We arrived in chennai at a reasonable time since we took the over night train, (14 hours). Train was reasonably comfy since we traveller 3rd class, air conditioned. Chennai was said to be the No1 place in India for harassment... The rickshaw drivers were evidence of this. Every one of them made sure they had tried their best, I suppose, at making a sale. To no avail, since we only had to walk a short distance from Eggmore station to the hostels. For £5 we foun...

The Palm hotel was only £2.50 each a night, it had the cleanest an most spacious rooms so far, and only being 100m from the beach, it's was perfect. The beach was a dangerous one for swimming due to having extremely strong rip tides and currents tearing across. The waves here are huge and make a good gauntlet for most the male population of the beach After a exhausting few hours for me and a lot of reading for Hannah we retired for a shower and some shade. ...

Allappey was described by our travel guide as an 'Indian Venice'. Despite two parallel canals running either side of the town, it's a pretty poor description. Although these canals lead to the famous Indian backwaters, which are used frequently by locals as a method of transport, food, washing and playing. We stayed one night here before making the exciting journey down through the backwaters to Kollam. The backwaters were really stunning and was a great plac...

Known for it's unique way of fishing, Fort Cochin was an stunning old town. Although having visits from large cruise ships including Q.E II, made it quite pricy. We were lucky and found a really tidy place to stay for a bargain price, next to Ballards Bungalow, a very pricy option next door. We had to get to the fort via a ferry from the main land. The original chinese fishing nets are the main attraction here, all still functional and quite fascinating to watc...

Oort was only a 70km journey from Mysore, although we went through a few tiger/elephant reserves and also ascended to 2300m, and therefore mastering vicious hair pin bends. It took a total of 5hours to cover the 70km. Once we arrived it was actually COLD!!! It was such an amazing feeling, like air conditioning the whole time we were there. Ooty is famous for it's chocolate, and since we hadn't had any 'normal' chocolate since we both left it was a real treat....