The next morning we got up to find ourselves sick with burning fever, we also couldn't tolerate any light as it hurt our eyes and it hurt to move our heads.  Still they made us continue to walk to the river that morning, basically because we had been abducted.  We were too far into the mountains and too disorientated to find our way back alone and they knew it.  That was their plan. 

The next part of our journey saw us hiking through jungle, hot and bug infested but the hardest thing was maintaining balance and concentration with such a thirst and the fever.

A few hours later we made it to the river and the day was getting just as hot as the previous day but it was harder to take in our present state.  We crossed part of the river for an hour in a small rowboat and then transferred to a larger boat, which was also awful.  It was hot and noisy and the boat belched out choking fumes for the next four and a half hours, unbelievably we were then transferred onto another boat before we finally reached a village.  Tim was made to film village life and villagers singing protest songs and just when we were near collapse we were told that we would be sleeping in a different village and would have to board the boat again, we were too broken to put up a fight.  In two days we had eaten one hand full of rice and drank one litre of water and we were still sick as dogs.  The one Godsend about the next village was that they had chlorine so we could put some in the water and drink at last.  It tasted foul but we didn't care anymore.

In the morning we were made to film more stuff we didn't want and didn't need and so then went for the whole day to day, village to village, boat to boat.  Every day the same meal of rice and the stinking stagnant chlorinated water.  Eventually when they decided we had filmed enough of their plight they took us to the dam site and let us get the shot we had come for.  After our ordeal it definitely didn't feel worth it considering there is plenty of archive vision of the bloody thing we could have bought.

And so now they were going to let us go we had to return the way we came, the thought of it was crushing especially knowing the mountain trek we had to do to get back to the road where our car was (hopefully) still parked.

We made it out there two days later and returned sick, sore and full of resentment to the town where we had started out from what seemed like months ago.  If they had been honest with us we would have taken proper clothes, water and food and INSECT repellent, it's not the kind of arduous journey you take on wearing a t-shirt and carrying a bottle of water!  We would have been prepared and it would have been a wonderful adventure, the places we saw were incredible and people have an amazing story to tell but instead we were just left an anger towards them and a bitter taste in our mouths.

Now you would be forgiven for thinking that this is where it ends, but no, that night sleeping back at the hotel we were woken at 5:00am by a load banging at the door.  Tim knew it must be the police and scrambled to hide all the tapes and evidence or our true purpose there as all along we had insisted that we were tourists.  I was so scared I knew that the others that had been arrested were still in prison including the kids and we were already so sick and battered that I didn't know how much more I could cope with.  The police asked to see our passports and asked questions but eventually seemed to get bored and left us.  We didn't hang about, we were packed and out of there as quick as we could and back in the car for the tortuous 10 hour drive back to the airport.

We finally caught a flight back to Delhi and it was over, all we had to do was courier the tapes out of the country, as we could not risk them being found by Customs.  That done we slept for two days solid until we could get our flight out to Bangkok.  Between us, Tim and I had lost 6 kilos and it took a full two weeks to start feeling remotely human again.  Not going back to India in a hurry that's for sure!