There really isn't a lot to say about or stay in this typically noisy Indian town as we were simply stopping over on the way to the hills from the coast. The highlight was walking into a shop and emerging a couple of minutes later to see a sketch a guy had done on the wall outside in chalk which was an amazing palm fringed beach, incredible how he had produced it so quickly.

Our journey to Calicut was by train and we have now worked out the importance of grabbing a seat as soon as you see one. On our first journey I had turned to Alison to say shall we sit here which provided enough time for a family of 4 to push past us and grab the seats. So we grabbed our seats nice and quickly. This doesn't necessarily secure your seat, travelling to Alleppey we had both watched silently as a woman got on and seeing there was no room effectively sat on two young guys who were in a seat, not satisfied at making them squash into a corner (they probably didn't mind as they'd been draped over each other the whole time, young men here don't seem to be able to stop touching each other) she then put her bag on the seat so they had even less room. On our Calicut train a guy lay on the seat which could have held 4 people (or 8 teenage boys) while a woman and her daughter perched on the end and a man had to stand. I can't for the life of me work out why nobody asked him to move, perhaps it's a relic of the caste system. The other difficulty on the train is working out when to get off (especially with a lot of places having two names so the station may be the right one but called something else) especially as it's usually a mad scramble and you need to be ready as the sheer force of people getting on can leave you trapped.

That said the trains are fairly reliable and the steady stream of chai and snack sellers makes the journeys fairly pleasant. Of course the major advantage of trains over buses is the lack of overtaking. While the traffic in cities means it is bedlam it as at least fairly slow paced bedlam. Taking the bus from Calicut up into the mountains was pretty incredible, there really is no such thing as a blind corner in India. We were on a hairpin bend overtaking a lorry that was itself overtaking a rickshaw. The driver did of course take all necessary precautions, namely leaning on his horn throughout the maneuver, it really is incredible to watch, given Alison's travel sickness we usually take front row seats. We really our stuck to our seats although I'm not sure if that's due to fear or the plastic which is used on both buses and trains which in this heat makes for a rather sweaty journey, we've both adopted the strategy of moving as little as possible. Anyway, didn't see much of Calicut.