Happy Birthday to me!

We've been having an amazing time since we left Madurai, which was also cool. First we went to Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Keralan hills, which is an amazingly beautiful area. We went on an early morning wildlife spotting trek which mainly involved spotting leeches, mainly attached to me as leeches appear to share the love all biting insects have for attaching themselves to me (seriously the rest of the trekkers nicknamed me the leech detector, it's not fair). We also saw this huge black and yellow spider in it's web. After we'd all taken photos of it, with our hands allmost touching it to show the size of the thing, our guide informed us that it was 'one of the few posinonous spiders found in Periyar'. Which was nice. Then we trekked to the top of a very steep hill and were rewarded with the sight of wild elephants on the neighbouring hill which made everyone very excited except for Paul, who stood there loudly making remarks like 'I've seen them much closer in the temples' while we all tried to ignore him. We also saw the Malabar giant squirrel and some Nilgiri monkeys and the scenery was very beautiful. Then we took a boat trip around the lake in the sanctuary, which we'd been told was not very good for wildlife spotting, only to see loads of sambar, wild boar and two more groups of elephants including a big herd with some babies drinking right by the waters edge which actually managed to impress Paul.
After a slightly eventful bus journey down to the backwaters, during which our driver and most of our fellow passengers kept having to get out and hide as he was technically breaking a strike (which was due to end in an hour), we caught the ferry through some beautiful little canals to Alleppey where the hotel we had booked for my birthday was located. We got picked up by a very nice boat which took us to our hotel, which consisted of 12 little wood cottages surrounded by palm trees on the edge of a lake. Our room was lovely with a big outdoor shower under the palms and the sun was shining for the first time in days and we had the pool to ourselves....all in all it was a perfect day. Paul also arranged for an amazing bouquet of flowers about the size of me to be delivered at dinner (they were meant to be in our room when we arrived but weren't so we also got a free sunset cruise. Which was nice). The manager had promised to do it 'subtly - she won't even know it's going to happen' which apparently meant assembling almost the entire staff and then coughing loudly until Paul realised what was going on. They all hovered behind a bookcase as if Paul was going to propose and to entertain them I asked Paul to sing 'Have I told you lately that I love you' and, due to our state of ludicrous overexcitement and some Keralan wine, he did so quite loudly which they seemed quite disturbed by. We were debating whether he should jump on a table to continue the performance or just give up and actually propose when some other guests turned up and we realised we should really just go to bed. The next morning I had a massage with sirodhara which is when they pour oil on your head - travel TV programmes can't seem to go near Asia without the presenter having it done - and, once I'd got over being naked in front of a complete stranger, and the urge to turn to the camera and say 'this is very relaxing and one of a number of treatments offered by the hotel', it was one of the most relaxing experiences of my life. Anyway I'll stop gloating about my birthday now and say thank you to everyone for their messages and thanks also to Paul for shoehorning the date into his last post so only a few people forgot (if you are one of those people I am no longer talking to you. I may be 24 but I'm not a grown up). And, apologies for being very soppy, but thanks to Paul for making it the best birthday ever xx.
Right before I actually make someone vomit, I'll go and find him.....
Sophie xx