Chennai was our last stop, our visa was about to expire, we had spent two months in India and it had just flown by. Aside from the obvious beauty of the country, the nature of which changed as we moved from state to state, we have strong memories of crowded cities, temples, forts, tuk-tuks, motor bikes, cows, very friendly people, even the vendors with their incessant patter were good humoured and did not "turn" when one said the final "no". The food was ge...

Mamallapuram, once an ancient historic town and bustling seaport, is now a beachside tourism centre with a group of Tamil monuments declared as a UNESCO world heritage site and apparently one of the most visited towns in south India. This was our final stop before Chennai, the hotel was next to the beach but like the rest of India in monsoon, no swimming allowed. However, the hotel had a nice pool and decent facilities which allowed us to "chill out" and we spen...

We were unable to book a train to our next destination (Pondicherry) because all the tourist level seats were already taken i.e. aircon and soft seatubg. At 7:30 am with a packed breakfast in our bag, we just turned up at the railway station and joined the locals on the lowest class of seated accommodation existing on Indian railways. The seats were hard, the carriage crowded and we were not seated together (Ryanair learned their seat allocation rules here). When...

In late July 2018, severe flooding affected Kerala state in India due to unusually high rainfall during the monsoon season. Kerala's worst floods in nearly a century, over 373 people died within a fortnight, while at least 280,679 people were evacuated, with all 14 districts of the state placed on high alert. 35 our of the 42 dams within the State were opened for the first time in history and all five overflow gates of the Idukki Dam were opened at the same tim...

This blog entry is just to mark on the map so it shows we went around the "horn" of India to get to Madurai i.e. the long way round. Kanyakumari is also the most southern town in India and the confluence of the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea