Kollan and Allepy are the gateways to Keralas fascinating palm fringed backwaters and has over 900km of navigatable canals. We set off from VArkala to Kollam, the first drop off point for the backwaters and did an 8 hour cruise from Kollam to Allepy the most popular drop off point. The scenery was stunning and we went through on a boat with a top deck. We saw all the local villages and village people. Its serene quiet and a milllion miles away from the India as w...

We arrived to Varkala, our first stop in the state of Kerala. It is a wee village on the coastline, the beach is clean (hurrah!), and the shops and restuarants are situated on a palm tree'd cliff overlooking the beach, with a little path running around the cliffs. The train trip there was one of the most scenic trips so far - rice paddy fields, palm trees as far as the eye can see and lovely mountains as a backdrop. Its been very aimed at tourists tho and there i...

Madurai and Kanniyakumari Madurai: The temples in Madurai are the most special I have seen yet. We arrived into Madurai from Ponders at about 6am, and the sun was coming up behind the Meenakshi temple complex from the roof of our hotel balcony. I almost cried when I saw it. 4 large temples with intricate colourful carvings surround smaller temples on the inside. When you go inside the complex has an amazing feel and on one day we came across an elephant, 3 ca...

Mallalapurum and Pondicherry. We took a bus to a little beach town called mallalapurum. It was just fantastic! Very quaint town that makes its liveliihood from carvings. Every litle store has carvers at work and a single carving the size of a fist can take 10 days to finish. Its pretty amazing seeing how skilled they are. The town also has a huge bunch of amazing temples which we biked around for the day. We also attempted to bike 28kms to another temple, but m...

We made it to Chennai and realised the rickshaws aren't bargainable and they totally over charge you. I was a little frustrated after the bus ride from Hyderabad and nearly yelled at the guy who told me it was 20kms into the city when it was only 10km. We found a reasonable place to stay and slept for most of the first day there. We went out to a couple of nice eatieries, but Chennai is so large and spread out, its hard and takes time to get anywhere. We made fri...