As my partner in travels described in her previous blog, we are in Alleppey, Kerala, the Venice of the east, as it's recalled to by the locals. I wonder though, have they ever been to Venice? Because, in my opinion, it is not like Venice at all. Of course, there are a lot of canals around, since it's located in the backwaters, many gondolas acting like water taxies as well, but still it is just another messy Indian city. It is nice though, but there's absolutely nothing to do around. A messy beach, just a few restaurants and many many Indian-like stores. Fortunately, we are staying at an awesome guesthouse with the (stress the e) most friendly Indian owner we have met so far. Evening time at 8.30pm, we enjoy a homecooked (made by his mother) Indian dinner, just delicious!, and after that he gets the beers and whiskey on the table, and we drink until late night/ early morning, together with the owner, Saji, and the guests. Last night (Tuesday February 10th), we just went on and on, until I was near to passing out at around 3am, I decided to go to bed. It was an amazing night though!

The next day (Wednesday February 11th) we were actually quite surprised not to be that much hang-over, we were confident enough to head out for a good and nice breakfast. So we did. Just a few blocks down our guesthouse, we found an indian-like restaurant, we had breakfast there, some sort of thick salty pancakes (dhosa), an omelette and, of course, as we are in India, two quite spicy curries. Well hello diarrhea.. Nah just kidding, it was actually quite good! Like any other day, it was quite humid, sticky hot, so we decided to chill out at the guesthouse a bit. As we did totally nothing than chilling that day, it was time for some activity in the evening. Mariëtte, Kyra (some german chick guest), Saji (the big boss) and I sat together in the common area and decided we should invent some sort of special 3 palms (the guesthouse' name) cocktail, so Saji could use it to attract more guests (not that he need it, 'cause his guesthouse is basically fully booked all day, every day), and so we did. We sent Saji out to get us vodka, pineapple, watermelon, coconut and some juice. After a while, he returned with basically every ingredient we asked him to get, and so we started to make the special 3 Palms cocktails. Pictures on Facebook will show, they were just amazing! But before drinking the cocktails and chilling with everybody (expect 2 Estonian guys, they basically locked themselves in their room all day long, and only came out during dinner, but whatever), we had dinner, of course, home-made curry by Saji's mother, delicious once again! Cocktail time started, everybody enjoyed it, it felt like home. Saji is a great host and his guesthouse just feels like your home, it is terrific. After three night of chilling with Sagi, we sorta bonded, so he was quite sad that we were leaving, like genuinely sad, and so were we. We thanked him a lot though, and promised to write a positive 5 star review on TripAdvisor.

Thursday (February 12th) arrived as we left 3 Palms guesthouse in Alleppey. We still had to pay for the room though, but Saji wasn't around. Luckily, on our way to the bus depot, we walked straight into him, so we could pay him and say goodbye. He wanted 1800 ruupies (€25 euros for 3 nights including dinner) for the room only, although we drunk for over 2000 ruupies of beer (and mineral water) on his expense, but he didn't want anything for it. Finally, we agreed to pay 2500 ruupies, to at least cover some of the expenses. Kyra walked us down to the bus depot, and we said goodbye there. Just in time though, the bus left the moment we entered, right on time, en-route to Thodopuzha, the hometown of my friend Litty. The ride was about 3 hours, quite hot and sweaty, though quite nice. Beautiful views and scenery, the nature is amazingly green and it is quite mountainous, at some points it doesn't really look like India anymore, ratherMediterranean-ish. We arrived at 3.00pm in the city centre of Thodopuzha, where Litty's sister Liya picked us up by auto-ricksha. From the centre, it was about 4 km into the hills. Their house is really beautiful and, my god, it is huge! In Holland, this would be named a Villa, or as we say in Brabant 'dès godveurdomme unne gròte kiet'. Anyway, as we arrived, Litty's father welcomed us to his house, and invited us to come up into the house. It really is beautiful! We first had to have lunch, so we did. Lovely lunch, fried rice and a spicy chicken curry. The hospitality we encounter here, it is just unbelievable. Words cannot describe my, and our, appreciation. I have never met this people before, and they let us into their home, eat their food, their time, it's just amazing.

Time flies, as do airplanes, a next day has come (Friday February 13th), yet to become one of the most epic days, since we have started our travels. Our day started with a traditional breakfast, including dhosa, chapathi, egg curry and chicken curry, home cooked by Mary, Litty's mother. We enjoyed this breakfast very much, although it was too much to finish it all, we tried though. Soon Liya (Litty's sister) came down and asked us to come with her to her Aunt(ies) house to try the most famous Kerala specialty Toddy. Toddy is an alcoholic beverage made of palm tree coconuts. It's actually referred to as a coconut wine. As we tried it, Aunties brought us some food to eat it with, Tapioca and a beef curry. More food, yay! Like the food, the Toddy was quite nice, although it tasted a bit like vinegar in my opinion. Then, we were asked to move out to the porch, where about 10 men were pealing tapioca, it is very famous in Kerala and it tastes a bit like potato. After the pealing process, the tapioca is cut in pieces, before they let it dry for 3 to 4 days in the sun on a nearby rock. Later that night, we went to that rock, to actually spread out the tapioca, so it could dry in the sun for a few days! It was so much fun! The tapioca was loaded onto a small pickup truck, as about 10 other people were standing in the back of the pick up, including us. This was so funny, we were standing in the back of a truck (it's open right) while it was driving through the most bumpy roads ever, it was like a roller coaster without any safety standards, we loved it. But anyway, back to the cutting process, we were asked to cut the tapioca, so we did. But, and it might be hard to believe this, we are still in denial ourselves I think, we had to wait for a while, because somebody went to get somebody to watch us cutting it. After a few minutes, he returned with the local newspaper photographer! No way, we thought, but believe it or not, we were photographed for the local newspaper, while cutting the tapioca (pictures soon to be shown)! Once again, we were a big tourist attraction haha. As the photoshoot ended, Liya and Rose Mary (Litty's cousin) took us sightseeing through out nearby places, all day long! The area here, it is so beautiful, it is hard to imagine. Greenery, rivers, mountains, it's all there, we totally love it. Kerala is the most beautiful state of India, we all agreed. The sightseeing ended with an Indian-like BBQ at Aunties place, where most of the family and neighbours gathered to greet and meet the two Dutchies. Every single body talked to us, took pictures with us, was actually really interested in our story and how we came in touch with the George family. It is just a real privilege to experience India in this way. I am sure, if just regular tourists, we'd never been able to experience all this.

Unfortunately, I have to pay per word, so I'm going to shorten, or at least try to, a bit, in order to keep the budget balancing. So, the next days we have seen a lot. We have been to some sort of small dam, a waterfall and pineapple city. Pineapple city true is the pineapple city, from this town the pineapples are exported all over the world. Literally everywhere on the streets you'll see pineapples. It is quite funny to see so much pineapples all together. To continue, we went to a very mountainous area, about 2 hours drive from Thodopuzha. We were amazed, once again, by Kerala's finest nature. Words hardly make up the beauty of this area, therefore I am not going to try, please have a look at our pictures on Facebook.

Monday (February 16th) we took the local, non AC, windowless (busses in Kerala don't even bother to have windows, because the weather is hot, always) bus heading to Kochi. In Kochi we met up with Liya's friend Antony, who would show us around town. But first, we had to go to the railway station to buy tickets to Gorakhpur (near to the Nepali border) for, preferably, coming Friday. Fully booked. Damn. Next available train? Tuesday February 24th. Okay. So we have another unplanned week to go in Kerala. We surely do not mind that much, although our Nepali time is going to be shortened, unfortunately. We'll probably visit Kathmandu for 5 days, whereafter we have 2 days to reach Calcutta and another day to fly out to Bangkok, before our visa expires. Tight schedule. (We might take a direct flight from Kathmandu to Bangkok to save some time, not sure though, to be continued). Anyway, when finished at the railway station, it took quite a long time, we went to the biggest mall of Kerala (some say India), Lulu Mall. It is quite big indeed, comparable to West Edmonton Mall i think. First, we went up to the third floor to have lunch and we were happily surprised by the fact of beef burgers being served. After the lunch, we did some fun stuff, an in-mall roller-coaster and some more in-mall fair (kermis) attractions. The next stop was located a few hundred metres ahead, a bowling alley. We bowled and Mariette won after a close finish, I ended second and Antony third. Time passes so fast while having fun, so before we knew, we had to head back to the bus depot to catch our bus back to Thodupuzha. Are you sure you want to take the non AC bus instead of the AC bus, Antony asked. Yeah, we are quite sure, the non AC bus is more fun, Mariette responded. It was quite fun, due to the fact that we had seats probably. Some people were less lucky (like 50 people... The bus was loaded!), and had to stand for 2 to 3 hours haha. It's like the 135 at 08.35 AM multiplied by a zillion, and I usually avoid taking the 135 at 08.35 AM for that reason only, but here it was just funny (a bit cozy and sweaty though, when a big Indian guy tried to squeeze in at our bench, which narrowly fits 3 indian girls). We arrived back in Thodupuzha around 9 PM, whereafter we took the Tuktuk back to the George' mansion, and ofcourse, we had to take a delicious dinner before we could head to bed.

Tuesday (February 17th) was unplanned until the moment we woke up at 10ish AM. George, Litty's father, invited us to come along to his old university, where he used to be a professor in mathematics, but retired now. He was invited to participate in some sort of reunion of an old class, he used to teach, and we were asked to come along. And so we did, after having our breakfast of course. Once arrived at the university, we were guests of honour. We were asked to sit in the front of the class together with George and the old school principal & headmaster. Everybody welcomed us and special thanked us for our presence, whereafter we were even asked to speak in front of the class about our travels and experiences throughout India and about our home country, The Netherlands. So we did. Although I don't really like to talk in front of big groups of people, this was a quite nice and cool experience to add to our overall Indian Experience.

We are currently in Munnar, about 100km (3 hours by bus) from Thodupuzha, which is famous for its tea estate. We left Thodupuzha last wednesday (February 18th) and we will return to Thodupuzha tomorrow evening. As I wrote before, there were no train tickets left for this friday, so we had the opportunity to visit Munnar, lucky us, 'cause it's beautiful up here. The tea estate is literally everywhere, every direction you look, tea estate. It looks beautiful! The tea plane grow up hill, so it makes a beautiful scenery. Today, we have visited various touristic point in and around Munnar. As this area is very mountainous, we have seen and photographed beautiful scenery. Even temperature-wise, this place is awesome. During the day, it's about 30 degrees (but NOT humid!), and at night... The temperature drops down to 15..maybe 13 degrees... we were shivering of cold last night, when we went for an evening walk.

Okay. Blog's finished for now, I hope y'all enjoyed, make sure to comment down below (either in English or Dutch) since we do appreciate that. Oh.. Yeah.. Last update regarding our schedule, we'll skip Calcutta and take a flight from Kathmandu, via Mumbai (lay-over of 14 hours, omg so we can have dinner at our beloved cheap local amazing restaurant again) to Bangkok. This way, we have some more time to be in Nepal. We are planning to visit Pokhara at first, and take the bus to Kathmandu after.

Ok. Doei.