Journey here!

Well we got here (finally). After roughly seven hours on a plane we goto Doha (Google Maps) and had about a four hour stop over before our connecting flight onto Trivandrum. As we were there for a bit of time, we went out to have a whirlwind tour of Doha - well, the beach at any rate... It's a really new developing place - lot's of really good looking buildings going up all around (a bit like Dubai I guess - but having never been there I actually have no idea...). We managed to get onto a boat trip which took us out into the Persian Gulf for a look around - theres some photo's of it up on flickr;

The boat, Doha city in the background
Matt and Karen on the boat on the persian gulf
Sun starting to set over Doha

That was our first (intermediate) introduction to the heat too. I thought it was quite humid there. It was definatley hot - but I discovered later that it was nothing like india itself.

We'd travelled about 3,200 miles to get to Doha, then it was back onto the plane for another 5 hours flight to Trivandrum. When we got off the plane it was about 30 degrees, and extremely humid. Oh, and it was 4am.

The taxi ride from the airport was a massive eye opener - Sadly I didn't get any photos because a) it was 4am and i'd been travelling for the best part of 24 hours, and b) I was a bit too gobsmacked...! We drove (very fast) through the slum area in (or near) Trivandrum. There's loads of stray dogs walking around (we saw a load of them on the beach the next day).. I can't really describe it though - there were people sitting outside there houses (small huts made of whatever was handy). It was really busy considering the time of night - but we hurtled through everthing beeping at all of it on the way. Still not entirely sure if they drive on the left or on the right side of the road, or when it's appropriate to beep the horn and flash your lights (as far as I can tell, 'a lot' pretty much covers it). We got to the hotel and went straight to bed until about 1pm on Saturday.