Munnar Munnar (do doo be do doo).

Our next stop was Munnar, famed for stunning views of miles of tea plantations. Our first impressions after the 4 hour bus journey weren't particularly great as it was pouring down with rain and really quite cold, well cold by Indian standards anyway! It was like being back at home for a bit. Scary.

Anyway, the weather cheered up the next day for our tour of the area, which included stops at several viewpoints, a waterfall, and a wildlife park (where I got roped into a 2 hour trek, and guess what... still no elephants!!!!)

The undulating hills of Munnar are incredibly beautiful, and can be best described as looking a bit like teletubby land. All I needed was for the sun to have a baby's face on it and the scene would have been complete.

Disappointing wildlife spotting but great tea plantations in Periyar/ Kumily

Kumily was a nice little town, and our hotel, Coffee Inn, was really good value in comparison to the horrible little room we'd had in Pondicherry, but we were extremely excited about the wildlife sanctuary. We booked ourselves on a full day jeep tour of the sanctuary, starting at a rather painful 5.30am.

We were really excited about the possibility of seeing wild elephants and tigers.... but instead the most exciting thing we saw was a giant squirrel! A few monkeys, wild dogs and bison made up the rest of our wildlife spotting. Such a shame. Plus we had a 3 hour trek to do after lunch which I wasn't aware of when signing up for the tour, and lets just say I didn't particularly enjoy that very much and vowed never to go trekking again (a vow which lasted a total of 48 hours!).

The next day was much more fun happily. We went to a tea plantation just outside of Kumily, where we got to actually fight our way through the bushes to befriend the tea workers, and have lots of photos with them. They were so friendly and loved seeing themselves on the digital camera! We then went to a spice garden, where we were bombarded with information about all the herbs and spices by our extremely knowledgable rickshaw driver.

In the evening, we had a great time on a cookery course. We helped to prep all the veg and then made bean curry, okra curry, pineapple curry (delicious!), egg curry, and parathas. The food was probably the best I've eaten in India, even if I do say so myself!

Going through hell to get to paradise!

As mentioned previously, Pondicherry was a wonderful place to spend a few days. Unfortunately, leaving there was not such a pleasant experience! We'd managed to get some tatkal train tickets on the posh AC2 class to Madruai, where we were going to spend a day exploring before heading by bus onto Kumily, the jump off point for Periyar national park. We first had to get an hour long train from Pondy to Vilupuram, where within 5 mins of getting on the train I was being badgered by an incredibly annoying Indian man (he gave me a gift of his pen in return for my fake phone number). After the ordeal of escaping him and that train, we had a couple of hours in this strange little station, kept company by bats, cockroaches, lizards and rats. Delightful. We stood by our platform, waiting patiently for our train to come. Of course, it was delayed. We waited, and waited, and kept being assured that our train was next. After about 2 hours of this, at 11.30pm, we became rather suspicious and tracked down the guy in charge, who informed us that actually the train had left from a different platform some time ago! Another train had arrived at this point, and he said that was the last train to Madurai. Nikki managed to get him to stamp our now useless tickets so that we could get on the train, and then made him run to help us find a seat somewhere on the train. He offered to put us in 2nd class unreserved, which is probably what you might imagine an Indian train to be like - people practically sitting on top of each other, and we were told to stand for the next 7 hours, which went down a treat I can assure you.

Anyway, after shouting that we need a bed, we ran to the other end of the train and got shoved into sleeper class just before the train left. With no allocated bed and an invalid ticket, you might not think things could get worse... until we managed to lose the invalid but stamped ticket. Now with no bed and no reason to be on that train, we basically had to hide from the ticket inspector for the journey. We found an empty bed which we sat on for a while, then Nikki kindly let me lie down for a bit whilst she sat on the floor with mice and beetles to keep her spirits up until a bed became available to her. What a nightmare of a trip! By the time we arrived in Madurai we had no desire to look around whatsoever, so we hopped straight on the bus to get to Kumily.

After 4 hours, we arrived. And all I can say is, wow! Lush vegetation, palm trees everwhere, the scent of flowers in the air, it was like getting to paradise after all those hours of torture!

A quick word about the honesty of Indian people

This is quite aside from my normal ramblings, I just feel that I've been so lucky recently that I need to share it with you! So far on this trip, we have had returned to us both of our cameras (one left on a rickshaw, one at a cafe), a camera case (fell out of a rickshaw and someone on a motorbike caught us up to return it), an ipod (fell off the back of the seat on a bus) and my small handbag, containing my money, debit card, ipod, phone, etc (left outside a hotel room when moving). All this tells you three things:

1) We're bloomin' idiots and should look after our belongings more carefully;
2) We're really riding our luck;
3) The people of India are extremely kind and honest. 

Delightful Pondicherry

I never thought the day would come where I saw Nikki talking French to an old Indian man in India, but hey, this is Pondicherry for you! We spent a few wonderful days scoffing our faces with creme caramels, chocolate mousses, wonderfully fresh fish and croissants (not in that order), and enjoyed our fair share of cocktails, wine and beer. It was like taking a mini break from our travels and just concentrating purely on gastronomic delights! The promenade was lovely to walk up, and there were loads of little stands sellig selling freshly chopped watermelon and pineapple for a few rupees. We also tried a coconut on the insistence of a friendly Indian man, where a lady chopped the top off, handed us a straw to drink the water, and then after handing it back she got the insides out for us to eat. Delicious!

Delicious fresh seafood.

We had a brief journey into the weird and wonderful world of 'The Mother' and Auroville, a place where a resident is asked to renounce all religions and wordly possessions (presumably to give them to the Mother and join her cult). The idea of Auroville is that its a place for people of all races to join together for a common goal of working on the land and helping the local community. Sounds good on paper but quite frankly, it was very strange!

We had a wonderful time relaxing in Pondicherry, which was a good thing as an ordeal of a journey to Kumily was to follow... more of that when I have more time!

Enjoying time for reflection on the promenade.

Opium tea in Jodhpur, wonderful times in Eggra, cremations in Varanasi and visiting Mother in Calcutta!

WARNING: this post is not suitable for kids without cutting out a few of the more gruesome facts!

Wow, I'm a bit behind with my blogging, we've been so busy for the last week or so, taking 12 - 15 hour train journeys here there and everywhere! I'll try and get my photos up as soon as possible but at the moment I'm in a funny little cubicle in the funny city of Chennai. More of that later.

So, after Jaisalmer was Jodhpur. We only had a day there, so tried to fit in as much as possible. We got up early and went in a jeep to a Bishnoi village just outside of Jodhpur. Our driver had only a sprinkling of English but boy did he like to use it. He repeated everything he said at least 5 times until we were ready to batter him with his own turban. It took forever to get to the village as he was very overexcited by wildlife on the journey, and kept insisting on us taking pictures of everything, including sheep! Very exotic. We went to a few little houses on the tour, the most interesting of which was a few huts with a family in, where the mans job seemed to be amusing tourists but drinking opium all day. He was almost blind from it I presume, and completely out of it. We had a sniff of the solid stuff and then politely refused to have a drink of the opium water. It felt too rude to turn down their chai as well so we drank that, in the hopes that it wasn't opium tea! No hallucinations occurred afterwards so I think we were safe.

We had a really tasty lunch at the jeep driver's house in a little kitchen/hut thing.

We had our jeep driver drop us off by Jodhpur fort, which was imposing but less so than the fort in Jaisalmer. The views of the blue city were impressive though (apparently they all painted the houses using violets to repel mosquitos, amongst other reasons). We had dinner at a lovely tranquil restaurant in the heart of a crazy market, and then went back to our hotel with the delighful 'Indian comfortable' bed (i.e. a 1-inch thick mattress which you could feel the wooden bed frame through. Great for my back as you can imagine).

The next day we headed off to Agra. It was quite dark when we arrived, and the first thing that struck us was the smell - thus the name Eggra (thanks Richard for the pun!) We then spent the next 2 days getting up for sunrise and staying out until sunset just staring at the wonder that is the Taj Mahal. It's impossible to describe how a building can be so breathtakingly beautiful, but it was from every single angle. I have literally hundreds of photos of it, but I'll try and not put too many on here, as the pictures really don't do it justice. We had a great time in Agra though, thanks to Richard and Sanj making us laugh all day!

How to spoil the world's most beautiful building - stick us in front of it being stupid!

After Agra came Varanasi. The Lonely Planet had made us think that it would be awful there, being constantly bothered by touts and beggers, but it was actually very relaxing and tranquil down by the ghats. Watching the Indians wash themselves in the Ganges was very interesting, mainly because the water is so filthy its apparently septic in some areas, yet this didn't stop them from completely immersing themselves in the water to wash away their sins. We took sunrise and sunset boat trips, and of particular interest was the burning ghat. This is where hundreds of corpses each day are first dipped in the Ganges and then cremated in a very public way. Apparently not everyone has to be burned and then have their ashes sprinkled in the Ganges - children for instance are already seen as clean of the sins, so they apparently have rocks tied to them and are then sunk in the river. Its hard to imagine how many bodies there are at the bottom of the river. What an incredibly interesting and different place to be.

Next stop was Calcutta, a very short stop before getting a flight down south. I was expecting to see real poverty there, much worse than anywhere previously, but actually I think the worst slums are kept very much away from the eyes of tourists. In fact, we had a very middle-class Indian experience here, as we went to watch a Bollywood film in a mall. The mall was completely Westernised, with pick and mix shops amongst the clothes shops (I was very excited by that!) and lots of chain restaurants. We enjoyed a Subway for dinner, it was so nice to eat something not saturated in oil. You know something is wrong when Subway is the healthiest dining option around! Anyway, we got our popcorn and headed in to the cinema to watch Patiala House, which was set in England, and about a Sikh man's journey to becoming an England cricket player. Although it was in Hindi, without subtitles, we were able to follow the plot as they strangely interspersed English sentences in the dialogue throughout, just enough to keep us involved! We actually really enjoyed the film.

The next day, we went to Mother Teresa's tomb and old room that she lived in from the 1950's until her death in 1997. There was a lot of information there about her life and her work, and it was incredibly inspiring to see what she had achieved in her lifetime, and difficult to imagine how she coped with all the desperate poverty and illness that she saw in the slums every day. I'll definitely be donating to her charity when I return to England.

So, finally, if you're still reading, we're up to date. We had a 2 hour flight to Chennai yesterday afternoon, and are planning a quick escape to Pondicherry in the next couple of hours for some French colonialism and promenade walking. It will be great to see the sea, it feels like we've been trapped inland looking at forts and temples for far too long!

Still here in Jaisalmer!

Well, after a tfew days of doing very little but managing the short walk to the rooftop restaurant, I'm starting to become mobile again, hurray! I'm still quite dosed up but much less so, and I'm now able to walk a fair distance without too many twinges. In fact, I got far enough yesterday to go shopping! Retail therapy always helps. I bought a beautiful wall hanging for my bedroom at home, and a pair of trousers.I decided to get an elephant one as they are supposedly good luck, and I certainly could use some of that! Today I intend to get out there again and find some matching pillow cases for the hanging.

Last night was a mini-disaster - we put our faith in Lonely Planet as we have so many times over the last three weeks, and went to a restaurant called Desert Boy's Dhani. We both fancied curries, and after making our order and waiting a little while, something in the kitchen caught my eye. Something small, black and furry with a long tail. Then another, and another... Just as we were deliberating leaving, our food arrived. It was really hot and seemed fresh so we ploughed in, and during the meal we were joined under our table by some delightful cockcroaches. To cut a long story short, my stomach is once again upset. I figure that this is the third bad thing that's happened during this trip, and therefore should be the last!

After our meal, Nikki spotted a sign advertising village safari's, which she was reall interested in. We may be going on this over the next day or two, which would be good, certianly a different experience. The manager in charge of the tours was a funny guy, he suddenly decided to start trying to read our personalities and predict our future. He was way out with Nikki but got quite a lot of his guesses right about me. Apparently Nikki will be having 2 children and for me, the sky's the limit as I like children so much! It was a bizarre experience but interesting, I now want to go and see a Guru and find out what they make of me!

Broken in Jaisalmer

There weren't many things I definitely wanted to do before I came to India, as everywhere I read about sounded great. One thing I did have in mind before the off though was camel trekking in Jaisalmer. So even though I was sad to say goodbye to Udiapur, I was really looking forward to being somewhere totally different and having a crazy desert experience.

We left Udaipur at 9pm on the 31st, and had a gruelling and torturous 13 hour bus journey to Jaisalmer. Our first bus was ok, and I managed to get to sleep in our coffin-like sleeping area after an hour or so. However, we were woken up at about 4am by the driver shouting Jaisalmer change, get off, mistake on bus, off to Jaisalmer.... So we begrudingly found our belongings in the dark and changed buses. The next bus was the same layout, but was so rattly that the windows kept sliding open to let in freezing cold air. There was no way to keep them shut so we just lay there painfully cold for 6 hours! When we finally reached Jaisalmer I had a back ache, but still managed to have a normal day. We had lunch at one of the many beautiful havelis, and then walked to the fort, and had a look around the palace museum inside. It had some interesting artifacts and pictures in, as well as offering a spectacular 360 degree view from the rooftop, where it was possible to see all the way to Pakistan (about 100kms from here, which means there are a lot of planes constantly flying overhead, and many military personnel scattered around the city, heavily armed).

We had dinner on the hotel rooftop with two lovely English girls, Elle and Sam, who we bonded with on the bus from hell. We booked up the camel trek to do together, and then headed out after dinner to get the money for the trip. This is when my back went. I have honestly never experienced such pain my life, the whole of the right side of my torso, front and back, went into mad spasm and it was all I could do not to shout out in pain. Ibuprofen and paracetamol didn't touch the pain so I called out a doctor to get something stronger and to check that I didn't have anything majorly wrong with me.

Today, the pain has reduced quite significantly but I still can't really walk for more than a minute or two before being in a lot of pain. This trip has been less than 3 weeks in duration so far and yet it's already completely destroyed me! Bad things tend to happen in three's so I seriously dread to think about what's going to happen next!!!!!!  

Udaipur - my favourite place so far.

We have now come to the end of our time in Udaipur, and we have had the most fantastic time. In fact, I'm tempted just to stay here for the next 6 weeks! It's a beautiful and enchanting city, full of lakes and palaces and temples. Our journey here was painfully long despite going the ultra posh AC chair class (lovely comfy seats at first but after 6 hours my bum was beyond painful!) The journey wasn't helped by the fact that we had to change lines when we were nearly there, and the train went backwards for a good 20 minutes!

We have been staying in the Udai Niwas hotel, which is very well located near the city palace and Picchola lake although the building work has made things rather noisy in the day. I forgive them the noise for the lovely hot showers we've had though, very much needed! On our first day we went for a day tour with a very friendly tuk-tuk driver (who later returned Nikki's camera after she'd left in on there - some people are incredibly honest here). He took us to a spice and vegetable market, which was huge and great fun. One lady selling the vegetables took a shine to us, and had our picture taken with her many times before putting bindi's on us, and some red powder just below our hairline going into our partings. We found out later that meant we were married - oops! We also went to the royal cemetary, which was full of huge memorial monuments for the Maharajah and other nobility. The guide showing us around had the job of burning the royals, which apparently takes 3 days. Until the 1940's if a Maharajah died, the wife or wives were expected to throw themselves into the fire. One king had 26 wives, and they all had to kill themselves! And if they didn't want to die, the family would apparently poison them and then push them in to keep their honour intact. Crazy and incredibly interesting. This has now been banned, and the last time a wife performed this ritual was in 1971.

The next day, we went first to Jagdish temples, which were quite small but with inredibly detailed carvings on the outside of the building, including some kama sutra of course! After that we made the short walk to the city palace and had a guided tour, which was quite infomative. The palace was very impressive, with many fine statues and everything carved from limestone. In the evening, we returned to the palace to watch the sound and light show, which was basically the story of how Udaipur and the palace came to be, and the various battles fought to retain thearea and keep it out of the hands of the Mughals. We went to a little restaurant for dinner called the Lotus cafe, which was playing Western music, which was actually really good to hear for a change. And they had jacket potatoes on the menu - double result!

 The view of the lake palace from the city palace.

On our final day in Udaipur, we got up early and took a 2 hour taxi trip to Ranakpur, a large Jain temple with I think over a thousand carved pillars, each one being unique. It was very beautiful and interesting to see the holy men around the temple. Unfornately they were only willing to talk or have their photos taken in exchange of money, which I found rather disappointing.

All in all, Udaipur is an incredibly beautiful city, my favourite place in India so far. I hope to return there someday, with an empty suitcase preferably to fill with all the wonderful rugs and wall hangings and art work available here!