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. Eventually our train arrived and we were off on our way back to the beach!

James naturally got straight onto the top bunk and fell asleep, but my bunk was the middle one (in sleeper class, it's 3 tier, but you can't really have the middle bunk up if everyone wants to sit up) and everyone else was awake, so, I stayed awake too. There seemed to be a lack of samosas coming through the train though, so feeling a bit hungry, I made a daring run off the train to the nearest cart, bundled my way to the front and bought a few, then ran back on. There wasn't really any need to rush so much as the train sat there for another 10 minutes or so, but you can never tell and I didn't fancy a mad dash onto a moving train!

After an hour or so, another family got on and there were quite a few of them, I think they all wanted to sit together so kicked out the other family that were sitting with me and all bundled in! Over the next few hours, they shared their sweets and snacks with me - even buying snacks for me and giving them to me as soon as I'd woken up from a nap! Such a sweet family, even if there were loads of them! They even made sure I was by the window to see the train going through the waterfall at Ponda (which we were hoping to go to with James's parents when they came out). The train picked up some more delays and we finally arrived back in Goa a few hours late. Which would have been find, had James not been going back into Margao to watch FC Goa play North East United in the Indian Super League! So, we hot footed it back to our guest house, settled back in our room and off James went to a football match, meeting up with the guy from Palolem. I met up with a few of the girls from the place we were staying and had some dinner….a nice, raw chicken kebab…hmm. Luckily I didn't swallow any of it! Quickly returned it and asked for some dal instead - didn't really fancy any more meat that evening! James arrived back about half an hour after the match finished (nice being so close to the city!), face all covered in paint and slightly deaf from all the noise! But he had a great time, even though Goa only drew their match.

James's parents arrived the next morning and we mainly spent the week on the beach or eating! It was so lovely to see them both! It was mum's birthday while they were out, so we decided to do the day trip to the waterfalls at Ponda and then onto the spice village. Off we go in a taxi at 7am to the waterfalls, only to get there and find out it was about 750 rupees each to get in, which included another jeep ride for a total of 90 minutes. Over a cup of chai and a samosa, we decided it was a little too expensive, so went in search of the spice village. Unfortunately, we got there super early, so had to miss out on lunch (otherwise would have been waiting around for ages!), but the little tour they did was really interesting! We were back on the beach by lunchtime though and managed to get some good sun time in - not a bad way to spend a birthday! We were even treated to dinner at their hotel that evening, and although the service was a bit rusty (they'd just reopened), the food was fab - definitely the most 'upmarket' meal we've had so far!

Town was a fair old walk away, so to counteract the laziness of the beach, I walked into town a few times over the week to pick up some Christmas pressies to send home. It was quite good fun buying bits for everyone! Once I'd managed to secure some boxes, we packaged everything up and headed in the direction of the post office to send them off…

Only in India, the only post office in town doesn't send parcels! Feeling rather grumpy and not fully understanding why, we picked up some treats from the supermarket and headed back to work out how on earth we were going to get these boxes back to the UK! …we were going to have to try our luck with the airport when we flew…

Our last day in Goa and with James's parents was mainly spent on the beach (surprise!). There was a bit of a kerfuffle in the bar that we were lounging outside of (on the free sun loungers), turns out there was a snake that they were trying to catch, although the manager assured us that it was not a dangerous snake. Comforted, we settled back down to soak up those last precious rays of sunshine. A little later, we were sat up having a drink, and casually (although rather quickly) a bloody snake slithers past! James was the lucky fella to spot it and we alerted the staff (plus 2 other guys that we think were professional snake catchers) who quickly set about almost tearing the place down trying to find it. The lovely waiter kindly informed us that the snake was in fact poisonous…hence why they were trying to get it out! Lovely, our first encounter with a snake….I'm sure there will be many more…but it was a bit of excitement for our last day at least! Not sure if they ever did catch it.

Anyway, we were all packed and ready to go. We bid farewell to the folks and bedded down for our last night with the dodgy mosquito nets and red ants…Tomorrow night, the Taj(!) and our last night in India. How quickly time has flown.