Hey guys well this trail of hardship continues. After the stresses and strains of massages and lots of beer and rum and coke. We arrived in kollam off the train. These are getting a lot less daunting now. As long as you get a seat away from groups of lads, you adopt a hard b**** attitude to the ticket queue and you pay attention to which station you're at it's fine. We then got a boat cruise to alleppy. The backwaters are really stunning. A little embrassing to be madly snapping anything in sight like everyone else on the boat and have kids screaming from the bank 'one pen, one pen' when we had no pens. But it was still a very pleasant trip. Arrived in Alleppy to a very persistant guy who was brother of internet guy in varkala, who offered us room for 250Rps. (bout 1pound20 each.) Turned out to be really nice homestay with a very sweet family. Nice day after much deliberation decided to slum it and take our very own houseboat for 24hrs. Worked out to be about 20quid each but that was for our own kettelam (wrond spelling) boat (similar to ones in pic) chef and captain, food and drink for 24 hrs and trip around the back waters. Absolutely magic- we had a whale of a time. Lounging around on the sunbed ontop of the boat sipping tea- felt delightfully colonial darling. I would recommmend the trip to anyone. Would be wicked for a group of people. Emily also managed to get the 'non-drinking captain' pissed on one glass of beer, and apparately we were lucky he could drive the boat the next day as this was the problem last time he drank!! Anyway next on the road is cochin. We've ended alleppy very much, people are extremely friendly our houseboat trip was brilliant and the crew hilarious. Has to be done by all at some point in life!!