Travelling south

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Our alarm woke us early as we have to catch the 8am train, which is about an hour's travel away.  Two friends were due to give us a lift to the bus stop on the back of their motorbikes.  However one overslept so the other asked his brother in law to give us a lift in his car!  Rather than dropping us at the end of the road at the bus stop, he kindly took us to the bus station.

A bus was about to leave so we jumped on.  This bus took us back into Kozhikode where it was a short walk to the train station.  On arrival we discovered the train we were going to catch was delayed by 1.5 hours.  However another train, which took longer, was running on time so would get us there half an hour before our original train now would.  We bought our tickets and waited.  The station was filling up fast, which is always worrying when you only have a general ticket, so no allocated seat ...  and the journey is 5.5 hours.

The train arrived on time and we jumped in a carriage which was less crowded, although we still both had to stand.  After the first stop a man got off and Christine got a seat and not long after Darryl was able to join her.  The views were beautiful of little villages, rivers and occasionally the sea.

We arrived in Aluva and headed straight for food, as we had missed breakfast.  Just outside the train station we found a little cafe and ordered green pea curry and egg curry with chappati.  The portion size was a little small but we continued on as we still had 2 bus journeys to make.


We walked over the road to the bus station and found the stop for the bus to Kotamangalam.  We were told the bus went in 15 mins so Christine waited with the bags whilst Darryl went to find more snacks for the journey.  Not long after he'd left the bus came in. Christine struggled on with all the bags and managed to secure one seat.  Soon the driver was getting ready to leave but there was no sign of Darryl.  Christine indicated her 'husband' was coming and he kindly waited.  Darryl had to stand for a while but soon a very kind lady let him have her seat.  He thought this was because she was about to get off, however, she didn't and stood for some time.

The bus arrived in Kotamangalam and we jumped straight on the next bus to Anachal.  We got seats together and tucked into our snacks.  A man came on board selling roasted peanuts so we had some of those too.

The bus had a 15 min stop in Adimali where we managed to have our first cuppa of the day ... By now it was around 2.30pm.  Back on the bus and we eventually arrived in Anachal.  We were coming to stay with a friend from our last trip so new exactly where to go .... first stop the tea shop!  Another cuppa down and we walked to our friend's house.  We had forgotten how steep some of the hills were and were impressed with ourselves for remembering the way.  By this time.wr had been travelling for nearly 12 hours!

We sat chatting for hours and our friend made us a tasty lentil curry before we all headed to bed.

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