We have left Fort Cochin a little later than expected and caught a local bus on a bumpy but pretty road south to Alleppey. Alleppey is a bustling market town on the shore of a lake connected by a labyrinth of canals and lakes to villages and towns in the area. We were excited about hiring a house boat - a converted old rice barge - to cruise through the backwaters. When we arrived we found it very easy to find boats with owners willing to hire out their ...

Interwoven with countless rivers, backwaters and canals, the coastal state of Kerala, meaning land of coconuts, is without a doubt our favourite part of India so far. We arrived into Ernakulam in the middle of one of the incredibly heavy, although usually brief monsoonal downpours which inevitably leave you at the mercy of the auto-rickshaw drivers... This time was no exception, although, now armed with a little local knowlege and the essential haggling weap...

The bus from Mysore was a little longer than anticipated. We took a stopping bus and not an express. This meant we saw a lot more of the rural countryside and it was worth it, really stunning views coming down from the Western Ghats. A local guy sitting opposite us next to his wife and 3 kids shared his lunch with us, a rice dish with fruit and chilies – yum! Something we have noticed is that the further south in India you go the friendlier the people g...

After the huge metropolis of Bangalore, we were happy to get back to a small town and looking forward to seeing Mysore, India’s sandalwood capital. We fought our way through the auto-rickshaw drivers and walked a block away to our hotel...The Ritz! (We knew we’d get to stay there one day!) For the princely sum of 400 rupees (less than 5 pounds) we’ve got huge rooms, kitted out with old colonial furniture, our own living room and a restaur...

The train journey to bangalore was great. We had booked the tickets at a travel agent before – hastle free at a small commission charge. The tickets cost over 3 times as much as the previous train journey for the same distance. This was because we had reserved our seats and gone up a few classes to 2-Tier Air-Con. This means we each had a full bed for the night and probably the most comfortable nights sleep in india. The beds in most of the guest houses...