At nineish we went across for our buffet breakfast at our hotel high on the hill. Apparently, buffets are generally not a good idea for travellers in India as eating food that's been sitting around lazily for a few hours can lead to stomach problems. With this in mind, I avoided the salads and started with Cornflakes and hot milk and then had the attendant egg minder to make me an omelette which was far too greasy for my delicate innards. But c'est la vie as they say in Kumily or Thekkady or Periyar or wherever I happened to be. On to some form of local curry with rice and a softish pancake type of accompaniment. Not delicious but fuel enough for the next several hours. This lot was washed down with mango juice which was very syrupy and coffee.

Away then for a more active day. The hotel organised for a rickshaw driver to collect us and take us around for the day. Apparently, 350 rupees would be enough to have him at our beck and call through the day! That's about £5!!!!! If you've never travelled in a tuk-tuk or auto-rickshaw, it's one of those experiences in life that you should try to do at least once. The three of us squashed into the back of the vehicle and went bouncing along over every pot hole as we zipped our way down to Kumily town.

First stop was the ATM and true to form it was guarded by an armed official. We arranged when and where to meet our driver -adjacent to the ATM- and then Alyson and Caitlin headed towards the shops. As a man, I don't possess the vocabulary to describe what they were looking for in any detail but Caitlin picked up an Indian style top and trousers for reasonable prices.

Again, we seemed to be the only Westerners wandering and every shopkeeper tried to get us into their shop to tease us with their spices, clothing or trinkets. We had bought spices in a spice garden in Munnar so we only ended up getting the obligatory bottle of water and some unfamiliar processed snacks. I was tempted by various curry flavoured crisps.

The shopping area was basically one fairly longish twisting street filled with a variety of shops and stalls. Everyone was so friendly and enjoyed sharing a sentence or two with us until frequently their command of English broke down and the conversastions ended in a smiling and sometimes an embarassingly lengthy pause.

We walked beside and tried to cross the busy main road avoiding huge colourful trucks, dozens of buzzing rickshaws, red open-aired buses, a growing number of motorbikers and several cyclists joyfully gliding through the mayhem. Wonderful fun. A feast for the senses.

And everywhere you looked there was something unfamiliar to the experiences of our normal lives -aged men carrying huge bags of whatever on their heads or shoulders across from one stall to another, a fieldful of flies feasting on mounds of festering fruit in an open to the many elements shop, men earning their rupees ironing clothes on the roadside, an overloaded truck being inspected by the local police at the border crossing with Tamil Nadu where a rickety barrier helped the local border force restrict traffic from entering Kumily too easily.

We walked past the barrier into Tamil Nadu territory just to say that we'd been there and it seemed that every building on the Tamil Nadu side was more delapidated and poorer and less modern than on the Kumily side.

Having retread our tracks, we then took the road where the tourist hotels were situated and came across one or two Westerners venturing toward some trinket shops. We loitered around the ground of a Catholic church for a short while until we finally came across a clean and welcoming coffee shop which to Alyson's delight also had home-made plum cakes. The walls of the cafe had framed balck and white photographs of Indian and English royal families on hunting outings with rows of the wildlife they had bagged in front of them. Apparently, there are only fifty or so tigers left in the Periyar reserve by now. George V and his hunting parties probably killed several multiples of them in his visits here.

If you are visiting Kumily / Thekkady, I would actually recommend staying in the rooms (called The Wildernest Rooms on the internet site) at the back of the coffee shop. They were keen to show us them even though we were in another hotel for our stay this time. Very impressive rooms -clean, tasteful, spacious, cheaper and closer to the town than our room in the Wild Corridor. If we were to come back to the area, we'd stay here!

We hurried back and got to to our meeting point at the appointed time of one o' clock having just popped in for a moment to a little shop for Caitlin to get postcards for her grandmother and father. Next stop was the Periyar Tiger Reserve. The entrance, where our driver sorted out paying the entrance fee to the reserve, was back down the lane past our plum cake coffee shop. Slightly disturbing to read signs prohibiting people from getting out of cars in the reserve for fear of being attacked by the wild life......as we bumped along the route in our fully open rickshaw.

At the car park, a few monkeys were in the welcoming party playfully leaping from the bonnet of one car to another. From here we walked with our driver to the ticket office for the boat trips on the huge lake. This area was a tourist magnet where we saw more Europeans and North Americans than at any time in India. A young woman from New York accosted us hoping to borrow a mosquito spray and then carried on to tell us about her adventures living and working as a volunteer in a remote mountain region of Tamil Nadu. Having previously worked on Wall Street, she was now involved in a project helping impoverished women set up small sustainable businesses. Apparently, she had spent a few days recently hidden away by the local villagers when there was a terrorist attack where she staying. And she being an obvious kidnap target!

In the back of my mind, I recalled something I had read about Periyar but couldn't quite recall the details. Everyone who had paid for the boat trip were allocated a specific bench seat and all on board were tied up into huge day-glow orange life jackets. Once we were away onto the calm waters of the lake, there was a no getting out of your seat rule and wandering about to take a photo rule which was strictly enforced by a bystanding official. The American woman was not happy and divested herself of her life jacket when an opportunity arose. The official caught sight of this and demanded that she put it back on. The American in spite of being a majorly forceful individual who was willing to challenge the instruction was not allowed to argue her way to remain unjacketed !! Strangely, for some reason though, there were two young Indian twin girls who weren't given jackets even though their father requested them.

By this stage, I knew what the reason was for this uncharacteristic focus on health and safety on this boat trip. It contrasted with every other situation in India we had witnessed when the rule was that you had to place your life in the hands of fortune or fate or whichever God you reckon is your guiding light. Less than a year ago, one of the boats we were on had sunk on the lake when many of the boat trippers moved across to one side of the boat to view some wild life activity and the craft collapsed killing 45 people. In light of this, many safety precautions have been put in place to prevent a reoccurance which is understandable.

The two hour boat trip, as a result, was unfortunately dreary and tedious. With restricted viewing, we spied an occasional boar, a few deer, a distant monkey, a family of otters and plenty of kingfishers. But that was it. No trippers seemed to enjoy the trip. It was somewhat of an ordeal. And certainly don't expect to see any tigers. For us, we were closer to wildlife in the car park with the monkeys. My advice to future visitors would be to avoid this attraction but do a guided trek in the reserve instead.

Never mind! We had enough time to reach a traditional Keralan martial arts show which lasted for an hour. Although it was clearly aimed at tourists and nobody else, it was well worth an hour of our time. When our driver finally arrived quarter of an hour after the performance, it was dark and he was extremely apologetic for being late. No doubt on other business!

He took us a short way to a very posh hotel next to the Wildernest Rooms Cafe where we ate earlier. We agreed to pay 1000 rupees for two adults and 500 for Caitlin -plus extras for drinks- for what we expected would be a magnificent meal. The meal -buffet I should say- was okay but no more than that. Some interesting curries to try but unless your intention is to keep refuelling until dawn, it really wasn't worth the money. We didn't need a huge quantity and the quality was but reasonable. I preferred our afternoon meal a few days earlier in a modest back lane vegetarian cafe in Munnar which cost us a tenth of the price. More fool us for paying to eat amongst the privileged French speaking tourists here at this hotel.

Our auto rickshaw driver had parked up and was ready at the end of the meal to take us back up to our hotel in the hills. He seemed happy to be given 500 rupees as payment for the day. Seemed so little when I think about how much we ended up paying for the buffet in the too pretentious French occupied hotel. Anyway, he's been booked for tomorrow.

Time for us to do some book reading - I'm enjoying the first book of the Stig Laarson trilogy- and for Caitlin to write her postcards- and then to sleep.

Next morning, after a similar breakfast to yesterday but minus the eggy concoction and mango syrup, we left with our rickshaw driver for town. A five minute or so drive and we made some quick stop offs for some chocolates and crisps from a shop by the ATM and at the Post Office to send Caitlin's postcards.

The plan was to spend some time at an elephant centre in the morning because Caitlin wanted to ride and then help wash an elephant. Unfortunately, the place we ended up at seemed to be owned by a good friend of our driver and the only activity there was a limited stomp around the restricted grounds of the centre on a bored elephant's back. Not an impressive place! But having mentioned to the driver that Caitlin would like to give an elephant a bath, he drove the rickshaw off to another centre who were willing for Caitlin to do this but in an hour's time.

Today was the first time apart from my constant cold that I was feeling energetic and not having to battle against stomach disorders. Unfortunately on the elephant's back in the first centre, Alyson started to feel queasy and unwell and wasn't up to hanging around until bath time.

Decision made then to return back to the hotel where Alyson spent most of the rest of the day sleeping in bed whilst Caitlin and I entertained ourselves with a variety of activities which included a few card games, dinner in the restaurant and a walk down to the swimming pool where I informed her I was not going to swim due to the cold monsoon season. And also it looked as though I hadn't been cleaned for quite some time!

Tomorrow away from the hills and down to sea level and the back waters in the Allappey area.