Sending a parcel

After our first week in India we concluded that we’d brought too many clothes and our bags were too heavy, so we decided to parcel some up and send them home.

In England you would wrap the parcel in brown paper, address it and take it to the post office, so off to the post office we went. But in India, parcels have to be sown up in calico by a tailor. We were sent across the road to find a tailor and got our parcel sown into a big package. Then the To and From addresses had to be written on with a special red pen provided by the PO staff. Sending  a parcel to the UK wasn’t cheap- Rs2,600 (£30) for a parcel weighing 3.3kg, but at least that’s lessened our load.

Here’s the tailor sewing up our parcel

Hand sewing the final seam
The finished parcel

Fascinating!

Hana

Hana (Valerie’s niece) has been travelling in India since the beginning of November and we managed to meet up with her in Kannur. She was in Goa and managed to get the last ticket on the overnight train and we met up after breakfast and got the bus together to Mananthavady.

Lunch on the trek

Hana with our guide Jills

Hana is travelling for a further three months so good travels Hana x

 

Varnam Homestay – Wayanad

Travelled to Wayanad from Kannur on the local bone shaker bus. Good air conditioning (no glass in windows) and an easy 3 hour journey.

Varnam is an organic farm and our host Beena is extremely knowledgeable on all the plants and trees on her land, together with their medicinal properties. Here are some photos of the farm.

Our host Beena
Good spider (not dangerous)
Jackfruit
Ockra
Cobra chillies – hottest in the world
Umbrella Palm Tree
Hana climbing a coconut tree
Beena hugging one of her trees
Breakfast at Varnam

 

Arrived in Kerala

Fishing nets in Cochin

Arrived in Cochin and managed to very easily buy Indian SIM cards for our smart phones. About £7 for two months of unlimited calls within India and 1Gb of data per day!

We also had got an Indian Rupee Travel Card from the Indian ICICI bank in the UK which we had pre-loaded with rupees and then use in ATMs to get cash – and it worked.