Beth and I woke at 7:00am but we didn't need to be downstairs until 9:00am, so we turned on the tv expecting some poorly dubbed rubbish but no. GREY’S ANATOMY! Wait. A Grey’s marathon?! Season 3. 9:00am came around very quickly after that. The shower had a door. An actual area in the bathroom solely for showering. I took the longest shower I've had in three weeks, relishing in the hot water, and scrubbed myself into an inch of my life. A light tap on the door and a security guard is stood there ready to take our bags downstairs. We bid adieu to our fancy hotel room and follow the security guard downstairs. The box tie clad receptionist greets us as we enter the lobby and we wait for JohnMiller, the new guy James and our new tour leader Chandra. JohnMiller arrives. Closely followed by James. James is six foot three maybe- I still can't guess people's heights. Slim build, fair hair, blue eyes and has a soft American accent. I think he sounds a little Canadian but that's possibly because he's from North Minneapolis. He's a software engineer and he's been working in his companies Bangalore office for the past two weeks on a new project. Lastly Chandra arrives. He's a little shorter than me, dark hair, dark stubble and a massive grin. I like him. His grin makes me grin. It's quite handy there only being five of us in total because we can all fit into one people carrier. By 9:15am we are Varkala bound. The south seems greener to me. Roads are lined with thick bushes, tall trees with enormous leaves and flowering shrubs. We drive past stalls dotted along the road selling fresh produce, overtaking elephants(!), cows, goats and overloaded mopeds and motorcycles. We stop at a seller when we see red bananas and try them out- they don't really taste that different to the yellow ones.  Three hours later we have reached Varkala, checked in and are sat on plastic chairs on our balcony overlooking the sea. There had been a storm the night before and people were repairing roofs and clearing away fallen debris. Chandra gives us a minute to get settled and then takes us on an orientation walk, along the sea front. We stop for breakfast infront of the beach and order iced lattes, people watching and enjoying the view. I'd realised just how quick the pace of the North tour had been and decided that I wouldn't be moving from my seat for a long while. Beth read my mind. Soon enough midday had arrived which meant one thing…cocktails and beers. 12:05pm, drinks on the table and we start playing ‘ride the bus’. JohnMiller is terrible at it and gets through his large kingfisher beer in record time. We drank and played cards for a couple more hours and move on to another bar. A few apple mojitos later and Chandra heads back to the hotel and I have a fish curry and roti. I'm sure I've eaten my body weight in Indian breads by now. 6:00pm rolls in and we walk to another bar, Darjeeling Café. The café has low lighting, and the front of the bar is split into three levels with all chairs facing toward the sea, like cinema seating. Acoustic music is playing through the speakers and the sun sets. We walk back to the hotel and drink beers in the garden, listening to the waves crashing onto the rocks. Only when the hotel bar is closing because the bar man wants to go to bed do we realise it's midnight and the reason JohnMiller is slurring is because we've been drinking for twelve hours.