Day 9... a day off on the backwaters

Staying in bed until 8.15am felt like the biggest lie-in of all time, it must be said! Jai was in Kayaloram as we breakfasted at 8.30am, all kitted out in church robes. We packed up the guitar and lyrics sheets, and off we bussed to the Alleppey church.

On arrival we were amazed to find not the 20-30 churchgoers we expected to be performing in front of, but rather a 300-strong congregation! We stood outside the church as the sermon finished, then paraded up the aisle which separated males from females, before arriving at the altar. There we proceeded to sing our number – ‘Under the Bridge’. Henry Church started off with a solo, accompanied by Tom Parker on guitar, before we all joined in. Unfortunately, Hughes’ guitar tuning seemed to have had a deleterious effect, and the strums were not quite as melodic as we would have hoped! Still, we did the song about heroine addiction justice in the Christian Church (hopefully no-one understood the lyrics!) and we were all clapped off the stage. After a small donation we all said hello to the kids, who were over the moon to be high-fiving foreigners, and got back in the bus.

Next stop – the train station for tickets. Not an easy procedure when a) the room was searingly hot, b) there was one attendant, c) a fair few of the group had no real idea where they were going, and d) several irate locals were queue jumping at every opportunity. Still, we managed to get everyone sorted and we made the journey back to the hotel.

After lunch we headed out on the famed Keralan backwaters boat trip. Loaded with soft drinks and beers we boarded the hotel’s boat with three staff and motored out across the lake. The weather was stunning – unbelievable, considering the monsoon time of year – and soon enough we had moored to a navigation buoy and we were all diving and bombing off the upper deck into the warm lake water. Great fun! The rest of the cruise was a little more lazy, with some serious sunbathing, beer drinking and photo taking. We chugged down long palm-lined canals, waving at other boats (all the people invariably waved back) and watching fish eagles soar overhead and brilliant blue kingfishers and cormorants dip and dive. At one stage we stopped at a local’s house; he sold us some ‘toddy’ (fermented coconut palm oil) for 90 rupees. When we tasted it we could see why it was so cheap! We got back after three and a half hours, all well rested and ready for dinner, oily massages and then bed (well, after the World Cup Final, which only Hughes managed to stay awake for – finished at 2.45am: ouch!).