"What time coming?" The taxi driver who took us on the trip yesterday is standing at our door. It's 11am. We think he's got confused and remind him that we've agreed that he'll take us to the station at 4.30pm on Friday, two days from now. "Very good" he says, and gives that Indian shake of the head which could mean anything from total understanding to incomprehension.

Having updated our log for the last two days we try out the internet terminal at the resort. Our internet requirements have become very specific: Windows 2000 or better, a USB connection, and a firewall which does not prevent a special plug-in from being enabled. This latter requirement is a feature of our website and allows multiple photos to be uploaded easily and quickly. The alternative 'old' process, which you can opt for if the plug-in doesn't load, is laborious and very slow. So our first visit to any internet café or terminal is always filled with trepidation. In this particular case they have no USB connection (or claim not to - some will not understand and others will not want you to use it) so we can't connect our remote drive with the photos and log entries on it.

We decide instead to go into Mangalore this afternoon, then eat at the Heera Panna restaurant that we found on Christmas Day. So we spend the middle part of the day on cultural activities such as reading, table-tennis and swimming, (but not all at the same time) before heading into town on the bus which, despite being every 20 minutes or so, is as packed as ever. Once in the city centre we spot a familiar landmark then leap off at the first opportunity. Using the same poor Indian map we navigate our way to the money exchange, a bookshop where we stock up on good reading (Clive, feeling guilty because he's not making productive use of his time buys a book on economics!) then make our way to the nearest internet café to update our web site. This one is full of kids playing 'Counter Strike' and similar, and we soon find out why - it's only Rs20 an hour.
Although this one doesn't allow the plug-in to load, Sarah manages to configure a useful little programme that reduces the photo size and allows them to upload quickly using the 'old' process, which we save on our remote drive.

It's now gone 6pm and we wander out into the darkness and mayhem that is any Indian city. As we make our way through the city, dodging auto-rickshaws, side-stepping large holes in the pavement, and avoiding insistent vendors, we comment to each other on how familiar this has all become in the last six weeks. Journeys which might have seemed a rather scary proposition at the beginning of November are now entirely routine. The Heera Panna restaurant is every bit as good as on Christmas Day. Chicken tikka masala, prawn biryani, vegetable raita, a garlic naan, and a couple of bottles of Kingfisher beer help to round the day off nicely. Suitably imbibed, we leap on a 44c along with a thousand other people. The spare wheel is in the back and serves as an extra seat for about five people. Sarah gets a seat in the ladies only section while Clive stands for the journey home. There's a traffic jam in town due, presumably, to a road accident.

Once we're through that the driver makes up for lost time. Neither of us can see out of the front, but we seem to be on the wrong side of the road for most of the journey, and the horn appears to be stuck on! We get out at what we think is the right stop, only to realise that we're a couple of kms short of our destination. Clive's ready to 'tab' it, but Sarah's had enough today so we flag down an auto who takes us to the door for 10 rupees. As we walk past the resort reception we see our friendly taxi driver. "What time coming?" he asks.