Where did we leave it at last time?

This picture is for you murphys folks :).

Hello, how are you guys? We are brilliant. In Goa atm with sand in our bums and the rain in our faces.

So continuing from the last blog left off we have to go back 2 weeks...

After the wedding Tom and Jaison got their taxi friend to take us around and it was brilliant. His name was Aji, really good guy with very limited english skills, so we were in for an interesting trip. Every morning we got into this car not knowing where we would turn up, good start to our next adventure. Our first stop was way up in the mountains in a place called Munnar. Munnar is a major manufacture area of spices and tea. When you drive on the narrow/bumpy/steep cliff side roads you are surrounded by tea fields it was unreal. Every time you turn a corner you have to honk as an indicator for cars, cows, people, motorbikes or elephants coming your way on the cliff side to stay left. We stayed in Munnar for 2 nights, did some sightseeing and had an interesting car ride with Tom into a tiger jungle! He was positive that the animals would all come out when the sun went down and then he shot down a bit more wiskey. Haha, we ended up seeing 2 wild pigs and a deer but turned out to be a good day.

Next morning we got in the car not having a clue where we were off to again and turned up in the middle of a tiger wild park in a place called Tekkary. Our hotel was in the middle of the park where a bunch of monkeys welcomed us.
Later that day we hired some bicycles and went for a ride. It sounded like a good idea at the time but when we saw signs saying "please do not use your horns as there are wild tigers about" it didnt seem so smart anymore.
So we cycled back, quite quickly and saw some buffalos on the way. :)
The next morning we had booked onto a boat safari into the heart of the jungle. Into the jungle we went but I think all the animals were still sleeping because we didn't see any. But it was fun anyway.

In the car off again. This time we went to a place called Aleppy (south of Cochin) famous for its backwaters. Three men welcomed us, took our bags and told them to follow them.. so we said bye to Aji and did as they said. We went along a small path and then before us was a beautiful houseboat that we were to spend the night on. It was something you don't get up to on a day to day basis so we enjoyed it so much. The food was so nice we got fed very well. For dinner they took us to a fresh fish market and we chose some prawns that had been caught that same day. The local kids came up to our boat and asked us for pens along with Australian coins for their coin collection at school. We gave them what we had and got a picture in return. Sailing through the villages you could see the people washing their clothes in the river, collecting water and kids running around with sticks having a ball. They basically live off the water and use it to do all their cooking and cleaning.We gave the crew some beers and had a really fun evening on the waters surrounded by rice fields. Unreal.

From Aleppy we made our way back to Jaisons house where we spent a couple of days before we came to Goa. During those days we celebrated Lincys birthday and were introduced to the traditional feast (literally we were sweating). Served on a Banana leaf were millions of curry's, pickles, rice, poppardons etc and of course eaten with your hands. That is one of the best things about eating here, you can use your hands (mum you wouldn't like it).
Jackson took us for a ride into the forest where we saw 5 wild elephants and took a bath in the river (nicest bath i ever had). Did you guys know that elephants can run up to 80 km/hr, crazy. Because they were in a group they didn't attack us but if we would have come across a single elephant we would have been in some trouble.
The following days we visited all of Jaisons friends and family. It is a tradition that after a wedding the groom must bring the bride to all the family houses and vise versa. It was lovely everyone was very welcoming and we got fed like turkeys before Christmas. (5 families, 1 day, 6 meals, waaa)
In between visits we managed to visit a temple. This was no ordinary temple as there were 69 elephants that had been given to the temple and they lived there, ate and got bathed. It was a massive elephant spa. We got up and close with the creatures and said ga'day.

Jaison, Lincy, Jackson, Alice, Tom, Simon, Sabu if you guys are reading this thank you again for everything. You are the best.

From Cochin we flew to Goa, a beach state on the west coast where we have been beach bumming for a while. Mostly in the rain but we had 3 sunny days :) We have had some food poison which was yeah nice. Its pretty chilled up here compared to places we have been to and sunny can wear shorts again! So for now we are just going to hang out, have a cold beer and then we hit the airport on Sunday for the UK!

This trip has been amazing.

Until next time :)
sunny and mickey and the travelling pants