Kumily

Today is Good Friday and believe me there is nothing GOOD about it for us!

a quick shower

We arrive at the bus stop to catch the 8.30am bus. There is no bus. The private buses will not run today because it is a public holiday but there will be a normal bus at 11am. The honeymoon couple are at the bus stop along with another Indian couple, an Indian family and a French couple. We are all going to Kumily so the honeymoon couple persuade us to catch a bus which has turned up and is going half way, and then we can change to another bus that will take us to Kumily. It's better than standing here for two more hours so we all get on. The bus gets half way and we get off in a village which is deserted and pretty much shut down for the holiday. There is no bus the bus station is closed. The honeymoon man and another Indian man call over the driver of a jeep, an 8 seated jeep. 10 into 8 plus 4 rucksacks, 2 suitcases, 4 holdalls and 4 day packs does not go. Even more so when there is no roof rack!! But they are persistent, the bags go on the roof to a fashion and we all squeeze into the jeep. The bags fall off the roof several times and one an half hours later we arrive in Kumily. Now is it just us who are lucky enough to have these kinds of journeys or do other travellers go through them too?

a scene from the show

We stay at Rose Cottage and no sooner had we settled in to our new home the heavens opened and it rained lots as it did every day that we were there. That night we met Jackie and David who had just got engaged and she was wearing some big rock on her finger. They told us about a great day they had had trekking so the next day we book ourselves a day and night camping in the jungle. It's a disaster. They tell us we can't camp because there has been too much rain and there are 10 million leeches. We enjoy the 5 hours trekking to some extent but our hearts weren't really in it because we were so looking forward to camping out. We didn't see much wild life and it rained more on the way back.

Back

Ben needed time alone to think about what he'd like to have read out at his grandpa's funeral so he left with paper and pen in hand, went for a walk and when he returned I was amazed at what he had written and rearranged a few sentences so we could email it back home to his mum.

Tomorrow we leave for Kochi.

To be continued. . . . .

Deak lake

front

kathakali

middle

poisness spider

the stage

trekking