Where we learned the art of doing nothing

Stayed at: Johnny's beach house, 6 nights

Notes: Favourite breakfast haunt - Swiss Café (cheap and tasty and great chai!). Books finished; James - 4, Podgi - 0

We were up super early to get to the airport for our first flight to Mumbai at 7am. I had the whole contents of my hand luggage taken out by a very moody security person, not sure what they were looking at closer, but it all seemed very half-hearted! We had a 3 hour stop over in Mumbai before our next flight to Trivandrum, so stocked up on some books ready for our beach time! We arrived in Trivandrum and immediately felt relaxed, so quiet and peaceful compared to the past few weeks! Our little place is tucked away up a little lane at the end of Lighthouse beach, perfect. To celebrate making it to the seaside, we indulged in a few Kingfishers and soaked up the fresh sea air. As the alcohol licenses are quite expensive, most restaurants don't advertise that they sell beer, but instead serve 'pop' in mugs and ask you to you're your bottle down on the floor…quite novel really!

A quick head lice update - the thick coating of coconut oil I smothered on my head seemed to do the trick, however left me with rather greasy hair (funnily enough). The place we were staying only has hot water out of the tap, not the shower…let's just say, it's not ideal try and wash oil out of your hair with soap and cold water…I am still at the time of writing, trying to restore normality to the mop on my hair, but hopefully have succeeded in removing most of the residue from my locks. Thankfully, I've been saved yet again from the threat of going under the razor and having it all removed.

Anyway, back to our beach time. After a nice long breakfast looking out to sea, we pondered how best to spend the next 5 days. At about the time we decided to get on the beach, it start to rain…and thunder…so we waited out the storm for a few hours. When all was clear we went in search of an ATM, which ended up being up a fairly steep hill - as neither of us have done much strenuous exercise recently, we both struggled a bit in the heat, but nevertheless, mission accomplished. Time for lunch! Just as we were about to set off to get on the beach…it started to storm again. It was going to be a day of enforced relaxing…no bother, plenty of books to read! That evening was spent glued to BBC sport updates 'watching' the Scotland v Australia rugby match…such a shame we couldn't stream it or get it on tv, looked like an awesome match - just such a shame the scots were robbed in the last minute.

Ok, 2nd full day of beach time - we were going to make it to the beach for some sun bathing. We had a late breakfast and spent some time sitting and drinking tea and reading. By the time we got our selves ready, it was just after lunchtime…we secured ourselves some sun loungers (paying way over the odds probably!) for the rest of the day - fab. After about 45 minutes…was that rain we felt? Oh yes…here comes the rain again! After a bit of a lunch fail, the storm rolled in again and we headed back to the dry safety of our terrace.

Both of us had taken it in turns to have an off day, James the first day, me the 2nd. Whilst we'd had down time up till now, it hadn't really been enforced down time; but now we really didn't have anything much to explore or do. Our exploring area was limited to a few kilometres stretch of beach walkway and coupled with the atmosphere being more family holiday rather than 'traveller', we were struggling a bit to adjust. Who'd have thought we'd find it difficult having nothing to do, when this is all we'd been craving for months?!

Time to expand our horizons, after (another) long breakfast - not stuggling to get used to these! We decided to walk to the next beach to the North, actual Kovalam Beach (about a 2km walk). We'd seen a number of restaurants on Trip Advisor over that way so headed there for some lunch and maybe a bit of a dip in the sea. As we got over the headland, we were thrilled to see an empty beach, this was a good idea….or was it….

Walking through the surf and the beach looked like it was littered with little crystals…some bigger than others…oh, hold on a minute, they look suspiciously like jelly fish! Oh yes…there's a few big purple and brown ones…time to get back on the walk way… well that put paid to our dip in the sea, but we got a nice lunch out of it! We are now going armed everywhere with our books, James keeps picking up random ones from the book library, I on the other hand am trying very hard to work through Ghandi's autobiography…interesting, but a hard read.

Feeling like it was time to get going (and also watching the rather large black cloud work it's way over), we started the walk back…however less than half way there and the heavens opened - heavier rain than we'd had since we got here!! We jumped into our usual breakfast haunt for a few cups of masala chai to give ourselves a chance to dry off a bit. Ok, I think we're getting a bit more used to having nothing to do!

So, today we were determined to go up to the top of the lighthouse and then head back up to Kovalam beach for some lunch…only…after a late breakfast, we came back to the get the camera, but ended up reading our books and skyping Mum for a while. We finally got ourselves into action and donned swimwear ready for a dip in the sea somewhere. We'd decided that maybe we'd do the lighthouse tomorrow as it was pushing lunchtime…..just as we were getting to the end of the beach, oh yes, here comes the rain…and man did it rain!! Needless to say, we didn't make it very far today, but it did give us the chance to catch up on the blog! Both feeling a bit 'curried out' (we've been eating authentic for the past 5 weeks!) we decided to Western it up for dinner - well, James got as far West as Germany with wurst and chips…I went East actually and had the Indian version of Tom Yum soup - not the same - but yummy nonetheless…although, prawns…so far we've managed to avoid Delhi belly…hopefully tonight won't be the night! I lost epically at cards (again) …but there's always tomorrow. We had a little (or large-ish) visitor in our room as well, possibly some breed of cockroach? James being the Man in this relationship, took charge and tried to get it out….I can't remember ever hearing such a girly scream escaping from his mouth when it climbed on his hand! Well, it provided some entertainment for me at least!

Tomorrow, we will go up the lighthouse and we will go to Kovalam beach for lunch…hmm. So, as you might have seen, every day, at about 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon the storms come rolling in…every day this is the time that we've managed to get out with a plan! Tomorrow, we are going to avoid this time of day….what's the bet the rain comes later just to mess us up?!

Well, we made it up the lighthouse and we even managed to walk back to Kovalam beach for lunch again....and the rain stayed away!!....that was until we got back and stopped for a 'quick' cup of chai at our lovely little breakfast place...then the heavens opened...and didn't stop for a good few hours, it was by far the biggest storm we've had since we've been here - lots of thunder and lightening! Eventually it eased enough for us to make it back to our place to put on something more suitable for dinner.

How quickly 6 nights have gone...tomorrow, somehow, we head up the coast to Varkala.