101 Challenges:

Location : Somewhere between Goa and Kerala, India

Firstly, please excuse the pictures in this journal – Lindsay dropped the camera and so, we’ve got to wait on our Producer friend Mark giving us stills of lots of footage he’s taken. Until then, please enjoy some “art”.

But – Lindsay went back to the Mexican food joint the other day and took a picture of the hole-in-the-ground-toilet. It’s starting to get a little boring this story, but Lindsay still gleams with child-like excitement as he tells anyone he passed of his amazingly-accurate-bum-hole. Just realised, on closer inspection of this picture – there’s a bloody amphibian in it. We’ve all heard of a frog in the throat – but a frog in the ass?

Yesterday was a huge day for us. We had to get up at silly o’clock in the morning (6:45 am to be precise). Yeah, we know that’s very early but as Jimmy Cricket would say, “come here, there’s more”. Ahead of us, we faced a full day of Crazy Canyoning.

At 7.30 am we met with our guide Emmanuelle. A French man who lives in Goa 6 months of each year hosting canyoning trips. This guy is instantly likeable. Lee argues that he’s also instantly loveable and hasn’t stopped texting him since our encounter, but what we both agree on, is the fact that Emmanuelle makes everyone instantly aware that he is a bit mad.

Mad in a good way, not just the French way. We arrived with our colouring-in books and crayons and asked him why we had to bring sturdy shoes and clothing gear that could get wet without us worrying, just where were we going to be crayoning?

We were drunk the day we organised this challenge (hence, Lee allowing Lindsay to make the arrangements) and we’d only looked briefly at the Challenge on our website. So briefly that we never read the challenge specifics – instead, only reading the challenge name. Suffering from drunken dyslexia we saw a sign offering Crayoning lessons.

We proceeded to book a full day’s course with Emmanuelle. He informed us it would be extremely difficult and asked us if we were experienced enough. Hell yeah, we told him - after all, we’ve loved crayoning since childhood and hardly ever go over the lines. How hard could it be? Frank decided to opt out. Instead, he made arrangements to take a taxi to a nearby town for some kind of S&M fun. India has a Mark’s and Spencers?

In the sober light of day it quickly emerged that we had gotten ourselves into a bit of a kafuffle. The day was to begin with a 1 and a ½ hour 4x4 journey to our starting point. We then had to face a grueling 3 hour jungle trek to the top of Goa’s National Park (The Jungle)

And so it began…

On the way into the National Park we stopped to collect some food for lunch. Emmanuelle had said earlier that we could pick it up ourselves, that way it, whatever it was to be, it would be fresh. How considerate.

The dirt track road we were travelling on had no shops anywhere to be seen, yet we pulled over anyway. Was Emmanuelle so deranged that he hallucinated a line of shops?

All of a sudden, he grabbed two plastic bags and a bloody machete! Naturally, Lindsay crapped himself, but disconcerningly, Emmanuelle told us to join him by a tree. Phew – we were going for some apples or banana’s Lindsay’s nervous heart told his brain. Yum.

But on the tree were no banana’s, not even apples. We both hoped that whatever we were to eat was maybe purchased earlier and hung up high on a branch so it wouldn’t get nicked. Burgers? Chips? Sweeties? No.

Two Red Ant’s nests with thousands of the little angry bastards running all over the shop. So there was a shop involved in some funny way, perhaps this Frenchman wasn’t so mad after all.

Emmanuelle then showed us how to gather up an ant’s nest. Step one: Quickly grab said nest in said bag. Step two: Chop said nest from said tree with said machete. Step 3: Seal said bag before said angry bastard ants attack in huge numbers.

Seemed easy enough, so Lindsay went first. How brave.

He approached the nest with his plastic bag perhaps as nervously as those two Vegas guys - Siegfeld and Roy  (or something like that) would approach the next tiger they want to capture in order to train it to dance on roller skates.

Actually, the above paragraph is an understatement. Lindsay was more scared. He girlishly held the bag up to the nest, not even wrapping the bag around it and then tapped the branch ever so softly with the machete. He must have been hoping that, miraculously, the branch would break on the slightest touch, the nest would fall downwards and then, God himself would intervene and make the bag seal itself, ants and nest inside?

Sadly (for Lindsay but not for Lee) this didn’t happen. What did happen though, was that the ants got a bit upset with the girly prodding and squealing next to their home and so, they attacked.

A few managed to jump on to the bag (Lindsay said he counted and there was at least 3 million) and then raced on to his hand before he dropped everything and ran away –confirming to the World what Lee already knew - that Lindsay’s a terrified little girl trapped in a big Scottish lad’s body.

A few ants remained on him (probably for a laugh) and (probably after pissing themselves at what they were seeing) bit him a few times which turned his screaming even louder. The tone of the scream was so intensely high that the ants eventually jumped off him, ran back up the tree to their nest and put their tellies on really loud to drown Lindsay out.

Lee (who, like the ants, was in hysteric fits of laughter) went up to the other nest. Cock-surely, he put the nest in the bag, cut the branch as instructed and left without any commotion, screaming or any girly actions. Only now did we question why we had just done this. Were Red Ants the prey of bigger predators like Burgers, Cheese Sandwiches or Curly Wurly’s? No, the ugly feckers were lunch.

After a disappointingly disapproving nod, Emmanuelle asked us all to get back in the Jeep. He drove on a few more miles, parked the car, geared us all up and then we headed, on foot out into the jungle. The drive proved too much for Lindsay and his excitement and fear wore him out:

As forewarned - the first 3 hours were as hardcore trekking. A little down hill at first which made us both a bit cocky of how easy it was before the incline kicked in and we seemed to be heading up and up and up. We thought if we kept going much higher, we might bump into the Extremely Friendly Giant. But then we questioned, would she be happy and let us take a giant golden monkey-nut back down to little-earth and sell it to raise funds for a new village well – or – would she be angry and eat us?

Anyhoo, after 3 hours we reached the top of the mountain – 1700 feet above sea level. The river bed at this height was dry. When up so high and surrounded by wild anything's and everything's you start to have slight concerns. Ours was - if we run out of water, then we might die. Very quickly though, we realised there was no risk of that ever happening. If we became stuck, lost or injured, we could survive forever by licking up the sweat that was torrentially pouring down our faces in full waterfall style.

What’s now common knowledge – we’re used to crapping ourselves (well, Lindsay is) we had now both wet ourselves (but thankfully it wasn’t pee). We were both saturated and crotch-rot was starting to set in. Fast. Here we are with a big piece of wood – and a huge tree!

As we walked down the riverbed, the rocks became boulders, the boulders became bigger boulders and then some rocks became bigger rocks (what we’re trying to say here is, everything got bigger). As we crossed another summit, we were greeted by a free and wild flowing river. Water… and plenty of it.

But, before the Crazy Canyoning could begin, first we were to have lunch.

Oh my F*ucking God!

Emmanuelle pulls out the bag of Ants. All of whom are extremely pissed at being kidnapped. Sticks them all on a bit of bread and asks us if we want chilli-sauce topping or honey. Lindsay surprised us both and said almost immediately, chilli.

After (what’s becoming rather expected now) lots of squirms and shrieks – he finally put the slice of bread with at least 80 live Red Ants up to his mouth. Then, frantically, he started pounding the bread with his fists – making a last ditched effort to make sure that the little vicious buggers were dead. Even though some were still alive – although now severely crippled – he crunched into this delicacy. As you can imagine, this was a disgusting sight. Ants crawling out of his mouth and him sucking them back in. He loved it!

Only joking. He fecking hated it. So too did Lee – who, on top of his 78 Red Ants, was given a dashing of Ant eggs too. Equally as squirmish as Lindsay, he battled his body’s natural reaction to reject this meal and both of us, very surprisingly, didn’t puke!

Red Ants do not taste like chicken. Red Ants taste like lemon. Red Ants are little evil twats and so, if you ever get the chance to, please eat one or two.

We then abseiled down what must have been an eight foot drop, nothing really. For once Lindsay wasn’t a girl. That honor was saved for Mark - our Producer and Camera Man (but above all, our bestest friend). He had to be given instructions about 100000 times by Emmanuelle on how to use the abseiling gear. He just couldn’t get it and with each failed explanation he would say “Right explain that to me just one more time”.

As he was saying this, his legs were knocking together at the knees. We felt for him dearly as we had to do all this as we were Challenged (yes, we agree with the double meaning here too!), Mark was only there to film us doing the challenge. Did we heck feel sorry. Turns out, Mark is seriously scared-of-heights.

Now, Mum always told us not to mock people and their ailments – instead just poke them with a stick and shoo them away from us better-beings. We decided to ignore this sound advice as if we shoo’d him, he’d have fallen to his certain death. So there we were, huddled together like two prepubescent schoolboys who had just had sex-education class at school and heard the teacher say “Erection” for the first time. We would have wet ourselves (properly) had we had any body fluids left after the aforementioned trek.

Eventually Mark abseiled. Thank f*ck. The pain of laughter was starting to rupture some internal organs. Lindsay farted accidentally and swore that a little wet poop had come out and quickly circumnavigated his wetsuit and settled under his right nipple.*

We “bigged” Mark up (eventually and with a slightly sarcastic undertone) for his bravery in overcoming his fear of heights and he responded well by egging himself on further and further throughout the day. He was proud of himself at the end of the trip and so were we.

Then our canyon jumping commenced. We had 8 jumps to do. The first was a “mere” 2 and a ½ meters and went without any problems or fears. The second, a 6 meter jump, brought a “no bloody way is that just 6 meters” response from us.

A shared fear then set in. This alleged 6 meter jump was reasonably high. The last jump of the day (which is compulsory if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in the jungle) involved a minimum jump of 12 meters with an optional jump of 21 meter available to you if you felt confident and Emmanuelle felt there was a chance of you doing it without dying.

Onwards we went and completed jumps of 8, 10 and 11 meters with the butterflies in our bellies – fighting manically with the ants probably. It was after these jumps where we came to the crescendo of the trip.

As we walked to a series of big rocks which simply just… ended, we looked out and down. God this was high. We were above the Jungle trees – and jungle trees are bloody massive! We both rather girlishly edged ourselves to the lip of the 21 meter jumping spot inch by inch. Both our bodies were shaking so much that it was impossible to hide the fact that we’ve got man boobs.

We both looked down and then quickly looked up. No words needed to be exchanged. We were sh*tting ourselves (but not literally – well done Lindsay)

It was decision time. Could we jump from that height or would we take the “easier” option of climbing down to a safer level and 12 meters? All we will say, is at that particular time we were very scared. We were sick to the stomach at the thought of it. Unsure of our ability to do it and really questioning the stupidity and/or necessaryness of it all. The outcome has been saved for the telly show.

Sorry to leave you on such a cliff-hanger (pun intended).

So, whatever happened, happened and the time came to start a three hour trek back to the car. This couldn’t be harder than the 3 hour trek there in the first place. Wrong. Twas an absolute nightmare. The first 40 minutes we climbed up through the jungle at an 80 degree angle. Even the Indians who were there as jungle Sherpa's to carry our gear were struggling. Worse than this climb though was the fact it was getting dark and the Jungle is not a place you want to be when it gets dark, especially if, like us, you don’t like beasties.

We had to trek like the best trekker in the world (who everyone knows is Captain James T Kirk). So we Kirked ass and put everything we had into it. Our group put blood sweat and tears into that last few hours.

Blood provided by a guy called Gene who cut his finger. Sweat provided by everyone - but particularly us (Scotland's current sweat champions). Sounds like a great achievement but it’s not really as nobody really sweats too much in Scotland. And the tears were provided by the fat Indian guy who had obviously blagged his way into a Sherpa job for the day. All in all, we had trekked a total of 26 kilometers!

So... we can not recommend strongly enough that if anyone who reads these journals (Mum) ever ventures to Palolem - Make sure you book a canyoning trip with Emmanuelle. He can be found on the back street which runs adjacent to the beach (in the same Mexican restaurant the toilet pictures above come from). Mention us and mention Crazy Canyoning - you'll bloody love it - and our little French Friend. His number is (0091) 98 50 48 56 41. Give him a call and say Bonjour!

And here we are. One day later and at 22:30 our time/17:00 your time (if you’re in the UK) on Wednesday the 16th of January. We’re on the 16 hour train journey down to Kerala to do some Charidee work. We don’t like talking about it all that much though. We only do what everyone should be doing naturally – helping our fellow man (and some women). Can’t wait to get rid of these bloody t-shirts – they weigh a ton and the sink’s caused Lindsay’s bag to rip. So we’ll throw everything at the poor kids down there and lighten our loads.**

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of travelling with India Railways you’ll know that the toilet on these trains is simply a hole in the ground in a very small and very dirty little room. The bonus to this is - you can do a jobby and feel extremely satisfied that your poop just hit the ground at about 110 mph (great fun to watch).

The downfall is - you have to be careful when pulling down your trousers to do said poo. As Lindsay just found out – not only will the hole make your crap hit the rail tracks, but if careless enough, you’re 400 Rupees will fall out your pockets and also hit the ground faster than the speed of sound.

Right. That’s us off now. Lee’s away to sleep and Lindsay’s off to find his 9th second-opinion about his foot. He’s had a cough for about a week now too – naturally, it’s Malaria or Yellow Fever.

* Turns out, the fart Lindsay did, was, luckily, only a fart and the sensation of warm jobby under his right nipple was only a pocket of methane gas and chilli smells.

** For the attention of the RSPCC. Obviously we won’t be throwing any kitchen utilities at small children.