So?greetings from Kovalam or Pervalam as we have renamed it..........

We had an extremely bumpy bus ride from Kanyakumurai, we stupidly sat on the back seats so we were thrown about quite a bit, when we went over one pothole we?were both launched into mid air and when we?slammed back into our?seats I (Ellie) grazed my leg quite badly on a bar :-( . An excited man got?on the bus and sat near us, he was really eager to talk to us but couldn't really speak any English, we told him where we were going and he just kept saying 'Tsunami Tsunami' with a massive grin on his face. We weren't sure if this was his sense of humour or maybe he knew something we didn't!!! We had a scenic journey, one lovely sight was a man cutting off chickens heads and putting them in a manky bucket (mmm I'll have chips with that).

We found a room pretty much immediately when we?arrived, the low season prices got us a nice room with a balcony which had a swing chair on! The place also had a nice big swimming pool - luxury!!! We spent alot of time doing nothing here which is always nice!

We have renamed Kovalam? = Pervalam for a few reasons....in Goa there is a problem with all the stray dogs on the beach, in Pervalam theres a problem with stray men!! They patrol the beach learing over women.One afternoon we were enjoying a drink in a bar overlooking the beach. There was a man and a woman in the sea splashing about, on the sand we were disgusted to count 25 men all staring at the girl with their camera phones out, the couple in the sea soon noticed and moved on!! Haven't these blokes seen Baywatch before!!!? After this we noticed lots of groups of men with their phone cameras out taking pics of any female flesh they could!! We were quite looking forward to leave Pervalam, on the morning we left we decided to go and get some breakfast on the beach first. We were walking along a path when 3 blokes passed us, the one nearest me 'accidentally' bumped into me and grabbed me where they shouldn't. I was shocked (although this is the third time I have been groped in India) and by the time I had realised what had happened it was too late to do anything about it. This is one issue we have had about India,not only have I?been groped three times, I have also had countless lewd gestures made towards me. Do these man not respect western women, do Indian women get treated this way too??It makes you feel extremely vulnerable and wary all the time. We just hope that what goes around comes around for them.

Anyway rant over, next stop Allepey for some backwater cruising.........