Hi guys,
We are now on our last day of India and are in the capital of Kerela called Trivandrum. Since we wrote last we spent another lovely week on the beach in Varkala, soaking up the sun! It was so stunning there and lovely to have a bit of a holiday.
Last Saturday night we went to see a Kathakali show, this is a local art form, where the people involved spend about two hours getting on their costums and appling make up to the face, they even put a flower seed into their eyes to make them go red - they said the seed is good for the eye's but we wouldn't fancy trying it!!
After they have got ready the show is performed using facial expression, screamimg!, and body actions and went on for a grueling two hours. Half an hour or so would have been plenty. At the end of the performance it finishes with one of the actors have her brest chopped off, we dont know if it was meant to be funny, but we both just burst out laughing!! Were glad we saw it as it's a big part of the culture, but just didn't need to see a full two hours of it.
We also went out with a fisherman on Sunday, who said that we would see dolphins. We got a bit worried as we were getting ready to go out to sea, because a group of Indin men put together this boat which consisted of four pieces of wood, tied together with string! It made a little canoe type boat. We then took it in turns to help the fisherman paddle. The paddles are made of a bamboo split down the middle.
We saw shaules of fish which created loads of bubbles in the sea and there was a great view of the beach and the surrounding coast line. On the way back we didn't think we would see any dolphins as we had been out for two hours already. Cheryl being her usual piss taking self kept pointing to bits of rubbish floating and saying "ther's a dolphin", 5 minutes later she said it again so I didn't believe her, but when I looked there were about four of them jumping around. We paddled as quickly as we could to try to get nearer, but they were to fast for us, it was still lovely to see them though. It turned out to be a great morning.
We got the train here yeaterday and it was fine. It was really busy, but we managed to sit in the corridor on our backpacks. We were sat next to the toilets (a hole in the ground) and an older Indian man stood right in front of us and just took off his trousers before going in. Cheryl couldn't stop laughing and I had to stop myself from looking at her, as I would have started as well. Men just do that kind of stuff all the time here and they just pee by the side of the road too.
Trivandrum is another big city which is quite dirty. They burn all their rubbish here again, so it stinks. Yesterday we found a little Itailian (yes Italian in India!!) resturant, which was like oasis here, the food was amazing as well.
This morning we got up for 6am, to go to a martial arts school, where the students were doing their warm ups and practicing their patterns and routines. Their were children who were aged about 6 going up to adults all varing in skills. One guy in particular was amazing, he was so flexable and skilled, we saw them batteling with different weapons (sticks), it started our morning off really well.
We then went to the temple (Which we couldn't go in) and the palace, which we had a tour around. The palace was beautifull, it took four years to build with men working day and night and was only in use for one year, then the king died and it wasn't used again for 150 years and was re-opened in 1996, although only 20 of the rooms are open and there are still another 60 that are locked up - such a waste, especially when their is such poverty here.
We have also loked around the bizarre, which we really enjoyed, they seemed to sell everything you could possibly think of when it comes to fruits, tupperware, bronze and gold.
We are now going to have a relaxing night in preparation for flying to Sri Lanka tomorrow, whichwe are both really excited about.
We will update again soon, lots of love to you all xxx