We arrived late afternoon at Mumbai and our circle was completed. We were surrounded by a group of touts and we haggled hard with the rickshaw driver who took us for a couple of schmoes. Price agreed and we headed to the hotel, for the entire journey, the driver tried to convince us to change hotel or go shopping etc. We had had enough, the guy was a bit of an ass at the airport in front of his mates and was now trying to schmooze us and we weren't having any of ...

We arrived at Haripad station for our final rail journey in India, a two hour journey to Kochi. We got to the station 45 minutes early and we sat around waiting for the train to arrive. About five minutes before the train was due we decided that it would be prudent for us to move further down the platform to give us more chance of finding a quiet carriage. We walked about 100 meters along the platform Before we were satisfied we were in the right place. The trai...

With our preferred route to Allepey thwarted, we were starting to feel like a pair of hapless, bumbling fools. What to do?, what to do? How about a stop at an Ayurvedic spa? Nice! A short 2 hour hop by train and we would be relaxing with a juice by the pool. As the journey was short , we chose to travel in the non air conditioned sleeper class. This class tends to be pretty busy but not heaving and we had been reassured by several people in Varkala that a reserva...

The hour and a bit journey from Trivandrum to Varkala in the rickshaw was not too bad, although a couple of times we caught ourselves sucking in air sharply as the driver Sasi darted between lanes into the path of oncoming traffic. We passed through Trivandrum and into the surrounding towns. At the roadside stalls selling fruit, vegetables, drinks and fish. On one particular fish stall the old lady had what looked like three tuna fish each one about four feet in...

After a good nights sleep on the train from Chennai, we awoke about 4 hours before arriving in Trivandrum, Kerala. The scenery once again was laden with coconut groves, rivers, farmland and the occasional hillock or rocky outcrop. The soil was now the deep red that we'd first seen in Goa and we looked out the train window and just smiled. The train tracks in some places were elevated and where this was the case we had sweeping views across the vast coconut and b...