Mumbai was not part of our original itinerary for India, but since most flights to Goa from Madurai stopped in Mumbai, we decided to check it out for a couple of days. We also thought it would be a place where we would once and for all figure out some train tickets in person at the rail station due to our constant failures with the online registration system, but this was in vain, and will not be discussed further. (Breathe.) Full disclosure: We ate at Pizza Exp...

Madurai marks the end of our time in Tamil Nadu, and a visit to one of the most important sites - the Meenakshi Amman Temple. The temple is dedicated to the Hindu goddess, Meenakshi, and we again had the opportunity to hear some fascinating stories about Hindu mythology from a local guide on our city tour. Another star site, the Thirumalai Nayak Palace was mostly indoors and a nice reprieve from the heat and sun, so we spent a good couple hours wandering through ...

We are attracting a lot of attention in Tamil Nadu - probably because we seem to be some of the only foreign tourists at the temples sites we have been visiting. Many Indian tourists have asked to take photos alongside us, and some children have asked to have their photos taken in front of the temples just because they are curious to see how they look on Troy's camera - very sweet! We hired a private driver to take us from Pondicherry to Tiruchirappalli, via Chi...

"Pondy" (as the locals refer to Pondicherry), is lovely! First introduced to us through the book and movie, "Life of Pi", we are here because we enjoyed the scenes of the city from the movie, and it is also a natural break in the journey through southern Tamil Nadu. Pondicherry has over a million people living in it, but size wise compared to Chennai, it may as well be the town of Caledon. Leisurely cyclists, big leafy trees, a big promenade to stroll on frontin...

It is as if all our travel skills have been building up to be put to the test in our new country of India. Okay, India, we see you, and we are not backing down! We flew to Chennai via Kuala Lumpur to land last Saturday evening, and awoke to our first Indian breakfast buffet which was a new, exciting concept! We took our first auto rickshaw into downtown Chennai to see Fort St. George, which was a site of the British East India Company in the 1600s. And we saw a ...