Extra couple of days

I've already written a bit about our jaunt down south, a little break for Sarah and I after 5 weeks of Bible activities.
We'd booked our tickets previously, but unfortunately I made a mistake about the date and when we went back to book, we had to book for Saturday night so we missed out on the final Memorial at the bible week.

The train was at quite a funny time, and we had no option but to leave the camp in the evening, and stay on the platform most of the night otherwise we would've had no way of getting to the station. I've always thought it would be interesting to camp out on a station, many Indians do it, but I've always had trains at sensible times before. That night was my camp out on a station. And the train ended up coming 2 hours late. Yes, really. Sarah read her book, while I found a nice clean marble slab as a seat and setup to sleep there for the night. It wasn't the most comfortable bed I've had, but at least it was off the ground, and I got kunchem sleep.

By 5pm the following day Sarah and I were embarking off the train at the southern most point of India. It was incredible (and I've already written briefly about it (sorry this is all a bit out of order) just to feel the sea breeze, and to go down to the beach. After the sun set we went onto the beach and just watched as the full moon rose higher in the sky. The breeze was incredible after the humid Kerala days. I could've stayed there all night, but Sarah still wasn't well. She found out after she finally visited a Dr in arriving back in Hyd that she'd had pharagitis (sp?) the whole time.
We got up the next morning to see the sunrise over the ocean where the 3 sea's meet and I could say it was beautiful, but the amount of people there absolutely destroyed it for me. Apparently, as we found out later, it is quite a spot for Indians to come for a pilgrimage and to worship their sun god. So that was quite dissapointing. I did manage to be of some use giving my water bottle to some lady who had fainted away in the crowd. There were more than a thousand members there.

From Kanyakumari Sarah and I trained and bussed further north along the west coast and stopped when we arrived in Alappuza. There are so many different spellings of this name I hardly know which one to take on board. It also used to be called Allaphey, which makes it even more confusing.
As we got out we were met by a man looking for foreign tourists, and he did his thing and took us to his houseboat on the backwaters and effectively sold us one night.
By that stage I think if it had been a dingy hovel we wouldn't have cared, we just wanted somewhere to stop and rest and leave our luggage. But it wasn't. We celebrated my 6 month anniversary of being in India on the 7th month and had a lovely night on the houseboat. The sunset was amazing. I think sun setting over any stretch of water is absolutely beautiful, and this one was really special for us both.

From there we headed to Cochin and succombed to seeing some different Indian dance..I forget what it was called, but i won't need to do that again. Strangeness of strangenesses. It was bizarre seeing so many white people. The only white people we see in Hyderabad are at big shopping complexes and we go to those once every 3 months, so it was random bumping into so many people. You felt like asking them 'which country you from'?

That night we had a gorgeous ferry ride back from Cochin for 5 rups across to Ernakulam with the light of the moon streaming down over the water and making the evening feel very magical!

Lonely planet being the best guide book led us to the cleanest guest house we'd stayed in for a long time, and we felt quite thankful for the clean sheets and relatively clean bathroom. Travelling can really tire you out!! Especially if you're trying to travel and see at the same time.
But there was no way Sarah was going to go to bed without first having a coffee at that coffee shop (cafe coffeeday) that we'd seen somewhere on the bus on the way into Ernakulam!!!
We found it, and it was worth it. They were playing the final match in the IPL (or is it ILP, I forget, in the Education Department the later acronym stands for Individual Learning Plan, so I get confused!!) on the widescreen there, and several people had come to sit in the cosy seats just to see it. I think the Rajastani's won, but I can't quite remember...it didn't matter to me, just amused me as it was such a big thing for the Indians.

The next day we met up with Justin at the train station and headed on to Bangalore.
A day in Bangalore, leaving Sarah to catch up with a friend, Justin and I headed on to Hyderabad. Arriving home, it was nice to be greeted with no water. It's the standard story. Our well / water storage area leaks. So you've got to use the water quickly when it come and do your washing the same day etc. It's just hard when you get to the last day and you're just hanging out for the evening to hear the water being pumped in.