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Whitneys on Tour
We arrived here on the 25th March after a less than lovely 32 hour train journey from Mumbai. It was our first experience of the Indian railways and whilst the view out of the window was pleasant, especially towards the end of the journey, and the food was just about edible, 32 hours is too long by anyone's standards especailly as it wasn't the cleanest carriage you will ever see.
Things took a decided turn for the better when we reached Varkala, in the state of Kerala, near the southern tip of India. Our hotel was really nice and landscaped with palm trees and with a decent swimming pool to boot too. We originally had 5 days in a normal room then switched for another 3 days to a huge cottage in the complex, the latter for all of twenty quid a night. This is actually expensive by local standards and you could easily get a decent double room for a fiver a night or so here but at times it's nice to have a bit of luxury!
Things got better still with Varkala itself which has a georgous beach and loads of cheap and lovely restaurants on the cliff. It's got quite a hippy feel here and you can do yoga classes (which Jo did) and get all sorts of massage and body treatments here. There's a nice balance here between a place that has a decent tourist infrastructure but hasn't in any way been spoilt or overrun by tourists. You can see locals on the beach in the mornings pushing out their huge ancient looking fishing boats and even conducting some sort of relegious ceremony too.
Therefore we did pretty much buggar all here except laze around and relax and I trust you appreciate the pain we are putting ourselves through to bring you these reports. Having said all that it was so hot here that you really couldn't do much else but laze around and Stuart managed to burn himself on the first day despite putting plenty of block on and not going out in the sun untill after three. We've continued to keep to our vegetarian diet from Mumbai but we've allowed ourselves to eat fish as it's fresh and you can see it in front of the resaurants on ice which gives you some confidence. No illness yet so we're doing something right.
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