Day 30 - Arriving in Ernakulam we had more rickshaw luck as our driver actually asked locals for directions and drove us around until he found our destination without demanding a single rupee extra. We had a warm welcome at Costa Gama Homestay and enjoyed a cool shower in our immaculate room before heading out to explore Fort Cochin. Having received recommendations from everyone we mentioned Kerala to we booked a backwater cruise for the following day before walk...

Day 27 ctd - Hoping for any standard of room that did not have mosquitos we headed for the New Guest House run by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. For Rs. 200 a night our expectations were basic but we disovered a lovely clean bug free room with balcony. The only rules were 10.30pm - 5.30am curfew, no smoking, drinking or eating in rooms and shoes off inside and in return we got a pretty courtyard garden and rooms labelled with personality traits (Heroism seemed fitting...

Day 29 ctd - From CMBT the 15B took us and our apparantly people sized bags (Rs. 8 for us, Rs. 8 for backpacks) to Chennai Central where we located left luggage before heading to Egmore for a lunch of bruschetta and lasagne. The Government Museum and National Art Gallery were interesting to wander round, though a few too many stuffed animals and men on cell phones following us for our tastes - more dinosaurs than Hyderabad though! With time to kill we did what we...

Day 26 - Arriving at Chennai Central we caught a prepaid autorickshaw to our hotel - not as straight forward as it should have been! On first inspection Hotel Mallika Residency seemed nice enough, even having a balcony, and we enjoyed our cool showers before heading out. While walking we were briefly halted as a police escort convoy drove past, sadly not for us. After walking through Chennai's very quiet streets we arrived at Fort St George, passed through "...

Day 22 - Arriving there early (but late) at 6am into Hyderabad we made it to Hotel Geetanjali (A Home Away From Home) to our surprise we found a clean, bug free room. After a quick nap we went to a quick nearby only open cafe and had Dosa and our first Idli (rice cake). We walked through Hyderabad to the State Health Museum where we learnt about every possible contagious disease from 1950's style wax models and diagrams (Kishor - I'm questioning the quality of yo...