Getting to Kochi from Hampi was a little more difficult than we thought. However, it was a funny experience looking back at it now but at the time it was far from that!!
After dodging the ticket inspector for 2 trains, each 12hour journeys we were always going to get caught at some point!
On the first train we had a basic chair seat ticket what all the locals had but thought we would do what all the Indians' seemed to do and upgrade ourselves and try and claim some beds in the sleeper carriage.
Ofcourse this didn't work and we slowly lost our beds, so we thought we would upgrade ourselves again and moved to the Air Conditioned carriage thinking we could easily get beds there and no one would know!! That was until the train inspector caught us deciding which beds we were going to have (a bed each or share!)
Rachel managed to grab a bed, make it, get in it and quickly close the curtain before he even noticed she was there!!Me Sarah and Katrina were having a rather heated debate about him having 'compassion' and helping us out as we are good people! and it was midnight! but he was having none of it.
After coughing up he let us off with two beds. One minute he was telling me to leave and Sarah was having a bed, he then told me to get in the bed and go to sleep because it was late!...although our light wasn't allowed to be switched off because he was writing!! :S
As he was showing Katrina her bed he pulled back the curtain to tell her to get in it only to find Rachel sat there! luckily he didn't go mental and let us have 2 beds between the 4 of us.
When we arrived in Bangalore at 6am we planned to get the 6.15 train to Kerala but just missed it by 10minutes, if that...So we had to wait until 9.30pm for our next train. We queued up and this time got the last 2 tickets, so we had 2 beds guarenteed. Thinking this would be fine we had no worries and managed to put our bags in a cloakroom while we spent the day in Bangalore. The IT capital of India (which explained why in our Air conditioned carriage there were Chinese businessmen who at the time of the debate with the inspector was trying to explain to Sarah that she could stay with him in Beijing!) yet it took us forever to find an internet cafe!Finally we found a wi-fi cafe so that was good enough. We had a walk round the city and chilled out for the day ready for our next train, of which we had 2 tickets for the 4 of us.
Once we got on the train, who were we kidding, thinking it would go all smoothly...the inspector saw our tickets and wouldn't let us stay 2 per bed so told me to move. Sarah managed to hide under the sheet so the 3 girls were all safe. I had to wait next to the doors for over an hour with a nice stale whiff of wee!
I sneaked back in and luckily that was the end of that. no more long train journeys!! Pheewwww!!!



Although Hampi was a little bit out of the way and messed up our train routes it was definately worth it...but now we had arrived in Kochi...where we planned to head down to Alleppey to rent a houseboat for a couple of days. After searching the streets of Alleppey, one dodgy guy trying to sell us his houseboat which 1. he couldn't show us AND 2. he was standing under the sign saying "Only buy from Authorised Operators not touts"...clearly a bit special so we decided to decline his offer!

We managed to find a boat we liked at a price we also liked so booked it for the next morning. However we had to get the rickshaw to the boat at 5am because the rickshaw drivers were all taking part in a 'strike' and if they are seen driving around giving us lifts after 6am they are likely to get "stones thrown at them" we weren't worried about him getting hit by stones but more concerned about us 4 getting involved in these shenanigans, so 5am it was!
Once we got on the houseboat and set off at 6 o clock we went through the backwaters lined with palm trees and little villages all down the side of the canals
We cruised until 9 o clock where we pulled up and our chef cooked us breakfast and later lunch! sooooooo much food and so many different dishes! we were in paradise! Our own boat for the 4 of us for 2 days, our own chef, our own waiter as well as our own driver!.....PLUS the boat had a TV, DVD player and surround sound so we could watch films or listen to music all day!
Once we had lunch we set off until 5pm where we pulled up for the night. We had bought some Honey Bee brandy, which although wasn't as cheap as in Goa (£1.50 for a litre bottle) still wasn't bad between 4 of us! so we had tea, watched a film and then cracked out the cards and finally drank what we had all been craving for since Hampi!

When we woke up to our cooked breakfast, little did we know that what we had seen was just the start of what was to come. The 2nd day we went through much smaller canals, where there were a number of villages all in a row. Kids everywehere, women washing their clothes and the men in their kayaks fishing and trading on the water.
We pulled up for lunch where we were cooked fresh fish! 4 fish on a plate, so luckily the girls didn't really want any so I got to have 3...mission completed, I had been dying to try the fish since I had got here and in one meal I got to have 3 whole fish!! :) Once we had lunch me and Katrina decided we would jump in the river off the boat, and what an idea it was! We eventually got Sarah in after we assured her the fish wouldn't bite her feet! We got some awesome pictures but I managed to lose 1 of my earings...still definately worth it!...So now I have to roll up paper and put that in my ears until Thailand where I can get some more plugs. Maybe the paper look will catch on...after all the vest tan seemed to catch on, the Wes Brown look has also caught on (Indians dying their hair ginger), flares is a BIG BIG in thing so maybe paper earrings will be the next craze...

Our houseboat had to pull up early for the night because there was a massive storm coming our way! We were hoping to swim back in the river but with lightning flashing every 2 seconds, none of us were that keen to get in any more. Nevertheless our last night on the houseboat was a good'un. Although all the Honey Bee had gone we bought some apple vodka for the 2nd night and instead of cracking the cards out, we went a bit crazy and introduced the Canadians to the one and only game of Happy Families....pure classic....vodka and happy families. This was all going fine until a gang of cockroaches decided to try and take over the boat!...In came the driver with spray in his hand and the waiter with a brush in his hand to kill all the cockroaches from each room! As if they hadn't done enough for us already...we hardly lifted a finger!
Once the war had been won against the cockroaches, we managed to get our heads down.

Getting off the houseboat was interesting...we pulled up, got our bags and headed off the boat and before we knew it a rickshaw driver was already loading our bags into his boot telling us that we WERE going to alleppey beach and staying in a good guesthouse that he knew of! As we tried telling him we wanted to go to a different one he declined or doubled the price! We weren't taking this....we had been in India for 6 weeks, there was no way an indian was making a mug out of us. The debate got more and more heated, one thing lead to another and before we knew it, Katrina and Rachel were saying he was a bad person and that karma would bite him on the ass....not surprisingly, his next words were to get out of his rickshaw and find another one...our next words were "don't worry we will!!"...we like to think we won that argument especially when we were walking off down the road with our backpacks on blocking the road so the driver couldn't get his rickshaw through!...that had to give the win to us!

The plan now was to head to a cheap guesthouse for a night, and then make our way back to Kochi the next day and visit Fort Kochi. On our way to Fort Kochi me and Sarah thought of a great game to play whilst we were at the train station; how many Indian men can you find who don't have a moustache. In the whole station we counted 4 and in the station we arrived at, we found 3. Also we had made a rule up a long the way. If any guy was clearly trying to grow a moustache but was fortunate enough not to be able to grow one (like me!) then they couldn't be counted.
When we arrived to Fort Kochi it was awesome, so much nicer than the mainland, little tiny streets everywhere, a really relaxed atmosphere, no hassling and all these fishing nets (officially called Chinese fish nets) lining the coast, an awesome picture especially when the sun sets behind them too. This was our last stop in India and it was a good place to unwind. We plan to go to a beach on another island tomorrow and then rent bicycles and ride around the area and visit Jew Town the next. Thats another thing which is weird....there are a lot of Christians in Kerala, with most houses having a picture of either Jesus on the wall or the virgin Mary, but what gets me is that alongside this they then have a picture of Shiva, a Hindu god!...how can Christianity and Hinduism have anything in common!...beyond me