Munnar

Wednesday 14th - We woke on up a little more refreshed than the previous day, and headed into town. Found a fab little coffee shop which had great donuts so breakfast was sorted. We decided to take the 32km rickshaw tour to Top station (highest point in town) which also offered a number of interesting stops on the way. We past lots of tea plantations and then the area opened up into a gorgeous reservoir which made the place look more like Austria than India. The luscious green mountains and the beautiful clear sky was a great backdrop and was such a contrast from other places in India. Top Station gave us beautiful views into the next state of Tamil Nadu and the Western Ghats mountain range. Back in town we had a wander around the bazaars and then headed back to clean up before dinner. We wanted to try and find a bar before dinner and asked a rickshaw driver to help; he first took us to a beer shop and then the bar. Quite a seedy little joint where I was the only woman (this happens often in India) but we did meet a guy from England that lives there and runs mountain bike tours so that was interesting.
The next morning I headed out of our room to be in the sun so stood outside the hotel waiting for Ryan, and suddenly Heather and Bill (our US friends mentioned previously inVarkala) walked by !! We decided to head to breakfast together and showed then the lovely coffee haven from the day before (sadly no donuts though). We planned to meet them for dinner also.
We headed off back up into the mountains and I wanted to rent a pedalo on the lake.. it was good fun although I let Ryan do most of the pedaling!!
After our farewells at dinner with Heather and Bill, we had decided to take the night bus (9 hours) to Trivandrum (heading back to the beach at Varkala). We settled in to the seat and were ready for the ride. We thought we would try and stay awake for a couple of hours and then sleep around 11.30pm but the bus was so bumpy it was near impossible - it is like trying to sleep on a rollercoaster and I am not exaggerating. We suddenly smelt burning which made us look behind and although there was no fire it was probably a cigarette, we noticed my bag was open. We had been robbed and I hurriedly tried to work out what was missing whilst feeling very shaky, Glasses were taken, my bag cover, our ear plugs and my tampax ! I am sure they will have fun with those. We stopped in the next town to go to the police and sort out paper work - Ryan had to fill in a deposition whilst having 6 police standing over him whilst I remained on the bus as they searched a couple of people, with no real order to it. We both knew the culprits were long gone however. After that we were very on edge and didn't want to be on the bus anymore but knew we had another 5.5 hours! We arrived in Trivandrum at 5.15am and waited until 6.30am for our train to Varkala. We got to the hotel we stayed at last time and the really nice guy that worked there let us have our old room and we fell into bed on Saturday morning, tired but happy to be back by the beach we loved.