I arrived in India I the early hours of last Monday morning to be greeted by the monsoon, brilliant! Although it seems somewhat of a cliché to regale stories of hair raising taxi rides in third world countries, the ride back from the airport at 2am without using the car's lights (the drivers like to save energy) and the use of the 'lean out front window hand to wipe rain off windscreen' technique both deserve a mention.

I flew in to Mumbai (formerly Bombay) the home of Bollywood and the very extremes of wealth in India. I am starting off on a overland trip which goes down from Mumbai through south India and then heads up the east coast through Chennia, Calcutta, and finally ending in Kathmandu in Nepal in November. Overlanding involves a huge off road truck with seating inside and a couple of guides from the tour company to do the organizing and the driving.

I met up with the tour group (of which there are 10) on the Monday morning. One guide is an aussie who has been doing these trips for years and seems to have been pretty much everywhere. There's also an English guide who is new and on his second trip. The tour group itself is very much a mixed bag. I'm sharing hotel rooms with a 21 year old American guy also called Chris who is prone to strange behavior involving wandering off randomly overnight and being seen days later. He is also carrying round a huge video camera and is making a movie of all the cultural stuff he comes across.

There's a 70 year old English bloke who's a bit of a sergeant major type with more than a penchant for a slug of whisky. He talks non stop and has a seemingly endless supply of stories, a bit of a character to say the least. There's a Spanish couple who speak virtually no English and have to rely on the tour guide's broken Spanish to get by. The bloke is called Jesus (cracking name) and his wife Maria-something-or-other. The something or other is almost impossible to say and I have now given up, why she won't let everyone just call her Maria I'll never know.

There's an English girl and Irish girl both in their mid 20's yo early thirties who are both normal and a Prague based middle aged English woman who falls into the same category.

An extremely large English woman called Trudy who speaks like a cartoon character and says 'yeah' and 'you know' a lot is only palatable in small doses. She will buy anything off all the hawkers so when they hassle me I've taken to point her out in the crowd and send them her way (this is quite amusing). There's a middle aged New Yorker woman who is a freelance writer and currently the subject of sexuality speculation among the rest of the group but personally I don't think is quite as strange as the others think.

We only had one day in Mumbai so myself and three or four of the others hired a minbus to do a bit of whistle-stop tour of the main sights including the gateway to India, Gandi's house, the beach etc. That first night there was a group meal in a travellers restaurant with the cheers of the Indian's in the background as they won the cricket 20-20 final against Pakistan. The streets were full of Indian guys in big packs outside shops and stalls peering at tiny screens, their cricket bonkersness factor is high.

The following day was spent entirely in the truck and involved a monster drive south to the state of Goa. The journey was slowed by Indians dancing in the street in almost every village we passed through as it was a religious festival for one of the most popular Hindu Gods, the half man half elephant Ganesh. At one point when we were tantalizingly close to our destination, the road was completely blocked and we had to wait a half an hour or so for them to finish their prancing about and get out the way so we could pass. The wait was however spent dancing with the exuberant Indian blokes that jump around behind a car with loudspeakers on the back in the shadow of a Ganesh statue on a truck. This was fun until one of them pinched my bum which I didn't like at all and promptly stopped.

Goa an increasingly popular tourist destination and is made up of beach resorts ranging from Benidorm style built up hotels to sketchy village resorts with tracks and temporary structures full of dreadlocked Israelis fresh from military service. We stayed in a village called Arambol with fell into the latter category but despite it's downmarket appearance was the home of some decent restaurants and cheap seafood. Unfortunately the rains have not yet dispersed and we only had one day of sunshine here, not a place to be off season. Only really pottered around on the beach, drunk the local Kingfisher beer, and ate food.

It will be of little surprise that I have already acquired the nickname 'team table hoover' with the group. Long (bordering on rude) stares at other's unfinished dinners were the main protagonist and I am now always the first to be offered anything remaining at meal times.On the way out of Goa on the Thursday the truck broke down. This meant half a day spent hanging around in a Goan village while the guides attempted to track down a welder to fix the truck. Apparently the same problem occurred on the last trip coming down through north India to Mumbai. Nothing could be sorted by nightfall as the Indian mechanics cocked up the weld which meant it had to be ground off at a workshop and redone. Luckily the local villagers (typical Indians, keen eye for a commercial opportunity) were on hand to find us a hotel and arrange transport for the following day in minibuses.

While one guide stayed back to sort the truck out, the other guide and the group headed further south on a long driving day to a small town called Halebid to see a Jain temple and another temple at a place called Belur where we overnighted. The hawkers at Halebid were both persistent and numerous. My two defence tactics are to stare blankly into the distance when they are shoving an elephant carving into my face asking 'where you from?' and 'good quality' or buying something to hand (on this occasion it was bananas) and trying to sell this to them.

The next day I reached the lowest point on the trip so far. When I woke and headed downstairs at the hotel the guy on reception informed me that the hotel restaurant wasn't open for breakfast, a complete disaster in a small town like Belur where it is the only eatery! In a state of utter despair I scoured the streets of the village begging for food, finally I found a dirty guy selling coconuts and got him to cut one open for me. It just had to do.After this place we headed down further to the city of Mysore famous for a palace and sandalwood. Thankfully the second guide turned up at the end of the first day here with the now functioning truck. This was a particular relief as all the rucksacks were in the truck and a fourth day spent wearing the same clothes didn't overly appeal.

Mysore is full of groups of India teenagers wanting to take pictures of me on their camera phones because I look like Brad Pitt (their words not mine). I'm all too happy to oblige and usually get a photo in return and provide them my autograph which they inexplicably gobble up.

Tomorrow we head down to Ooty which is a former hill station outpost of the Raj and then on to the state of Kerala for a tour of the famous backwaters. I've stuck some photos on the blog too.