Blogging is supremely fun, I did not expect this!

Writing from Kochi in the south of India. I feel as though I may have sweated out a good proportion of my recently acquired body weight. I’m sorry for the details but I’ve never been so hot in my life, it’s almost resulted in another ‘kettle throwing incident.’ (Last week in Kolkatta I threw the base of a kettle because I got so frustrated. Megz and I have been laughing about the fact that it is a truly weak person who throws the base instead of the actual kettle.) So so hot but dressing ‘modestly’, i.e. completely covered, is still mandatory. Susan and Tess you will love this...as a safety measure i have invented a boyfriend. Being the only single member of the team has been a challenge and therefore my boyfriend is Shane (the most ridiculous name I could think of, and Shane Warne seems to be quite popular here.) It's actually been handy but Shane is starting to get far too well developed a person, I've started having genuine conversations with locals about his personality and his likes/dislikes.

Incidents of aggression and fake boyfriends aside, Kolkatta and Kochi have been fantastic. I always seem to rank cities on whether I can see myself living in them and whilst Rajahstan was jaw droppingly amazing I could never spend long there. Kolkatta, however, has enough greenery and an amazing combination of real abject poverty and areas that are very swanky. The combination is a little surreal but quite fascinating and I could certainly come back and spend some time here. We did also get to see Mother Teresa’s tomb despite it being closed (apparently we have the ability to charm Nun’s as well!) 12 years of Catholic education doesn’t leave a person that easily and I have to admit to this being a highlight (I feel like the time I got mocked for going home from Uni to watch the Pope’s funeral.)

Our train trip from Varanasi to Kolkatta was one of the most frightening but exhilarating experiences of an already intense trip so far. 12 hours on an upper bunk that reminded me of a gym mattress about 4 inches too short (Megz was fine, lucky bitch.) We shared a cabin with the cutest Indian grandparents but didn’t eat the whole way and I spent the night sleeping in a V shape. Megz is probably more conveniently sized for this country…

In other hilarious news Megz and I have officially hit the clubs and we FREAKING LOVE IT! (That’s right people, I got Megz out well past midnight.) The music is absolutely fabulous (with all of the connotations that word holds) and the boys are very good dancers. I love their lack of interest in Western culture here, Bollywood rules supreme and we danced all night to some pretty rad beats.

One week left, hoping to load some photo’s but not having much success. I have a million with the child population of India. At the risk of absolutely scaring people, India has made me so clucky! The children here are so beautiful and just have so much guts and pluck. Yesterday a little boy mistook me for his mother and aside from me wanting to launch into a child protection-esque lecture on stranger danger, it was the cutest thing ever. Megz is getting pretty freaked out but we’ve had a few ‘take my baby to Australia’ offers so maybe she’s scared I’ll follow through. I’ve also had “Isn’t she looooovely” by Stevie Wonder, (p.s. AAAAAAARGH) in my head for a week so maybe it’s connected.

Lots of love, missing everyone heaps…see you in less than a week!