A visit to a beach was on the cards, so planned to leave and head for Mamallapuram, a coastal town which was being recently attacked by the sea, a few of the buildings had just crumbled away. The heat which attacked us after we had been dumped off the bus in the middle of nowhere was unbearable. Sheltering from the heat in a two minute rickshaw ride (turned out we weren't quite in the middle of nowhere) we got a couple of recommendations for cheap places to sta...

As many of you already know, the back seats of buses, the rubbish suspension/driving over bumps in the road… But no, I had wedged my head in between the seat and the bags and was horizontal! It wasn’t the best sleep, but at least it was some sleep (with the occasional bump that flung my body in the air!). But before we were anywhere near Pondi, I experienced my first flat tyre. Everybody jumped off the bus, got eaten by mosquitoes, had a cup of tea and got ea...

Eight hours, three buses, a pee break on a mountain road, a boy catching his spew nearly projectile vomiting over us later, we arrived in the busy Indian tourist hill station of Kodaikanal. Being lead to a room by a tout who was calling me his friend, disappointed me as we were offered a kitchen table with a mattress and a single bed, higher than the price we agreed, having made us walk 5 minutes downhill with our packs, I announced the break up of our ten minu...

You can't come to India without any restless bus journeys and it makes your next sleep that much sweeter! I got into a drizzly Munnar scoping tea plantations with my sleepy eyes, in need of a cup of tea and biscuits. I made it to the hotel Dan was staying in, got a room and crashed. Slightly refreshed we decided to go on the hunt for a waterfall amongst the mist and tea plantations. The beeping of vehicles was relentless as our trek to the waterfalls was alon...

A pleasant train journey down and at the end of the line, I was invited by an overcast tourist town of Kanyakumari. I walked along the coast where people were bathing in the water, but couldn't see a clear definition of the three oceans' divide. Having been to Allahabad and seen the distinctive divide of two of the three rivers, I was looking for something similar. I went to a viewing tower where my peripheral vision was nothing but sea where I could see three di...