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Other entries in Trivandrum

"Where do you want to go?"

After seeing all there is to see in Kanyakumari, we moved on to our next port of call: Kollam. With no direct bus to Kollam, we would need to make a change at Trivandrum. When we arrived, it was pretty late at night - total darkness apart from the lights at the bus station. We asked a few people which bus was going from there to Kollam, and were pointed in the direction of one that was just pulling out, absolutely overloaded with people. Doing our best Spiderman impressions, we sprinted (well, waddled really - huge packs on our bags after all!) after it, jumping up into the open doorway, just in time for both of us to get on before it disappeared into the distance. It was rammed, and it looked like we were going to have to stand up in the aisle for the entire journey, but hey, at least we'd got onto it.

After a few minutes the ticket blokey asked us where we were going. Our reply ("Kollam") was met with a look of confusion. A guy sat next to us, who was fluent in English, informed us that this bus was not going to Kollam. Great. The conductor rang the bell, the driver stopped, we got out on the side of the road not having a clue where we were. We asked some locals how we could get back to the bus station, but they kept asking where our final destination was. "Where do you want to go?", they asked. "Kollam", we said. "Kovalam", they heard. They all assumed we meant Kovalam. Maybe it's because it's a big tourist destination, or maybe we were just pronouncing Kollam totally wrong, i'm not sure. One guy even tried to insist that they are the same place! We were standing on the side of the road, with well-intentioned locals trying to help but failing to understand that we didn't want to go to Kovalam...we began to despair...

...until we finally flagged down a Boss who took us back to the bus station, where we asked a guy in the actual ticket office which bus was going to Kollam (why we didn't do this in the first place, i'll never know, but you live and learn). He pointed us onto one that was, you guessed it, just pulling out to leave - another Spiderman-style action scene followed. It was rammed, and it looked like we were going to have to stand up in the aisle for the entire journey, but hey, at least we'd got onto it - the right one this time.

Onwards to Kollam!

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