The God of Small Things This town has been immortalised by one of my (and KB's) favourite books; 'The God of Small Things.' We were only here to catch a local ferry to Kottayam and then catch a local bus to Kochi-phew! We spent the night in Alleppey and the town isn't very interesting but our trip on the ferry was brilliant. It took us through the local backwaters where we passed smug looking tourists on their posh house boats gently floating along the water ...

Going down saaaaffff As we flew into the southern state of Kerala we immediately noticed the extreme change in the landscape. We had flown from the majestic Himalayas into the smog fuelled Delhi and finally landed in the green tropics. There were palm trees as far as the eye could see and the air was damp with the humidity of the wet lands. Our taxi driver was dressed in the traditional lungi, a sarong like skirt worn by Indian men in the south. The people w...

Holy Cow it's Varanasi We thought we had seen poverty. We thought we had seen dirty pavements. We thought we had experienced Indian traffic. We thought we had seen a lot of cows. We thought we had experienced touts and beggars. We thought we had seen polluted water. We thought we had seen tiny walkways full of people and rubbish. We thought we understood India, until we came to Varanasi! Our train into Varanasi was delayed by a few hours but our lovely ...

Om Mani Padme Hum The journey from McLeod Ganj back to Delhi deserves an entry to itself. So enjoy, or don't as the case may be. We were sad to leave the mountains and were reasonably happy with the Volvo bus we had booked ourselves on. After travelling in South America no buses will ever compare but we set our expectations low for buses in India and from the outset it looked alright. We had booked the bus in the hope of getting some sleep; it is called a s...

Free Tibet We left our rude hotel owners at 9am and luckily checked out the same time as an Italian woman (Martina). We asked if she wanted to share a ride to the bus station and she said she was getting the toy train towards Dharmasla (McLeod Ganj). We had read a lot about the toy train but found it impossible to get any reliable information about it from tourist information and the internet. After some confusion of where the train stops we managed to buy ti...