Hello People,

We hope you are all well because we have not been! Food poisoning. Of the worst kind. We had some dodgy (didn't seem dodgy at the time!) rice at Chennai train station just before going to Mysore and ended up having to spend 5 days in bed and toilets in a hotel there. Nice. But we did get to see some of Mysore in the end and it was beautiful. We went to see the Maharaja's Palace. It was very big and ornate and gold and flashy. Beautiful stained glass windows and very colourful rooms. It even had elephants and camels to ride on. If you go on a Sunday night you get to see it lit up with 50,000 lightbulbs but we were too ill. But pictures of it are nice.

We are now stuck in Bangalore. We wanted to get a train straight to Hampi but there are no tickets for 5 days. The people in front of us in the queue got the last two tickets for that night! Typical. Bangalore is actually alright apart from the fumes! We went to MG Road (everywheres main road is called MG road) in the evening which looks amazing. Tonnes of lights and neon signs. Its very western and expensive but its a nice change. There are quite a few things to do in Bangalore- Planetarium, Aquarium etc and we are hoping they won't be too expensive.

Backtraking to after Pondicherry- next we went to Kanchipuram the"Golden City". The day we went to visit all the temples it chucked it down but it was actually quite cool to see them in the rain- less poeple anyway. Then to Chennai- everywhere we went the thing we wanted to do was closed- temples, art galleries etc. So Chennai was basically a waste of time and it gave us food poisoning! hmmm...we hate Chennai!

Anyway. things are back on track now and we can't wait to get moving again. Bye for now. Love you all loads.

xxx

p.s. Tara do you have an email address- we will email you all the tips and things wehave discovered!