Kerala flooding was getting worse and many of the places we had planned to visit were now unreachable but the rains seemed to be abating so we just moved another 40 Kilometres or so down the coast to Kollam, with a view to coming back for the Snake boat races if they were rearranged. The journey was our first experience in India of using local buses. We boarded the bus along with the locals, the bus was overcrowded so we had to stand up and manoeuvre oursel...

The Nehru Trophy Boat Race - The spectacular and world-famous annual Snake boat races were to be the highlight of our Kerala jaunt but today they were postponed because of severe floods in Kerala. The race had existed for 66 years (the same as Dan) and this was the first time ever they were postponed. We had booked a hotel for three days close to the finishing line so that we could enjoy the festivities of this event but decided to go anyway. We arrived at t...

On our day of leaving our beach hut, we were told that there was a national transport strike ….. No Tuk-Tuks, taxis or buses and not sure about trains. We managed to hire a private car to take us to the train station and luckily our train was still operating and we arrived at Fort Kochi at about 3:00pm. On the first night Heather was keen to take in some culture and accordingly we went to a Kathakali performance. This is an Indian theatre experience of hig...

Destination Kannur in Kerala ….No trains, buses diverted half way round India because of landslide damage to roads - We hired a car and driver and set off through curved roads in a forest reserve, the scenery was lovely . When we neared our accommodation, the driver phoned for final directions ----- these took us well off the beaten track and the driver was getting visibly worried as we went down a lane touching the hedge at both sides. We finally arrived at ...

Our next stop was Mysore, we arrived by train in the mid afternoon and took a taxi to our hotel. The hotel was the Grand Mercure …… We had lapsed back into a better class hotel, complete with roof-top pool and fine dining restaurant ……. We must recover our backpacking roots. Mysore is famed for it's Royal Heritage and especially it's world heritage-listed palace which was a truly amazing building - and also the first place we had visited where the en...