India Blog

We arrived at kovalam in Kerala India late on 1^st October. We were meet by a very happy Indian lady ‘Shirley’ who took us to our basic but clean hotel. The next day we were overdue some sunbathing action and hit the beach early, however it was not peak season and most tourists were Indians. We were mobbed by street sellers, I did by two beach dresses for £4….how can Matt grumble at those prices J.

The sea was crazy rough so we paid a few pounds to use another hotels pool…..and there we stayed sunning ourselves for the next 4 days. 

 The dinners where very yummy in all the places we tried, I have not seen prawns that big before!

We had a little electrical fire back at our hotel, Matt turned on the boiler so he could have a hot shower…why you would want a hot shower when it 30 + and no air con, anyway he ran out of the room shouting ‘get out, get out’ I thought it might be some monstrous snake or something not a cloud of black smoke coming out of the electrical socket. A little man came along with his screwdriver and seemed to fix the issue. 

We had not really done much research on Kerala and there didnt seem like there was much more to do, so we decided to head up the coast to Goa.

We paid £30 each to get a 16-hour train to Goa, we opted for the 2^nd class air con. When we got to the station it smelt of wee which didn’t get me off to a good start, once on board and found our cabin I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t dirty or smelly in fact it was quite nice. I didn’t except any meals on the train as Matt had told me a horror story were they drug the food and steel all your stuff. I slept clinging to my bags for dear life. 

When we arrived in Goa we jumped into the death cab and drove for about and hour to our hotel in Candolim. With everyone on the roads on a mission to be the worst driver, I needed a stiff drink when it was over. Our hotel was nice, we upgraded to a bit of luxury. We went out for a walk to see how much the area had changed since we were last here 6 years ago. My mouth almost hit the floor, Goa beaches and the area had turned into a shit pit, and the amount of rubbish on the beaches was crazy. The area was out of season for the westerners to holiday and everywhere had a skanky feel to it. My heart sank to the thought of spending another 4 weeks here, we walked for hours hoping when we turned the corner it would get better….it didn’t. The man I bought my ring from all those years ago remembered me and even the ring I designed which was nice. We had to come up with a plan and fast! We hadn’t planed to fly to Kuala lumpa for another month and our return flights where no refundable, so we paid £400 to get out even though we took a big hit on our funds we felt relived to be leaving.

We spent the next few days around our large resort and didn’t venture out into the skank that surrounded it.