Arriving at the mall building there was the amazing sound of about 40 drummers drumming and dancing their socks off. The noise was truly striking. We watched them for perhaps 20 minutes and they got faster and faster and the crowd grew bigger and then hunger drove us inside. They were still going some time lat when we had finished shopping and glistened with sweat but did not stop.

After the ‘supermarket’ experience Damien was not feeling well so he went with Henry back to the apartment and Tamarin and I were very brave and went into a bar! Well, two fair haired western women in an Indian bar full of locals in a town with few tourists was quite an experience. You cannot buy alcohol from many places in normal shops in Kerala so the bar was the natural place. We got our own escort to guide us through the back way, past some very dark rooms and into the main area which was quite brightly lit and full of men. There were 3 bars in quite a small area, one just for takeaways it seemed, it was great we had a member of staff as we did not get hassled at all, just stared at. We were hoping for some Christmas wine (I had only had one glass since arriving, in Varkala) but they only had a glass left which we shared and we got some beers and rum to take home.

We had set up a Christmas tree in the apartment and decorated it with whatever we had; jewellery, flowers from the local area, Tamarin’s fairy lights and some souvenirs we had brought, we also had some ‘plum cake’ which contained no plums but was quite like a Christmas cake…