5/2/10 Mysore to Fort Cochin road trip from hell!!! The alarm went off at 5.30 to wake us up to meet the driver at 6am.We had agreed to meet him so early to avoid any traffic as it was 450km and there are only a few good roads on the way so it was going to be a long enough day without traffic too. The driver had very little English and we soon realised absolutely no road sense either. We drove South west towards Kerala and stopped on the way out of town to see t...

3/2/10 Bengaluru to Mysore Wednesday We arrived into Bengalores Yesvantpur St station about 4km out of town half an hour early after leaving an hour and a half late from Hospet. Somehow the driver had made up two hours but that explained the extremely bumpy ride. We'd had an awful 'sleep' on the Indian equivalent of bullet train. Our initial plan was to spend the day in Bangalore sightseeing after leaving our bags in a hotel, then get a night train to Mysore for...

31/1/10 Hampi Sunday We were up and out to get to the station for the morning train. A taxi driver gave us a tourist price to go a short distance to the station so we went with a more reasonably priced rickshaw instead. We arrived at the station where there was the usual security faff. Liz had to yell "oi" at the security guard to get his attention away from the paper and when she said about the pacemaker he totally ignored her and looked back at his p...

29/1/10 Panaji to Madgaon/Margao We woke up reasonably early to get a taxi to one of Goas bigger towns Madgaon or Margao as its also known. The newspaper had an update on the sexual assault case. The police had gone to arrest the main suspect and his work colleagues had tipped him off so he'd done a runner too...suprise, suprise !! He eventually got arrested in Mumbai where he'd tried to hide with famly but they'd turned him away. A lot of the town names have be...

27/1/10 Arambol to Panaji/Panjim We got up and had a shower , packed and got in a taxi to Panaji the capital of Goa. It is Indias most unique city and demonstrates that Goa was independent of the rest of India under ortugese influence. There is Portugese architecture and small lanes lined with red tiled Portugese houses with window shutters in contrast to other Indian towns. Panaji is quite small and has a river running through it as well as a creek the size of ...