Day 29 - Madurai to Trivandrum - Monday 14th November 2011

Because we arrived at our hotel at 7am, we had to also check out at 7am!! So we were up early for a bucket shower (basically filling up a bucket and pouring on your head!!) and checked out, we left our bags there and walked to the station. What a fun time we had ahead… First we got a ticket straight away (awesome), then we were told this was standing only, no seats (our journey was 8 hours), so we went back to find there were no seats available on any train. Then we were told to go to reservations to get on the waitlist. Once there, we were told to go back to where we came from and cancel our standing ticket and come back, so we went back to cancel it - done, then back to wait for an hour to get… yep you guessed it… a wait list ticket - we were waitlist 45/46, so 46 people would have to cancel in the next 7 hours for us to get a train out! After a bit more chatting and Soph smiling, we got our waitlist ticket and were told to come back at 2pm where "He would see what he could do"… I didn't think this was going to happen, but he seemed honest so we waited in hope. We had some time to kill so we decided to walk to the Gandhi museum - an hour later, hot, dusty and sweaty, we finally arrived. The museum houses the story of India's independence and Gandhi's role in this, plus his specs, his sandals and the dhoti (with blood stains) that he was shot in - this again was free!! The walk there was 3km so we got a rickshaw back. After a spot of lunch (paneer ginger curry wrapped in chapatti - lovely), I headed back to the station leaving Soph to chill on the roof top restaurant. Once there, the guy was all smiles, happily proclaiming that he had our tickets. He had come through and we were booked Sleeper 1 seat 31/32. However he just wrote this on my waitlist ticket, I asked for a new printed ticket to which he replied "No Mr Slint this will be fine!" Let's wait to see… We boarded the train at about 5.30pm after about an hour or so delay, we sheepishly walked to our seats hoping that the ticket man hadn't let us down… and he hadn't, the ticket inspector checked our ticket, nodded and punched it as OK! We were so chuffed as we were a little worried as we didn't have the proper ticket. After about an hour into the journey we got chatting to the couple opposite us who had just had a baby, they were really nice and friendly and made us take their number should we need anything! Then we pulled into the next station, we stopped for about 5mins when some Hijras came on asking for money (Hijras are a caste on nonheterosexual, transvestites and eunuchs who dress in women's clothing) I swear they could do a better job than the England's front row, they were huge!! I was terrified!

After that we started to snooze off not before Mr Angry / Religious man came along… He decided that he wanted to chat to me about God, Jesus, Muslims, Hindus and why he hated the English. Now I can honestly say, every Indian we have meet so far has been really very nice and extremely helpful… this guy just wanted a heated debate, at 11pm, when we were hungry and tired!! Soph and I tried to be nice and entertain him, and then politely told him we needed to sleep (even though we were due at our stop in 45 mins!) he was having none of it!! Eventually I told him to get up and sling his hook (in the nicest possible way) which he did but not before telling me why the USA are a super power and how he can let me know many secrets!? Anyway sure enough, 45 mins later we arrived at Trivandrum station; walked 30 mins with our bags to the Princess Inn, our hostel for the next 2 days, while we look for beach huts in the two towns close to us, Kovalam and Varkarla.

Day 30 - Trivandrum - Tuesday 15th November 2011

After a bit of a lie in, we headed out for a late breakfast at the Indian coffee house in the town (there are lots of Indian coffee houses in India, all of which are part of the Indian Coffee Board Workers Co-operative society and are run by the employees who all share ownership). The building it's in is a crazy red tower that has a spiralling interior lined with bench tables and the service is the best we've had in India! Within 5 minutes we'd sat down, and ordered and already received our 3 hot coffees, an ice coffee, 2 juices, a masala dosa, poached egg on toast and bread and butter - we were hungry!! Our waiter loved having his picture taken and even gave me his address so I could forward them onto him! 132rs later (£1.60), with our tummies and camera memory full, we headed out into the very hot midday sun to wander around.

Kerala is really green and the streets very clean -after a month on the road and big towns, it's a bit of a welcome relief to be someone less noisy, less polluted and green!

We decided to get the bus over to Kovalam to have a look around and decide if we wanted to spend any time there. As we got to the bus stop it so happened that our lovely, air conditioned bus was ready and waiting for us - brilliant! We jumped on and within 20 minutes we were in Kovalam.

Ah the sea!! We ran down and dipped our (very dirty) feet into the water - it was divine.

We strolled along the beach and we're pleasantly surprised as it wasn't as touristy as we thought it would be. The main part of Kovalam is made up of 2 beaches - the first is Hawah beach which doesn't have much on it and seems to be where the Indian's play in the water and the second is the Lighthouse beach which is where the main cluster of hotels and restaurants lie. We walked along both beaches and then up a hill which led to the other side of the where the water hits the shore but on rocks rather than sand - we thought we try a few hotels up the hills as they might be cheaper than the ones on the beach. After looking at a few hotels, we stumbled across Mini hotel which has rooms with balconies that look out over the sea. After a bit of negotiating, we agreed to 650rs a night for a room just above the rocks which overlooks the sea and horizon from the balcony. We agreed we'd be back the following afternoon.

Happy with our find, we settled down in one of the many restaurants along the beach - Ad had sizzling prawn curry and I had fish wrapped in coconut leaf. The food was yummy and the setting perfect.

Relaxed and happy, we jumped back on the bus to Trivendran to get our heads down after a not so hard day.