101 Challenges:

Location: Varkara/Allepey  - Kerala, India

It’s about 10:30am and we’ve just boarded a “deluxe” house boat in Allepey, Kerala. We decided that it was time to take some “me and me” time and chill out on the back waters of this astonishingly beautiful place.

We arrived here yesterday after what must have been the most traumatic taxi ride of our lives. About 25 minutes into what was going to be a 3 hour drive, the driver suddenly and abruptly pulled over and got out of the car. He vanished for a couple of minutes and returned with a bottle of water. As he took the cap off and poured the entire contents over his face – he turned to us and said “I have no sleep in two days”.

Inconveniently and very needlessly making us petrified, he then slowly crawled back into the taxi and, as we watched his eyes slowly blinking in the rear view mirror, we decided that we’d try and take control of our fates, rather than let this insomniac kill us – we decided to keep him awake by singing “The wheels on the taxi go round and round…”

We did this as loud as we could whilst Lindsay rocked his chair and with the two of us stamping our feet. Thankfully, the poor guy had a sense of humour and didn’t turn round and stick-the-head-in us. Even more thankfully, we never careered into the truck that we were up-the-ass-of which was carrying about 150 tanks of gas.

After leaving Nayerdam, we headed off for a place called Varkala. It’s sh*t. Don’t go there. If we were to write the Lonely Planet, this is what we’d say;

“Varkala… Sh*t. A big cliff which over looks a bit of sand and a lot of salty water. Upon said cliff and right up to its very edge are 978 café’s and restaurants. All are sh*t, and all have at least three members of staff standing outside pulling at you to spend your cash at their “amazing” and “fantastic” establishment. The food (if you get it) is sh*t. The service (if you get it) is sh*t. Every shop, taxi driver, hotel and food outlet will try like hell to rip you off. On a positive note though, should you ever find yourself here – you can use said cliff to jump off to an almost certain and instant death. Only come here if you are a) Stupid or b) Swedish.”

And here is said cliff - excellent way to end the living hell;

Needless to say – Lindsay doesn’t like Varkala. Lee (who’s obviously turning into a Swede – and who’s also obviously stupid) thought it was ok. Good waves apparently (especially the one’s Lindsay gave the sh*t-hole on the way out of it)

The only good thing (apart from leaving the place) was that we met two amazing lassies – Sophie (who wanted to headbutt everything) and Lyndsey (who has a boys name). Nice girls – and are genuinely the only positive we can take from what was otherwise a crap-hole!

Anyhoo… Right now we are stinking. The humidity is overwhelming. The 3 t-shirts we each managed to cram into our bulging sacks (ruck) back home in Scotland, are absolutely minging. We have no soap and can’t find our toothpaste. We have B.O and God awful Crotch-Rot!

Lindsay’s went all hippie-like and is detoxing for the next 10 days (only 8 more to go he keeps saying to himself) and his pits are more pungent than a skunk that’s eaten 12 tins of baked beans. Lee can’t get a shave and so, his tan lines are almost comical. We’re both hot, clammy and our feet are horrendously smelly. Lindsay hate’s it here.

Don’t get us wrong – Kerala is beautiful. But with that Ying comes the following Yang. If you want deodorant bring it with you, if you want breakfast – order it 3 evenings before hand. If you want lunch, pack it yourself and for dinner, if you want anything at all – leave Kerala.

Surprisingly, Lindsay still hasn’t lost any weight. Despite nearly every waiter forgetting his order and living on a diet of very dry plain white rice for a week, he’s still huge.

We’ve now just set off (11:45) – the boat is elegantly slicing through the calm waters and as a light breeze whispers away the stench of our bodies, we look onwards and outwards to sensational stretches of turquoise rivers covered in leaves from the leaning palm trees. This isn’t just a boat ride. This is an M&S boat ride.

Hmmmm. That was slightly girly.

We must interrupt this journal – Lindsay just said the stupidest thing ever. He’s made up his mind that when he returns back to the UK, he’s going to start a family. He doesn’t know who with yet – apparently he hasn’t met her – so there you go Mum (Gran). Whoever she is, we’re absolutely positive that Mummy will deem her “not-good-enough” for her little boy.

On another tangent, Mark’s away “home” now and so, we’ve got a couple of weeks to chill before manically preparing the upcoming challenges we’ll be doing in Thailand. That’s all the filming for “show one” over. Thank Feck!

Before he left, Mark said there’s a slight possibility that we may get a book deal.

On hearing the news, Lindsay went “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay"

Lee said “Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 0oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh"

How the hell can we write a book? “Oh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh" we both said.

Turns out – Writing books are a piece of piss. That’s a page done already!

Don’t think we’ll get that book deal :(

Frank enjoyed the ride. For once, the slag stayed with us for the entire day. But vanished at night after a nearby party boat full of Bollywood Bunnies passed us. B*tch!

An hour into this boat journey (12:45) and we’ve pulled over for lunch. Unlike the Kerala we have experienced so far, lunch was at lunch time and was actually sublime. We’re not sure if we have people running this boat that are used to eating on time or whether we have received the lunch order for yesterdays boat passengers. Either way it was welcomed by both of us (especially Lindsay who very foolishly thinks he’s wasting away to nothing). Just to be on the safe side, we’ve placed our order for tomorrow’s breakfast.

(13:20) Oh God, we can’t eat another thing. This isn’t because we’re stuffed from lunch but it’s because we’ve just witnessed something horrible. Our eyes have born witness to one of those things that you want to forget instantly. A horror on equal par as hearing your parents having sex! If they want a baby (what other reason could they give for doing it?) why don’t they just order one from the Stork?

What we did witness, was a staff member from the boat in front of us cleaning the dinner plates in the water that surrounds their vessel. No real surprise as we are surrounded by a vast amount of the stuff. But (as Lindsay keeps on screaming) we know the toilets, when flushed, disperse pee’s and poo’s straight into said vastness, which doesn’t seem vast enough for our plates to be washed in properly.

By this stage you are probably pondering as to why this journal has the time stated now and again. The reason for this is simple. This is first time we’ve been able to write as we are actually doing something. When that happens there’s only one thing for it. Jack Bowers, 24 stylee.

This journal entry is being written with this in mind. We will of course, throw in some flashbacks from time to time if we get lazy. A good flashback always work, think Memento. In fact they work so unbelievably well that they even called a film Flashback. Lee found that film a bit weird as unlike the title implied, there wasn’t a single flashback in it as it was set 100% in the present.

Here's a random picture to break up a rather long-winded journel;

(14:35) Lunch finished what seems like an age ago and we’re still sitting anchored to where we pulled over to eat. Now don’t get us wrong it is amazingly beautiful here but a change of scenery would do wonders, even if they just moored the boat the other way round.

Lee had a peep downstairs and found the staff lying on their backs in the passageway snoring their sweet little heads off. “Oi!” he shouted “get up and do your job, we’re paying £62 for this”. Well, this is what he would have shouted if he had the balls. However, here in Kerala, he was alternatively trying out his telepathic abilities he convinced himself he acquired at our Yoga classes. Needless to say his T-Powers are piss-poor and he failed to rise the lazy louts.

Time for Lindsay to deploy the never-fail-cola-approach.

(14:38) Lindsay donned his hypothetical green beret and set off on mission Cola. Simple mission is this one. Simply go down stairs and apologetically enquire to whether it would be too much to ask if we could get a cola.

He asked once but not loudly enough to wake the snoring staff. He asked again, this time slightly louder. Negative result. Still failing to wake the heavy breathing skiver. Instead, only causing him to roll over slightly and momentarily disturbing his exceedingly greedy intake of air. Third time and the word Cola bellowed through the over reaching coconut and banana trees - inducing a sway that created the biggest Mexican-wave along the Palm fringed shoreline as far as the eye could see.

(14:40) Mission Cola - an astounding success. We’re now moving and on our way to wherever the driver wants to take us – to a lynch mob probably. Lindsay now quickly removes the imaginary beret from his head and puts it in his imaginary soldier bag which, apparently has everything in it that a soldier would ever need. He then imaginarily folds it down to the size of an imaginary box of matches and puts it in his imaginary soldier pants pocket. He then jumps back into reality and catches up on his sunbathing.

The word sunbathing causes an instant flashback. Just before lunch we decided to film ourselves at the front of the boat (remember, the scenery is celestial down here). It is so good that if we filmed us just sitting or standing then we may not be centre of attention and God, that can never happen (Lindsay’s still traumatised that throughout school he couldn’t sit in “teachers” seat so all the kids would have to face him and adore his prime right of being centre of attention).

So, Mission Nudity was duly employed. Down came the shorts, and sunbathing commenced in a vertical position. Naturally (literally) we threw in a bit of dancing and gave the odd salute to other boats – anyone who seen us will surely have appreciated the lovely scenery (we ain’t talking about the trees or waterways).

(14:55) Exit reminiscent flashback trance and focus on the here and now.

(15:45) We’ve both finally chilled enough to allow ourselves to enter the Zen-Zone. For those of you that have never reached the height Zen, we shall explain. Zen-Zone, for us, occurs when we are both sitting motionless, soundless and starring at the wonder of it all. 

Ahhhhh… pure bliss!

 (15:47) “Hello Sir Lindsay, Sir Lee. Please, you come”. Crash, bang and wallop out of the Zen-Zone and back to reality with an instant hangover equivalent head.  We’re met with a smile from the ships manager and he says again “please, you come Sir’s”.

Reluctantly, Bitterly and Begrudgingly, we oblige. Why has this man tore us from our  Zen?. Thinking it must be of the utmost importance we jumped off the boat as if Armageddon was taking place right here and right now. Maybe the man broke our Zen as only we could save human existence.

Alas. No. We were snatched from the best state of mind we had been in, in months, to be shown a bloody banana tree, a crappy coconut tree, some piss-poor Paddy fields and a couple of d*ck-head ducks. Now that wasn’t called for.

We don’t want to seem excessively and unreasonably harsh but, once you’re off a plane in Indja and out of the city, which we clearly were, then you kind of notice that down every road, there are paddy fields, banana and coconut trees everywhere. As for ducks, well, you can go Old-Fecking-McDonald them. Indian ducks are not magical or miraculously special – they look the same as Scottish ducks, the only difference being their accents.

We did see some "nature" though - and although we couldn't bother our asses over it - we thought we'd film some birds in flight. Ooooooooh;

(16:03) Back on the boat. We quickly set about trying to re-Zenerise. We lost count of the numbers of Zenning postures, chants and breathing exercises we performed. The Zen was not forthcoming. Bugger.

(17:50) Lindsay comments on how it appears our boat is just going round a giant square. At this stage, if he’s right, then we would be almost at the end of the 3rd side. Something fishy in the air.

(18:01) We’ve moored just before the end of the 3rd side of the hypothetical (at this stage) square. This is where we would spend the night. Due to our positioning we couldn’t see the sunset and so, we became all sad. We wouldn’t be able to cuddle and gaze into each others eyes, under the reddening skies, as we hoped.

(18:05) We decide to consume some beer which was wisely purchased before heading off. We also try to put the negative thoughts of our broken Zen, wrecked sunset dreams and the biggest of all questions, “what’s around the corner?” out of our minds.

(19:35) Dinner was great and we’re feeling a little more upbeat, so we order more beer and stick a DVD on. Classy travellers. That’s why we opted for the luxury boat. What is luxury if it’s not a TV and DVD?

(20:20) Film quality poor, sound, miniscule. DVD turned off. Lindsay starts composing a letter to the FBI in relation to Piracy. A couple of more beers ordered. A few bites being sustained to the ankles by those w*nky mosquitoes.

Flashback, to around 19:00.

We couldn’t write this before dinner as we were to busy jumping around the boat and screaming again like the little girl’s we are. When the sun faded and darkness did befall us, we opened up the laptop for a wee game of Chess (Lee’s crap at it so it helps him to give Lindsay the opportunity to feel more worthy and manly).

At this point we were on the open air upstairs part of the boat, parked alongside marshlands and loads of vegetation. On goes a little light which over hangs our heads.

Fecking hell!. 32,675 bugs of all shapes and sizes swarmed us instantly. They didn’t just go for the light we switched, instead they decided to use our faces, arms, and legs as trampolines and food targets. As you all know, we don’t like beasties and these b*stards certainly didn’t like us. Girlishly but all too familiarly, we ran away downstairs – screaming and waving our arms in the air like crazed monkeys.

(22:00) Bed time. There were two bedrooms on the boat, so Lindsay got into one bed and Lee jumped in there right beside him. If it ain’t broken don’t fix it. During the night, the room must have reached about 200 degrees centigrade and we were sweating like pigs. Pigs who were wearing wet suits underneath duffle-coats and who were rolling around on a skewer above a campsite fire.

The only option available to us to help reduce the inferno that we were enduring was a p*ss poor fan. We could fart more air than what this could spread. There was an air-con option available, but that would cost another 1000 Rupees. Bugger our Scottish (sweating like mad) asses at that.

(8:30am) We awake after a really bad night of seeing every fifteen minutes on the clock due to the heat. Rather unusually we opted for a head-to-toe position that night. Didn’t work. Lee had to resort to kicking Lindsay for rolling on him. Lindsay having to constantly hit Lee for snoring. Head-to-head is so much more natural – so much more cosy. So much more fun.

Lindsay’s in a foul mood. He’s bitter at absolutely everything. The heat of night, the “square” route – the birds in the sky. Definitely the wrong side of bed – head-to-toe obviously confused him.

As we get out of bed, we start to question a few things. Our trip is scheduled to end in one hour – but we’ve not yet left the mooring spot where we’ve been all night. Is the world in which we’ve lived in for the last 20 hours a square? What’s around the corner? What happens if we reach the edge? Do we fall off?

More importantly – how the hell are you supposed to wipe your bum with a small bucket thing? This is all we had in our bathroom other than the sink and the toilet itself. After a long-while, Lindsay finally grasped the concept of the hose, but we were both dumbfounded by this little physical riddle. Are you to fill the tub with water, dip your hand in and then rub the sphincter? Or are you to pour the water down your back so it naturally reaches the anus? Either way, a hand surely has to be involved? If anyone knows the answer, please email us – quickly!

(8:40) The boat continues on its way, heading illusively to the enchanting corner.

(8:50) We turn the corner - full of desire and child-like excitement.

(8:51) We’re disappointed. It’s the boat park where we had, 22 hours earlier, hopped aboard. So it was a square. Woohoo – Yippee. Conning Feckers. Breakfast was then served on the boat in the original parking bay surrounded by the other 30840331 house boats.

What p*ssed us off is - there was no reason to stay on that boat overnight – especially and insultingly as we were just around the corner from our start/end point. Lindsay is absolutely furious. He’s swearing like a trooper. He’s frowning like mad. He’s huffing and puffing. He is Mr Evil today.

(09:45) Eventually, we catch a bus to Cochin – where we intend to catch a train to Pondicherry. Should be easy enough.

We got a mention in a Broadcast paper/magazine earlier this month. It's all very humbling and nice to have a little bit of our wee project scattered here and there across the media platforms - cheers Broadcast people. However, in this 6 paragraph article we noted the following 4 errors:

1) The £5 people "pay" us doesn't fund any of the challenges. Instead the "High Five" Challenge puts your fiver      directly into the hands of someone who needs it (hence the Goats and Sink malarky).
2) We haven't tickled a Tiger - Instead, we crapped ourselves at the sight of a Lion.
3) We've been nowhere near a Bollywood film set (this is to happen on our return to Indja at the end of the year.
4) We think the World knows by now that neither of us have balls - never mind "Balls of Steal".

Here is that article;


Note:

Our Mum says we’re talking too much about poops, jobbies and crapping ourselves. So we won’t talk about any of that nonsense anymore.

But, for everyone else’s interest;

Poop consistency is rather good. Solid jobbies but, Lindsay is experiencing 60% constipation. Lee’s happy with his babies – but if he needs to go – he needs to go immediately.

Sorry Mum.