We've been to a national park in Kahna, saw some tigers. That was fun, most
of it is in a Jeep and the park is so big you don't get to see much wildlife
as they are all hiding away in the dense forest, but the guides find out
where the tigers are located in the early morning and you get on an Elephant
and trundle through the forest to see where they are lazing around (it sounds fun and it was, but we were only on the elephants for 5 minutes which
was a shame).

Having said all that we saw loads of deer, some Indian Bison, some wild boars, loads of different birds (including peacocks and a small owl) and the tigers (it was expensive though, we blew almot 2 weeks budget in 1 day!). We needed a break though so thought we deserved to spoil ourselves after our overnight bus journey where it was so bumpy we didn't get a wink of sleep and our fun train trips.

We arrived in Nagpur the other night only to find all the accomodation was
booked and also twice as expensive as all the other places we have been in
India (and the hotels were actually grottier). There is a big religious
festival on at the mo, and also the cricket. We found a place for the first
night which was a shit hole and expensive but we didn't have much choice.

Anyway the next day we went hotel hunting and didn't have much joy until the last place we tried which is less than half the price of most hotels here
but twice as nice. It has a good shower (although no hot water - but in 40
degree heat that isn't so bad). It also is one of the cleanest places we
have stayed in and there's also a Gym 2 minutes away which we had a look at yesterday ,they said we could use it for free, they were really fascinated by us
and some of the Indians there were pretty muscley. It is no Esporta mind, but has the basic kit there which look a bit old but hey, it beats doing press ups and lifting our back packs in our room which we have been doing up to now.

Nagpur is very different to all the other Indian cities we have visited. It
is clean (ish) for one and quite westernised (they have coffee shops and
this morning we went to a supermarket - to buy some jam). We have bought our tickets for the cricket which weren't as expensive as I had been told (they
were about 15 quid each for five days, which isn't bad really).

Anyway so I am a lot happier, we have met a German guy here who is studying
here and knows loads of the locals so we met all them last night which was
fun, we had a gang of kids following us around all last night, I think they
thought Mark was in the England cricket team (Obviosly he pretended he was).

So overall things are very good. Hopefully we won't get beaten too much in the
cricket although with all the injuries etc it isn't looking good for us.
There aren't many english here (apparently there are only 20 or so tickets
sold to foreigners so far). Beer is hard to come by too as there are quite a
lot of Muslims here, but hopefully we can have a good singalong regardless.

We've now arrived in Mallabapurum and it is a lovely village by the sea, the first time we have been to the coast since our travels. The sea is a lovely temperature and the beaches are quite diserted, apart from the locals fishing. We are going to have some fish tonight which I am looking forward to. There are lots of travellers here, some stay for months so there is obviously lots to do here, we will explore more tomorrow. We will stay for about 5 nights and chill, make it seem like a real
holiday...

That's all my news for now, we both enjoyed the cricket, especially blagging the most expensive tickets for half the price and getting free food and drinks all day!

Take care

Faye xxx

Click here to see photos!