Following our last blog we have been briefly into two other Indian states: Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The reason for venturing into the former was to visit the royal palace in Mysore designed by an anglo-indian architect at the turn of the 20th century. It was impressively opulent. Our initial question on entering Mysore was ' why are all the cows yellow? ' The answer; there was a cow festival. Whilst there we also found an excellent historical bike tour of the island of Srirangapatna. We'd never heard of it previously but since then references pop up everywhere. The tour was made even more memorable thanks to the humour of the Yorkshire guy who ran it.

From here we went southwards (into Tamil Nadu) and upwards by bus to the 2000m high tea plantations in Ooty and Coonoor. It was fantastic to be away from the heat and humidity of the plains for a few days. After a bit of trekking and sightseeing we headed back into Kerala. However, that journey was a bit lengthy as we had to contend with a Kerala transport strike, a broken down taxi and a closed road through a tiger reserve. The experience revealed the indian willingness to please and our ability to just go with flow. In the meantime Fran came to a temporary impasse with south Indian food breakfast, noon and night and we were forced to seek out some western treats for a couple of days.

Following some more spectacular scenery around the tea plantations of Munnar we stopped at the Thettekkad bird reserve - said to be one of the best in India. It certainly lived up to its reputation. Our experience was enhanced by the homestay we'd chosen and a lovely group of Bangalore birders whose enthusiasm and sense of humour was contagious. We must have seen in excess of 40 different species.

Finally we hit the Keralan coast and backwaters again around Alleppy and Kollam. Here we had a watery time in a mix of canoes, kayaks and ferries plus will celebrate Andy's birthday. So with a month left to go we fly back to Sri Lanka on 9th Feb and get on our bikes again.