy to say the least. Then a guy and his old dad got k...

Stayed at; Brown Bread coco-huts - 6 more nights, Woodstock - 1 night The rest of our time in Palolem was mainly spent making the most of the beach and the good weather! Once the weekend was out of the way (because, as you can see, we've been really busy and felt like we deserved the rest!), we made the 2 hour round trip to Margao on the bus to get our train tickets to Hampi sorted out. It was worth it though as we managed to get both return tickets for around...

Stayed at; Brown Bread coco-huts - 10 nights (at the moment!) Well, time really does fly when you're having fun….or doing nothing! We were meant to leave Palolem today and go inland to Hampi, but the train we tried to book was 'full' and the guy in the travel 'agency' was trying to sell us a ticket for 3x the price. Also, as I wasn't feeling too well, we decided to stay put for a while. The next train to Hampi with any availability is on 20th of this month...