I didn't know ants could dig through concrete for spilt beer...

Spent our days in Ooty with far too many expectations of it being a lost colonial town with an Raj rustiqueness to it. In reality, the horse track, while not in use is turned into an immense sewer :) Cant wait to see what they do with the stadium in Delhi after the Commonwealth Games, perhaps a mud wrestling rink!! We did enjoy a lovely gander through the tea plantations though with some perky german girls, an american that had the flirting capacity of a 12 year old and an Isreali of 30 that hadnt yet grown a cerebelum...he picked up every child he saw and swung them around. We did a wee bit of horse riding in the rain and left without looking back for Kochi to start our week long tour.

Turns out our group was the size of one of those japanese tours, we might as well have had name tags at the rate the names were forgotten and eventually ignored. For a GAP tour it felt extremely tame and unchallenging. STILL! We did stay in the Keralan backwaters in a beautiful homestay, did a river boat ride, saw some South Indian sword fighting, ayurvedic massage in a loincloth and (thank god) peace and serenity on a beach on Varkala. The morning there were my favourite part as we were press ganged into pulling in the sea nets that were at least 500m away. The catch was like looking at something out of Forest Gump. A grand total of about 200 fish the size of pinky fingers flopped pathetically in the nylon and the fisherman turned their frustration on each other. Literally fighting over food I wouldn't feed my dog, pretty unfortunate.

After a week of relaxing, good times with mum we headed back to Kochi to part ways :(
No more pocket money for 7 months :((((
Vowed never to do a tour again but to become a wolf pack. Im starting out as a lone wolf, it may become two, then I will be a two man wolf pack ;)
Now up to the Himalayas to shiver my way to sleep and teach bugger-nosed munchkins how to spell their names!

Pondicherry memoirs: you know, toilet bowls are quite pretty up close

For some reason I seem to think that getting a SIM card in a foreign country is going to be as confusing as Canada. To be honest, everything in India IS more complicated...besides that. The man living in a house made of rubbish has a phone, in fact it will be just as fancy as the businessman's in the gucci suit. The tumored dog most likely had one. To reach my mum as she flew into Chennai I decided instead to use the pay phone in the station. Each rupee down the slot came with a different response from the receiver. From the number doesn't exist to welcome to Kerpal's Non-Veg Paradise Masala House.

Finally met up with mum. So nice to see a familiar face and approach someone that wasn't going to sell me anything. Mum being severely poisoned from some street food consumed allowed me to haul her bags along and set her down on the right bus. Seaside guest house felt way out of my class but I let my mother treat me just this once. After one day of ambling along the old French colony boulevard and attempting to book either bus, train, plane and even horse to get to Ooty or Kerala or perhaps the next town to no avail (xmas time) we watched Avatar in Tamil. Crowds poured in throughout the whole film, cheering when skin was shown or people got blown up. Even getting out their cam-phones to record a cleavage.

Ended the night with a lovely butter chicken...dum dum dum.

Ughhhhhhhh kill me. The bug I had eaten glued me to the chair in hotel lobby after check out and to get to the toilet I had to dash through the spicy smelling kitchen which brought it all up much quicker. Slumped into the cab come 7pm for 13 hours of head-out-the-windowing. Ooty was strategically placed at the top of 32 bends, each now bearing some part of my butter chicken.

Checked in to Reflections guest house and passed out, missing christmas morning!!

to be continued...