101 Challenges:

Location: Mamalapurilalum, East India

We left Pondicherry on the 28th after borrowing a strangers Lonely Planet at a restaurant the previous night. See – we never needed to buy one!

We hopped on a little tin bus and 3 hours later crawled off. It’s amazing what being tight will lead you to do. For less than £1 between us, we sat extremely squashed, at the back of the bus (which everyone knows is the best part – cause the front’s always in a huff) and travelled for miles and miles and miles.

We’re now in a place further north called Mamalupuram or something like that. Everything’s a little dearer here and drink’s still not allowed – please God, deliver us from this dry patch! Since costs are higher, much to the delight of Lee, we’re back to sharing a bed again.

There is nothing to do here. We’re now just killing time before we catch the flight to Thailand. At the same time we’re forever avoiding complete boredom. As a distraction, we’re focusing all our attention on saving as much cash as we can. We’ve only had one tuc-tuc ride (an extortionate 30 Rupees for less than half-a-kilometre) since coming here, and that was from the bus station to our place of residence.

As per Pondicherry – the food here is appalling and the place is absolutely infested with flies. Millions upon millions of the buggers! But, the webernet connections are fast enough for us (geeks) to update the site, so we’re happy to stay until the night we leave for Chennai airport.

For the first time since coming to India – we’ve seen a lot of clouds, but not a single droplet of rain – so everything’s still fine and dandy weather wise.

Finally, God succumbed to our constant moaning prayers and delivered us to a “Wine Shop”. 98 Rupees for a 180ml bottle of Gin. Tastes like licking in between your toes but the alcohol level is 42.8% so we bought four. May have to go back later and purchase some more – once the stuff has burned your taste buds away, it’s actually alright.

Mallalulapurallium is not a place we’d recommend. It’s (like most places in India) filled with Hippies and old-folks – but as an added insult, there are hundreds of French here and none of them know Emmanuelle.

Conversation between the two of us is mainly saved for breakfast and dinner times. This is because we fear looking like gay-lovers-who’ve-just-had-a-massive-hissy-fit (again) to onlooking fellow diners. We’re now risking moving to the stage of hating each others company and so, we’re staying apart as much as possible – until Lee feels the constant need to spoon his cuddlier and younger brother.

We just received a text message from the EFG. She’s apparently happy with the footage that Mark brought back from India. Thank feck for that – if she hated it, all she’d have to do is extend an arm into the skies above, bend it at a 112 degree angle and slam it down – instantly squashing us. Remember – she’s huge!

At the end of the message though, we’re two x’s. We don’t know if one was intended for each of us or, since the EFG sent the text to Lindsay’s mobile, if both were for him alone. Plus, we don’t know any telly jargon so maybe an x means something bad and two of them means something bloody horrendous… oh no.