Travelling India 2007/08

Day 124, Shillong [Friday 4th April 2008]

2009-04-12T02:47:00.000-07:00

After yet more refreshing cuppas of rich, strong Assam tea we get a bus towards Shillong, a 4 hour journey out of Assam and into Meghalaya. Then we swap buses and spend another 4 hours climbing slowly up to Shillong, watching people through the windows enthusiastically chewing paan. They seem to be really committed paan chewers up here.

Shillong, we discover, is a grotty, busy, noisy city, lacking any of the charm and possibly fresh air one might expect from a hill station. Although it's high up in the hills it seems to be heavily industrialized. The hotels, too, are grubby and overpriced.

The people here have the familiar northeastern look - strong east Asian features mixed with Western clothes - skinny jeans are in. There are also Khasi tribal people here from the surrounding Meghalayan hills. They wear distinctive gingham-check 'aprons' - a strip of material wrapped around the body and clipped at the shoulder.

Everybody here chews paan, or betel nut. Everyone carries with them a small package consisting of several lumps of nut and some betel leaves smeared with white paste, all wrapped up in a large leaf and tied with an elastic band. Men, women, children, they all have the telltale red stained teeth and gums, the bloody red lips.

That night at the Centrepoint hotel we eat delicious chicken kebabs from the tandoor, and I finally find masala Coke on a menu, although it turns out to be the same old stinky, eggy masala that I hate.

At our hotel, the Hotel Monsoon, which resembles a doss house, we watch the disarmingly childlike figure of the Dalai Lama on an NDTV interview. He is relating how he was discovered as the reincarnation of the previous Lama, and how he later used to cheat during his tutelage by looking at the answers to questions over his teacher's shoulder!

Day 123, Kaziranga [Thursday 3rd April 2008]

2009-04-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

Our alarm goes off at 4.45am, waking us up for 'bed tea' delivered by one of the lodge staff. At 5.10am we get a jeep into Kaziranga National Park, where we then transfer onto the back of an elephant to go on safari! The elephant lumbers through the early morning misty glow, the thick grasses getting taller and taller until they completely surround us. The elephant occasionally grabs a trunkful of grass to snack on.

Suddenly we arrive at a large pond and see a rhinocerous, less tan 15 metres away. She is slowly submerging herself in the water. She goes halway in, stops for a minute or two, then pushes into the water completely and climbs out the other side, leaving a tide mark high on her bony back. The grassy plains around us are dotted with rhinocerous, and despite their huge size the trunks of their bodies are surprisingly thin, their ribs clearly showing through the stretched grey skin. The armour plating is thickest where the skin folds around the joints. They look like prehistoric Transformers.

We walk through the grass for an hour or so, spotting storks, monkeys, swamp deer and bison, before dismounting and heading back to the lodge.

For lunch we go to a tiny dhaba outside the park where I get a delicious dal fry and paratha, which comes with a great sour mustard chutney and a sour-ish salad. At 2pm we go back into the park for a jeep safari, which will enable us to get much deeper into the park. We spend 2 hours in the vast western region of the park, which is a mix of grassy plains and forest. Here we see dozens of rhinocerous, including some tiny baby ones about 2 or 3 feet long. We see wild elephants bathing in a lake, bison, deer and so many birds. It's a beautiful, beautiful park. We can't believe the number, and accessibility of, rhinocerous we see.

Later in the day we see some truly gruesome pictures of rhinos that have been poached, hunted for their horns, their horns hacked off. It's really distressing, but it's also reassuring to hear the Kaziranga park is doing very well in preventing this sort of poaching.

That night the earth moves for us - literally! Around midnight there is an earthquake, and the hotel wobbles back and forth like jelly for a few seconds.

Day 122, Guwahati [Wednesday 2nd April 2008]

2009-04-12T02:03:00.000-07:00

We arrive 5 hours late into Guwahati, in Assam, at 11.30am. We pass the smouldering remains of a slum beside the railway tracks, a disturbing site. We later find out that the fire in the slum was started by a mosquito coil, and went on to cause some nearby LPG gas cannisters to explode. It killed 4 people and injured many others.

At Guwahati there are no buses today to Kaziranga National Park, a World Heritage site, where we're headed. Guwahati itself looks pretty run down and we don't really fancy hanging around much. This area has also become known for violence and terrorism from north-eastern state separatist groups. So we hire a jeep to take us to the park, whoch costs Rs. 2500. 2 men come with the car, and we scream down the highway at nerve-shredding speed. We have a couple of near misses with stubborn goats and cows, and stop at a dhaba for some basic food.

As we near the park we stop to look at wide plain full of rhinocerous and gaur. We finally arrive a few hours after we set off from Guwahati, at 5pm. We check in to the Assam Tourism lodge 'Aranya', have a beer and a typically sweet fish curry and listen to the exotic sounds coming from the birds in the trees all around. Despite the large and comfortable lodge it feels like we're miles away from any kind of civilization.

Day 121, Darjeeling [Tuesday 1st April 2008]

2009-04-12T01:59:00.000-07:00

We taste a few different varieties of Darjeeling tea at the Nathmulls tea shop. Apparently the tea up here is very light, almost delicate. The man behind the counter says rather sneeringly that the kind of tea we usually drink in England is synonymous with the darker, stronger blends from Assam. We pick up a 'First Flush' (picked in Spring) medium range tea, very fresh and clean tasting, and also buy a few packs to send home. At the post office we post back a weighty package containing my Nepali kukhri, some Tibetan handloom material and a few other bits and bobs.

We get a shared jeep down to New Jalpaiguri railway station, a 3 hour ride through rich green tea estates. At NJP our train is running 5 hours late, so we sit on our rucksacks and read our books until a tatty old train arrives. I listen to the new British Sea Power album I bought in an internet cafe in Darjeeling, finally getting to sleep around 2am.

Day 120, Jorethang, Sikkim [Monday 31st March 2008]

2009-04-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

A clear day! We finally get a great view of the entire Kanchenjunga range!

We get a shared jeep down to Darjeeling via Jorethang, a few hours ride through beautiful, tidy tea estates. The staff at the Bellevue remember us and excitedly tell us they have our passports and money, which one of the trekker's hut found under the covers of a bed. We meet up with Santosh too, and he mentions the possibility of a tip for the lodge at Kalapokhri.

We spend a few hours on the internet, uploading recent photos and emailing friends and family. Kunga restaurant is shut, apparently they are on a Tibetan procession down in Siliguri, so instead we go to the downstairs bar at Glenary's and have a couple of beers before heading to bed.

Day 119, Tashiding [Sunday 30th March 2008]

2009-04-11T03:59:00.000-07:00

We get a shared jeep from Tashiding back to Pelling via Legship and Geyzing, where I eat a deepp fried potato sandwich for breakfast. At Pelling it's a grey, rainy day so we hang out at our hotel eating snacks and watching some TV.

We do manage to hike up to the Pemayangtse monastery, up a winding path on the outskirts of Pelling. There's a ceremony taking place there, and it's full of monks. The chanting is deep, rumbling and sounds completely alien. Young monks sit following the prayers in books. Long, low tables are spread with food and tea. We pass through and look around upstairs. When we go back down the ceremony is over, and the monks spill out onto the lawn outside, next to the worn circle in the grass which is part of another ceremony.

Later we have a beer and watch the fascinating, and horrible, documentary 'Grizzly Man', about a sad, troubled fantasist Timothy Treadwell.

Day 118, Tashiding [Saturday 29th March 2008]

2009-04-11T03:40:00.000-07:00

Over breakfast of aloo paratha (potato filled breads, the best trekking breakfast you'll get in India. You can even wrap them up and take them with you for lunch) and masala tea the Indian owner of the restaurant advises us to trek to Tashiding via two monasteries, Dubdi and Hongri, high above Yuksom. It's a 7 hour trek, longer than we had planned, but it's a lovely sunny day so we go for it.

It's a step 45 minute walk uphill to Dubdi, the oldest monastery in Sikkim, built around 1701. A monk is inside chanting and making offerings, while a small child wanders around hitting things with an alarmingly large knife. Inside the gloom of the monastery are statues of Padmasambhava, and the three founding llamas of Sikkim. One of them is holding a human thigh-bone trumpet and a human skull bowl. There is a bowl of uncooked rice with money pushed into it. We gingerly follow the knife-wielding child up the stairs, his weapon clunking noisily against each wooden step, and find a large statue of Gautham Buddha.

Outside a friendly bloke makes us salty Tibetan tea, chats about his time as a guide in Assam, and points us on the way towards Hongri. It's a beautiful walk through farms and villages to Hongri gompa, situated hig on a windy hill. Everyone says hello and asks where we're going. Tiny kids shout long-distance 'namaste's from hilltops miles away, giggling and waving. At Hongri three laughing children emerge from a small hut. Who knows what they were doing?! They go and fetch someone to unlock the gompa for us. Inside it's bare and simple, in contrast to the elaborately decorated and muralled ones we've seen.

We eat our lunch - samosas - on the windy hillside, then carry on to Tashiding. It's another fine walk, mostly downhill, past yak herders, old Nepali men in suits and caps, pretty Nepali children staring mutely. We pass another gompa, Silnon, manned by a solitary young boy. Then we get to Tashiding, a tiny village with one main street and a monastery high on a hill behind it. They have a festival called Bumchu here.

We get a hotel (Rs. 200) then a quick snack of tea and samosas, and set off up the steep 2.5km climb to the monastery. We're racing against the light, and finally arrive at twilight. It's a peaceful place, with several buildings dotted amonst lawns, including one that's specially built to contain the 10ft high prayer wheel inside.

Behind the monasteries are several dozen chortens of varying sizes, including a bright, shiny gold one. The view reminds me somewhat of the trullo filled town of Alberobello in Puglia, southern Italy, with its crowded, alien geometry. I spin the prayer wheel before we leave, pushing with all my body weight to get it going. At this point all the lights in the area go off - on the hill, in the town below and in the hills and valleys surrounding us for miles. What have I done?! Everything is pitch black, and the quietness and silhouetted chortens all around are considerably spooky. We begin carefully walking down the rocky path back to the town. About halfway down all the lights in the landscape suddenly come back on. It's like turning on the Christmas tree lights! Tiny dots of light sprinkle the hillsides.

For dinner the owner of the hotel cooks us a delicous, simple Sikkimese meal - rice, dal, sabzi and a yummy chutney made with green chillies, mint and cottage cheese. We have a couple of Hit beers too, then hit the sack.

Day 117, Yuksom [Friday 28th March 2008]

2009-04-11T03:29:00.000-07:00

We trek from Khecheopalri Lake to Yuksom, the first capital of Sikkim. It's steep downhill again — it's all hills around here! — steeper than yesterday, and hotter too. But there are gorgeous views of the river valley and the terraced farmland all around. We have lunch again with the remainder of the bakery bread, plus some honey and pineapple jam we bought.

We arrive in Yuksom earlier than expected, and get a room in a trekker's hut — a simple wooden house, but clean and warm. We visit the Coronation Throne, where 3 monks ('Yuksom' means '3 monks') crowned the first King of Sikkim in 1641. A man sees us and invited us into his school to meet the children he is teaching. It's a Buddhist school, a simple one-room stone building. They are learning to write English numbers.

We visit the Holy Lake, then have an early dinner of Sikkimese food, which tends to be less spicy than plains Indian food. We get rice, dal, chips, sabzi (vegetables) and a delicious Chutney made with green chillies, mint and yak cheese!

Back in the hut a raging thunderstorm confines us to our quarters for the rest of the night. Lightning flashes and the rain clatters against the corrugated iron roof.

Downstairs a card school operates by candlelight.

Day 116, [Thursday 27th March 2008]

2009-04-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

First we go to the SP to extend our Sikkim permits. As we arrived here late we need an extension to allow us to remain in the state legally. We hitch a lift in the back of a jeep, then work our way through labyrinthine corridors of the police offices, asking everyone we meet which office is the SP's. Clutching our permits in our hands, we barely get the words "Ess Pee" out of our mouths before they're already pointing one way or another.

Eventually we find him, and he makes us sit waiting in front of his desk as a parade of underlings troop the room requesting advice, or a signature or an audience. Eventually he takes our permits and passports, and with a great show, his finger running underneath each line, he reads each part of both documents before stamping them and handing them back.

Then we start our Monastery Trek, heading towards Khecheopalri Lake. It's steep downhill for about an hour and a half, then we have lunch by the rushing water, sitting on a rock eating some bread and cake we bought at the Pelling Tribal School bakery on the way back from the SP.

Then it's steep uphill followed by a flat stint along a road to the lake. It's incredibly peaceful here, quiet and still. We're the only people around. A pier leads through some marshland to the edge of the lake. We remove our shoes and walk along it, spinning the prayer wheels which line each side. Prayer flags flutter all around, and the grey mist merges with the grey horizon.

There's not much else around except a couple of tobacco shops and a tea stall, We spend the night in a trekker's hut, in a bare room, which is also very cold. But it's only Rs. 100, and they make us dinner - fried rice and beer.

Day 115, Pelling, Sikkim [Wednesday 26th March 2008]

2009-04-11T02:54:00.000-07:00

We get a shared jeep to Pelling, in west Sikkim, a five hour drive. We get talking to an amiable Mumbaiker, Ronnie, and his wife. She's a travel agent, up here checking out hotels and tours to sell on in Mumbai. He offers to share a bottle of beer with me when we stop for lunch.

Pelling is the start point for many treks in the region, and we plan to do some walking from here too. We get a nice room in a hotel, then mooch around for the afternoon, drinking tea and snacking. We eat dinner alone, in the hotel's cold, dark restaurant, by candlelight. There's been a powercut. Afterwards, the power returned, we watch a documentary on the Ganges on the Discovery channel, followed by two more on Uttarranchal.

Day 114, Gangtok [Tuesday 25th March 2008]

2009-04-11T02:45:00.000-07:00

We book our train tickets to Assam for 1st April, then try to get the cable car down to the south of Gangtok. Unfortunately there's a power cut and the cable car, worryingly, isn't running. So we walk down instead.

The Institute of Tibetology is an interesting place. In a building built in the Tibetan monastery vernacular, and inaugurated by Nehru in the 1950s, it contains numerous Tibetan items including a human thigh bone trumpet and a bowl made form a human skull. It also has a beautiful series of thangkas (painted, woven scrolls) showing the 12 achievements of Buddha. Upstairs is an atmospheric library of Tibetan prayer books, and on the top floor is a brilliant photo exhibition documenting Sikkim-Bhutan relations since the time of the Raj. There are images of stiff and formal British military officers meeting the tribal monarchy of Bhutan, and an excellent photo of the normally exquisitely dignified Nehru looking rather uncomfortable riding through Sikkim astride a yak!

Throwing caution to the wind we decide to get the obviously unreliable cable car back up to the north of Gangtok, to visit the flower exhibition centre, which is full of orchids of all descriptions. Inside the humid room displays of orchids are al around, and people pose in front of them for photos. Kate buys a couple of orchid bulbs, confident that neither of us has the slightest idea of how to rear one once we get home.

Later we eat spaghetti with salami and a mixed vegetable pizza at 'Little Italy', the hottest restaurant in town. It's ok, but the spaghetti tastes extremely sweet!

Day 113, Gangtok [Monday 24th March 2008]

2009-04-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

After Tibetan bread and hot chocolate for breakfast we drive back to Gangtok. On the way we see an interesting building-site method we call 'the two-person shovel procedure'. It works like this: two female labourers (they're invariably women) stand in front of a big pile of gravel/sand/earth which is being used or excavated from a road/wall/building. One of them holds a shovel. A length of rope is tied around the head of the shovel, and the second person hold the other end of this rope. The first person then digs the shovel into the pile of stuff to be moved, followed by the second person yanking on the rope, resulting in a shovelful of stuff being rather inefficiently and untidily moved from one pile to another. The procedure seems to be quite widespread, and it's absolutely hilarious to watch a job being performed with so little application or enthusiasm.

In Gangtok we upload some of our photos, print out the instructions for a new card game called Casino and watch "You, Me & Dupree" starring Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson.

Day 112, Yumthang Valley [Sunday 23rd March 2008]

2009-04-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

We drive up to the Yumthang Valley. It's huge, surrounded by impressive mountains, the Teesta running through the centre, dwarfed by its surroundings. Snow and ice is piled up where the road has been cleared. There are dozens of jeeps here, lined up along the sides of the road and spilling Indian tourists. We spend an hour walking around the valley, the cold stones below and the hot sun above. There's bright blue sky and we sit for a while next to the icy river water running down from the mountains that encircle us. On the other side of those mountains is Nepal, Tibet and China.

We get a cup of tea-coffee (it's hot and wet but recognisable as neither) from one of the tents selling snacks, and walk dow nto see the hot springs. They're enclosed by a shed. I look round the door and see a few Indian men cavorting in the dark, splashing around.

It's a stunning location, and luckily the wide angle on my camera manages to cram most of the view in. It does feel like we're at the edge of India here — somewhat barren, like the county just ran out. It has a patrolled border feel.

We make the long drive back to Lachung, stopping often to admire each new frozen valley. We spend the rest of the afternoon reading books because it pours down with rain for the rest of the day!

We have soup, plain momos (no filling), rice and noodles for dinner, followed by a pot of tongba. We talk to Sanchai about the Darjeeling music scene. He's a drummer. Apparently the Indian Idol winner came from Darjeeling. He asks about music festivals in England.

Day 111, Chopta Valley, Sikkim [Saturday 22nd March 2008]

2009-04-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

After a freezing cold night in Lachen we go on a spectacular drive up to Chopta Valley — the stark, snow-capped mountains rising on either side of the valley, rhododendrons and yaks dotting the misty hills. It's cold and crisp. We pass through numerous army checkpoints where Sanchai leaves copies of our Sikkim permit. Given the military sensitivity up here — Tibet and China are just over the mountains — we aren't allowed to explore very far, and we also have to be careful what we take pictures of.

The beauty of Sikkim is spoilt only by the innumerable signs, boards and posters erected everywhere to proclaim Sikkim's unspoilt beauty, urging you to keep it beautiful. Another irritant, and occasional entertainment, are the endless blustering slogans put up by the Border Roads Organisation: "God built, we maintain", "We defy death to serve the nation".

Sanchai gives us some background on the state of Sikkim — the farmers receive massive government subsidies to live here and effectively act as a human buffer betweens 'plains' India and the Chinese. So long as the subsidies continue, he says, then the people will be happy. There are only around 700,000 people in the whole of Sikkim. It certainly appears to be very sparsely populated. The Lepchas, the original inhabitants of Sikkim, were animists, worshipping nature gods such as lakes and mountains, and they continue to do so. For this reason many of the mountains and other areas are not open for trekking. When Kanchenjunga was scaled, the climbers did not step on the very peak, out of respect for the Lepcha beliefs.

On the drive across to Lachung we hit a landslide which has completely blocked the road. It seems to be a common occurence. We climb over the rubble and decide to walk on, and let the jeep catch us up later. We walk a great route through the trees and numerous waterfalls. Eventually Neema catches up with us, having swapped jeeps with someone on the other side of the landslide.

At Lachung we check into the Modern Tours Hotel, a spectacular place built to resemble a monastery! It's still freezing cold, but someone sneaks a heater into our room for us, and gives us hot water bottles too.

For dinner we have all-traditional Tibetan food — noodle soup, momos and chips.

Day 110, Lachen [Friday 21st March 2008]

2009-04-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

We fill up on porridge on the rooftop restaurant of Modern Central Lodge in Ganktok. While we're there we meet a friendly Greek/American girl, a textile designer, who tells us how much she loved Gujarat and Varanasi, both places we're hoping to visit.

We meet Sanchai, our guide, and Neema, our driver, and begin the 6-hour drive up to Lachen. On the way we pass young children trudging aloing the road, weighed down with chopped wood. Naked toddlers wash a play in a river. We stop to admire the Seven Sisters waterfall.

We go to the Labrang gompa, belonging to the 'Red Hat' sect of Buddhism. There are murals and statues of Guru Padmasambhava who, legend has it, was born from a lotus flower in the 8th century. Dragons are carved into the pillars for protection from evil spirits. The paintings are also so detailed and colourful it's hard to know where to begin. Sanchai is extremely knowledgable — he spent a month in a monastery to learn about Buddhism, although he himself is a Hindu — and tries his best to explain everything to us.

Not far away is the Phodong gompa, part of the 'Black Hat' sect. It's incredibly ornate and just walking into it ovewhelms your senses. There are scary murals of the ferocious protector god Mahakala. Tibetans believe he lives on your shoulders, so don't touch them there! There are dancing skeletons carved into the gate here to ward off evil spirits.

We continue on to our lodge in Lachen, a freezing cold jail cell of a room with an entirely incongruous, almost obscene tiger print throw on the bed. We gather around the kitchen fire for warmth, eat momos for dinner and quicly retire to bed.

Day 109, Gangtok [Thursday 20th March 2008]

2009-04-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

We have a good night's rest, and awake with the dawn light. Robin brings us noodles and tea for breakfast. We leave a letter on the table with our address and Rs. 1000, say thank you to his mum and leave.

Back at the Teesta we see the ropeway in action — it's a small metal cage big enough for 6 people, which is pulled across the river on a steel cable, by hand. If you're standing on the bank waiting to cross you're expected to help bring it in, a local guy tells us, so I do. It's really hard work. Inching across the rushing river in tiny metal cage, mountains all around, I feel suddenly very tiny. It's scarier than I thought it would be.

On the other side there's one more steep climb up the bank and then we've made it to the highway. On a whim we decide to go straight to Gangtok in Sikkim instead of going to Kalimpong. A bus comes past a few minutes later and we hop on.

The bus winds up through rugged, hilly country, the river Teesta running along the bottom of a deep valley. We pass the Sikkim jam factory, and a well-publicized alcohol and drug-addiction centre.

At Gangtok we check into the Anola hotel and head down the pedestrian MG Marg to get a pizza at Baker's Cafe. It's pretty good! Afterwards we book a tour to the Yumthang Valley, get some hit beer in and have a well-earned rest in our hotel room watching Con Air followed by The Forgotten!

They sell beer *everywhere* in Ganktok, and it's dirt cheap too.

Day 108, Samthar [Wednesday 19th March 2008]

2009-04-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Jimmy meets us for breakfast with a table set on the front lawn! We have cornflakes followed by eggs and toast and fruit jice, and he takes us through the routes of some interesting treks in Sikim.

We all walk down to the school which Jimmy has set up, which is a few minutes from the Farmhouse. The kids have a uniform — red jumper and army fatigue trousers! The first class we see, aged 3 to 5 years old, sings us a selection of songs in English and Nepali, led by an enthisiastic teacher and a classroom assistant. Afterwards we follow them outside where they all take part in a miniature assault course(!), while the General eagerly explains the different parts of his self-prepared curriculum. We see another class learning joined-up handwriting, and get shown the mini-toilets. "It trains them for later life," says Jimmy.

From the women's handicraft shop we buy a knitted tea cosy and a kukhri made from melted-down lorry suspension metal.

I notice that I'm feeling a bit queasy. We say goodbye to Jimmy and the children — "Goodbye Sir! Goodbye Madam!" — collect our bags from the Farmhouse and start the 3-4 hour trek downhill to the Teesta River, on the other side of which we can pick up a jeep back to Kalimpong.

Barely 30 minutes down the hill I collapse with fatigue and throw up copiously. I think of the breakfast I ate, and curse the General. Having vomited I feel slightly better, although my back does now feel incredibly heavy. We decide to carry on anyway so we can reach Kalimpong.

We walk on for another 30 minutes, but suddenly I feel very weak and I've developed severe jelly-legs from walking downhill. The sun is beating down really hard and I repeatedly need to stop and rest. We also run out of water. t one point I have to stop and lie down in the shade. I start to feel like I'm not going to be able to make it to the bottom of the valley. Unfortunately it's now well over an hour's steep walk back uphill to Jimmy's, or another 2-3 hour's walk down, with nowhere to stop inbetween.

Kate is being very patient, and I feel bad for holding her up so much. She asks some vilagers for water, which we then purify with chlorine tablets. We make very slow progress but eventually arrive at the river. But we can't see the ropeway crossing Jimmy told us about, just a huge, wide, empty riverbed, well over 200 metres wide, with just a trickling steam remaining at its very centre. But this turns out to be another river, the Reli, which we must walk across to reach the Teesta. It's starting to get dark now. It's 5pm and we've been walking for 5 hours. Kate's starting to get a little upset about getting stuck in the forest at night. After we cross the river we go over a steep hill, our bags really digging in at this point. We walk through some lighter woodland and begin to hear car engines and beeping. Hurrah! But as we reach the egde of the woods we find ourselves high up on the banks of the Teesta overlooking a hughe hydroelectric construction project. But! We can see the ropeway. We walk down the bank t a small waiting hut from where we can see the ropeway cage swinging from the rope, far away on the other bank. We shout and wave but it's obvious that the ropeway has closed for the night. There is no other way over the Teesta and back to Kalimpong. Kate starts to cry. We're well and truly stuck.

We decide to walk back across the Reli and ask the last family we saw if they have any room for us to sleep. Luckily their daighter speaks some English but she says they can't help us. With my Hindi phrasebook I explain that I'm sick and we're both tired, but it's no use. We start to despair somewhat, when a Nepali guy turns up and talks to the family. After making a quick phone call he turns to us and says,

"Come, you can stay in my house,"

Wow! We're so releived. His name is Robin Lepcha and he takes us back to his mother's house on the bank of the Reli river. He sits us at the table and brings us tea. There is Christian paraphernalia eveyrwhere — pictures of Jesus, rosary bead, Christmas cards and a beautiful pencil drawing of Mother Teresa.

"I did that," says Robin.

We talk for a while about where we're from, what we do etc, then he shows us to a bedroom. It's large, comfortable and airy, with lots of knick-knacks scattered around. There is also, bizarrely, a large poster of Phoebe Cates on the wall.

We rest for a while until Robin calls us for dinner, which is soup, rice, vegatables and chicken curry. We're overcome by the family's generosity. We're both so tired we go to sleep soon after, to the sounds of the rushing river and birds tweeting.

Day 107, General Jimmy Singh's Farmhouse [Tuesday 18th March 2008]

2009-04-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

The lodge owner cooks us another tasty meal of puri and dum aloo. Then we set off for Samthar, accompanied by a black and white stray dog who seems to have adopted us. He waits while we stop to go on the canopy walkway. He rests when we rest. He's quiet and doesn't fight with the ither dogs, though, so we're happy for him to tag along — not that we really hve much choice.

Today we walk about 15km through acres of heavily terraced hillside farmland. Chortens dot the landscape — Buddhist memorial statues. The sound of a rushing river drifs up from the valley below. Everyone you pass here gives a proper namaste, with joined hands.

We have to as kthe way a few times, including once an old toothless Nepali woman who spoke no English but gestured down a barely visible track which wound all the way down into the valley. Eventually we reach the Samthar ridge, with extensive views on either side to the misty hills, terraced with farms, and the long flat valley below. We pass lots of enthusiastic and friendly schoolchildren, and finally arrive at General 'Jimmy' Singh's farmhouse. Jimmy's at home and comes out to meet us. He shows us around the house — a lovely old stone and wood building that looks highly susceptible to monsoon rains — and we decide to treat ourselves to a nice room for the night.

Jimmy points out that they need to replace half the wood every year because of damp and rot. Inside in the dim light there are yak skins on the floor, low padded chairs and cushions, oil lamps, a wood fire and a shelf full of bamboo tongba cups. Our room is in a cottage in the tiered garden behind the house. It has wood-lined walls, a big, comfortable bed and Buddhist bits and pieces everywhere.

We ask for a snack and get given a 3-course lunch: soup, noodles, fried rice, egg curry and a sort of honeycomb thing for dessert.

In the evening two other English guests turn up and Jimmy joins us all for a drink and a chat. He's an ex-army General, very tall, with a white beard and a cap where he used to wear a turban. He commands the room and is very talkative, chatting about trekking, budget airlines, Indian trains and the Nepali taste for alcohol (he says they favour strong beer, such as Hit which clocks in at 8%).

We all sit down to a hearty dinner of soup, sorpotel (Goan pork curry), chana masala, veg, rice bread and gulabjamun! All this is prepared by two girls Jimmy has working for him. He tells us old army stories about the Indo-Sino border, rejects out of hand the Gorkha's brave military reputation as British propaganda ("They're brave when they're drunk, but they are not brave soldiers. Although the kukhri is a very useful weapon,") and explains that his business model has now been picked up by the tourism industry and christened 'integrated village tourism'. All profits from the Farmhouse go back into the community through a school complex he has built nearby. The Farmhouse and the school both employ local villagers, and there is also a village homestay and a women's handicraft group.

After a long and talkative dinner we all retire to bed. The stars shine in vigourously on the dark garden. Other lights glow hazily from the top of a distant hill. I struggle for a while with the New Left politics of 'Multitude', a book I found on the General's shelf.

Day 106, Buddhabare, Kaffer, Samthar Ridge [Monday 17th March 2008]

2009-04-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

A bloke from a house down makes us big bowls of porridge and brings them up to the tea stall for breakfast. We check out the gumpa that this this village, Gumpa Dara, is named after. There is a huge, 6ft tall prayer wheel and a golden statue of Goutham Buddha, which Kate walks clockwise around 3 times, as per the instructions given nearby. Then we continue on.

The walk to Kaffer takes us past cardamom farms and pretty houses, their wooden balconies decorated with multitudes of pot plants and flowers. We see women and children stagger along, bent over under huge masses of greenery — food for their cows. A group of milkmen go past us — 4 boys with big metal churns strapped to their backs.

We get to Buddhabare around lunchtime. It's a tiny village, and unfortunately there are no lodges or restaurants. I ask a guy who is sitting on a bench in the dusty street, "Khana hai?" He shouts to a passer-by, who then leads us down the road, into a sweet shop and through to a kitchen at the back — it's his family's house. There, while his blind grandmother noisily uses the toilet, his mother dishes us up a lunch of rice, dal and sabzi (vegetables). It's good, and there's plenty of it. We can't quite dispel the notion that we're eating somebody else's lunch. I ask him how much we should pay for the food, and he says "Your wish!", so I leave Rs. 100 on the table. As we are leaving Kate says thanks for the delicious food, and her words are parroted back to her with uncanny accuracy by Grandma! Everyone laughs.

We walk on to Kaffer through more woodland, with gorgeous views down into the valley. On the path we meet a young English bloke with a headful of long, blond hair who is teaching in one of the local schools as part of a gap year placement.

When we reach Kaffer we are disappointed to find that it's a bit of a tourist disaster. Hotels are being thrown up everywhere, to join the crowded throng that already line the tiny streets of the tiny village. Kaffer has excellent sunrise and sunset views and as a result attracts most of the Bengali tourists, who arrive in taxis. The local council have recently begun to exploit this, and have created a forest park, including a forest canopy walkway, in an attempt to lure daytrippers. As a result, though, it's a crowded, soulless village with too many visitors and not enough infrastructure. The locals are surly and the hotel staff, the ones we met anyway, lazy and arrogant. Luckily we find a decent little room for Rs. 350 above a restaurant, where the woman cooks us a delicious egg curry while keeping an eye on her favourite TV serial!

Day 105, Lava, Gumpa Dara, Samthar Ridge [Sunday 16th March 2008]

2009-04-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

After breakfast we get a shard jeep to Lava, the starting point for a 4 day trek along the Samthar ridge. It takes about an hour to get there along forested roads. We buy some Kalimpong lollipops to take with us — they're funny little brown lollys made of sugar and milk.

After filling up on momos and fried rice we set off on the first leg of the trek, a 6km hike to Gumpa Dara. We walk through beautiful, pristine forest all the way, full of pine trees and mist, damp moss and elusive tweeting birds. It's incredibly quiet and we don't see anyone else all the way. We're carrying our big rucksacks with us for the first time, and while they're not too heavy they do make progress slow and steady.

We arrive at Gumpa Dara around 4pm, just as it starts to get dark and bucket down with rain. There's one hotel here, so we check into it. It's large and clean, with woodlines walls. We're the only guests. The owner also owns a tea stall over the road, so we sit under the wooden awning there and have some tea. Later in our room we start a fire, and he brings us a thali for dinner. We're both asleep by 9pm!

Day 104, Kalimpong [Saturday 15th March 2008]

2009-04-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

Kate's 31st birthday! We have porridge, eggs, toast and marmalade for breakfast. I ask for more toast and the waiter disappears for a few minutes before returning with an empty basket.

"I'm sorry, sir, toast is out of stock,"

He peels back the tea towel that is covering the basket.

"But I brought you some garlic bread."

We set of on a walk to Doleo Hill, the highest point in Kalimpong. We amble through the large and busy market. Lots of people are selling the disgusting, inedible cheese we tasted up on the Singalilla Ridge. We also find an old guy selling the famous Kalimpong cheese, the know-how for which was apparently brought here by a Swiss priest many years ago. It tastes tangy and fresh, like feta. There are also people selling millet, yeast, and tongba bamboo cups, although these ones are plain, without any of the fancy metal ornamentation.

We carry on up past Tibetan handicraft shops, monasteries and rows of quaint Victoria-era houses, eventually arriving at Dr. Graham's Homes, a huge 500 acre site containing schools and churches. The Homes were started over 100 years ago as a school for orphans, but today it operates as a standard school. It had a royal visit in 1912.

We don't make it all the way to the top of the hill, but the views of Kalimpong are spectacular all the way up. It's a tumbledown town, a frozen avalanche of concrete and corrugated iron, flags and 4x4s, all tipping down the hillside.

We sneak back into the Himalaya Hotel with a half-bottle of Indian red wine I somehow managed to find at the beer shop, plus 2 bottles of Hit beer ("Super Strong!"), all hidden under Kate's shawl. Later we watch Dark Water, an unsatisfying thriller starring Jennifer Connelly.

Day 103, Kalimpong [Friday 14th March 2008]

2009-04-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

We get up early and busy ourselves contacting the British High Commission in Kolkata from the phone booth inside Glenary's. We have to fax them a note to cancel our current passports, then submit a huge form to apply for new ones, which will cost us £125 each! We also check our insurance, which covers us for accomodation costs bu not the cost of replacing the passports. We dream up plans to go to Kolkata and stay in a top-end hotel for the 3(!) weeks it will take for the High Commission to renew the passports. Then we realise that we can probably just apply for them, carry on our trip to Sikkim and pick the passports up laer from Delhi when they're ready.

Luckily we are able to get a replacement Sikkim permit without any trouble as our name's written in one of their big books.

We get a shared jeep to Kalimpong, which takes about an hour by winding road, and check into the Himalaya Hotel, a lovely old stone house built by a Scottish bloke who was one of the first Westerners inside Tibet. It remains in his family, too. I think Kiran Desai stayed here while she was writing her excellent book The Inheritance Of Loss. There's a deep wooden verandah at the front, filled with comfortable chairs and surrounded by hundreds of flowers and pot plants. At the back there is a large dining room filled with Tibetan memorabilia and pictures of famous guests, including Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. A quiet, relaxing atmosphere pervades the place. Apparently on a clear day you can see Kanchenjunga from here, although we don't get one during our stay.

For dinner they serve up a pretty spicy chicken tikka masala(!), muttar paneer, rice, nan and a bread pudding with chocolate sauce and custard.

Day 102, Sirikola, Sukhiapokhri [Thursday 13th March 2008]

2009-04-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

After a breakfast of Tibetan porridge and huge, circular Tibetan fried breads we walk the spectacular, scenic route along the path of the river, back to Rimbik. The steep land on either side of the gorge is increasingly heavily farmed here, with narrow terraces cut into the hillside growing potatoes, sweet peas and other local vegetables. We pass lots of pack horses weighed down with goods — usually bags of rice or cement. We get some momos in Rimbik and then climb into a shared jeep back to Darjeeling. It's packed in the vehicle, we're crammed in with about a dozen people, plus a couple more on the roof, some baskets of chickens, children's bikes and several sacks of vegetables.

Along the way we stop at Sukhiapokhri, which has the police station for the entire Singalilla park area. There we have to write a letter, addressed to the officer in charge, explaining about our lost passports and money. He then stamps the letter and writes a reference number on it. It's all fairly straightforward and tedious, while Santosh translates the officer's Hindi for us. Remarkable, the jeep has waited for us all this time, still full of people. They seem to take these kinds of delays as part of the normal service.

Back at Darjeeling Santosh and Lakba take us to the Foreigner's Registration Office, where a helpful man explains that we should call the High Commission in Kolkata and also go to the District Magistrate to get a duplicate Sikkim permit, which we lost along with our passports.

After meeting Santosh's wife at the shop she runs, and where Santosh hands over the quantity of yak butter he bought in Nepal, we go back to the Bellevue Hotel. We have a big meal of noodles from Kunga for dinner and have an early night, fretting somewhat about our passports and permits.

Day 101, Sandakphu, Kanchenjunga [Wednesday 12th March 2008]

2009-03-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

We get a 5am wake up knock on the door from Santosh so we can get up and watch the sunrise over the Kanchenjunga range. The wind is howling outside, blowing through the cracks in the window frame and billowing the curtains. We went to bed in all our clothes, plus hats, gloves and water bottles. All we have to do is put our shoes on and leave.

Outside the sky is glowing. The sun is up but obscured by clouds. We can see the outline of the range, murky against the moodly blue light. We sit and watch for half an hour, hoping for the sun to come out and hit the mountain directly. We're perched high on top of a rocky outcropping, and the wind is blowing so hard it knocks me off balance. It's icy cold. Our hastily bought windproof trousers and coats seem to be standing up to the task, thankfully. Santosh points out all the major peaks, and soon after that my fac muscles freeze and we head back inside.

Breakfast is basic — Tibetan bread and jam. We see the now-sober policemen eating hot noodle soup so we order some of that too.

When we leave at about 8.30am we get a magnificent view of the might Kanchenjunga. The sun is shining brightly and we can see all the peaks except the very top of Kanchenjunga itself, which is surrounded by a swirl of cloud. The whole range looks so crisp and clear. We realise that we're not much further than 30 miles away, about the distance of Guildford from London, and the enormity of the sight becomes apparent. It's truly impressive, a beautiful sight. We stay for a while enjoying the vastness of the range. We look westwards and try to identify Everest amongst the jagged line of peaks stretching to the horizon.

We walk a steep 12km downhill and stop at a pretty house with flowers and pot plants spread around it. There are wild orchids growing in the trees. We have lunch, and afterwards realise with a shock that we've lost our money belt, which contains both our passports and Rs. 7500 in cash. We tell Santosh and he tries calling the last two places we stayed at, but he has rouble getting phone reception up in the hills. Eventually, after borrowing the owner's phone and standing on the roof of a nearby hut he manages to get through, but no one's seen our stuff. We spend an anxious night trying to work out where we could have lost them or what we need to do next, because our Indian visas and Sikkim permits are also in hte passports.

We visit the local waterfall. At dinner we drink some tongba and chat to a friendly Canadian guy who turns up, having climbed the steep route up here in the dark.

Day 100, Kanchenjunga [Tuesday 11th March 2008]

2009-03-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

Porridge, toast and jam for breakfast, then 6km uphill to Sandakphu. There's plenty of snow and ice up here, covering the pine trees that carpet the hills. It's a pleasant walk, and we reach Sandakphu by 2pm, with just a glimpse of Kanchenjunga peaking thorugh the clouds.

We eat a lunch of egg-fried rice and play cards with Santosh and Lakba. We play hearts, and we show each other some card tricks, while Santosh giggles like a little kid!

We walk a few kilometres along the ridge towards Phalut, across some slushy, muddy terrain. We hike up a, crevice thigh deep in snow, into Nepal and visit a family of yak farmers living on the ridge. They have about 10 yaks, each one with a coloured string decoration pierced through their ear. Their coats are thick and soft, and the family use a yak skin as a bed, on the floorboards of an otherwise bare room.

They serve us some Tibetan tea — a smoky, savoury brew with butter and salt, more like miso soup than tea. Santosh buys 1.5kg of yak butter, which the woman weights out on a pair of ancient hanging scales. He says it's purer than the cow's milk from Darjeeling, which has been 'adulterated.'

Back the the huge, freezing hut all the trekkers gather around the fire and listen to a cheesy 70s/80s playlist someone is pumping through a stereo. We get some Dr. Hook, Lee Hazlewood and John Denver. This is followed by an hour of Bollywood remixes. You can plug your iPod or mobile phone in and recharge it for Rs. 30 per hour.

Dinner is rubbish — thin, watery dal and plain rice. We go to bed shortly afterwards, at about 8pm! A group of drunk policemen are huddled together in one of the rooms.

Day 99, Singalilla Ridge [Monday 10th March 2008]

2009-03-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

Wake up at 6am and have a quick look around Tumling. The sun is just peeking over the hill. I see two drongos sitting in a bush. We are in a tiny hamlet, just a couple of houses. The mountainside is quite barren, we can hear he bells of yaks clanging now and again.

We have a feast for breakfast — Tibetan bread, cheese omelette, banana porridge and big mugs of tea. Around 8.30am we set off. Santosh elaborates on yesterday's lesson on the politics of the area. He tells us that most public sector jobs in the Darjeeling Hills go to West Bengalis, and that Gorkhas (which he says means 'people of the hillds') are seriously underrepresented. He also says that Gorkhas and Nepalis don't like West Bengalis, because they're so noisy. Everyone in the hills speaks Nepali. The Gorkhaland movement aims to secure jobs in the government for Gorkhas. This quota system, often referred to as 'reservations' in the Indian press, is a large part of politics in this country. Every caste, religious and social grouping it seems has their own 'reservations' in public sector jobs. It's not unusual to see a job ad in a newspaper, usually by the Indian Railways, seeking administrative staff to fill a particular quote, such as 'female and handicapped' or 'elderly male'.

Santosh tells us that 'Sherpa' is actually a Nepali caste, but often gets mistakenly used interchangeably to mean 'porter'.

The trekking is easier today, and the weather is warmer. We still haven't had a clear view of the mountain range we're walking along, though, as clouds and mists have been ever-present. There's patches of ice here and there. We see two very dark brown deer, who scamper up a near-vertical cliff upon seeing our approach.

We pass a group of singing Bengalis, who left the lodge a couple of hours before us this morning with a lot of fuss and noise. We reach Kalapokhri at 3pm and stop for the day. Santosh offers us momos and Nepalis yak for dinner. The trekker's hut is a bit like an alpine ski lodge, all pine paneling and creaky floorboards.

We chill out for a while in our room, then go for a look around. The mist has thickened and visibility is down to around 20 metres. The village is cold, dark and deathly quiet, and we get a strange feelign of displacement. It feels so remote here. The mist skews our senses and it feels like we're floating in the clouds. All we can hear is the gentle fluttering of prayer flags.

Dinner arrives, steaming soup, momos and chewy, rich yak meat. We eat and watch in amusement and awe the operation that begins to prepare the Bengalis dinner. There's a production line — one person pounds and kneeds the roti dough, another rolls the dough into roti-sized balls and a third rolls the dough into a flat pancake shape on a small wooden block. A fourth person then frys the roti in a pan and finishes it off with a quick charring in the wood fire. Each one then gets thrown nto a big basket and kept warm. They must make several dozen in this way.

I have myself a flask of tongba with dinner. It's millet beer — a scoop of fermented millet is put into a hollow bamboo cup, which is large enough to require both hands to hold it. This is then repeatedly topped up with hot water as you drink it. It's a pleasant, clean, sweet drink, a bit like sake, and is mildyl alcoholic.

Day 98, Singalilla Ridge [Sunday 9th March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

Wake up at 6.45am and have a very brisk cold shower. Order porridge and tea, pay our bill and rush down to meet Santosh, our guide, in the square. We drive by jeep to Maneybhangjang, where we have to sign in to the park and provide our passports as ID. This security is because the trek path we'll be taking along the Singalilla Ridge strays at times into Nepal, and they need to be able to track the traffic into and out of the park.

The trek takes us up a steep, winding jeep track, the heavy mist coming and going, simetimes reducing visibility to about 10 metres. Three woodcutters emerge silently from the woods, carrying huge packs of chopped branches on their backs. We pass rhododhendron trees, their reds and whites blazing against the grey, misty background. It's cold, but the walking keeps us warm.

Santosh gives us a precis of the Ghorkaland movement, from the 80s to the current strike and political manoeverings of Ghising, the Morch and the West Bengal government.

We stop in a cosy little lodge for tea. A woman is here with the kettle boiling on a wood fire. There are pale yellow strips of cheese hanging from the rafters, drying. We try some - it's hard, and tasteless. Santosh tells us to suck it — for a few hours! A cat sits on top of the stove, warming itself.

We stop in another lodge a little further on, and this time get lunch. Steaming hot noodle soup. They have a conservatory here full of pot plants.

A couple of hours hike into Nepal, past gompas and Buddhist memorials, brings us to Tung Lung, where we will stop for the night. There's a huge kitchen here, with trekkers huddled around the wood stove warming themselves. We get a cup of tea, maybe our 6th or 7th of the day, and it comes in a china mug with a china lid that keeps the heat in.

We sit and chat to the other trekkers — English, French, some Bengalis, who you can spot by their bobble hats or other improvised headgear; a shirt tied around their head, for example — until dinner. And dinner is delicious. We have soup, rice, dal, potatoes, veg and an apple and custard pudding. The guides and porters sit around the fire getting merry and giggly on tongba — fermented millet beer.

We go outside to watch the absolutely dazzling array of stars in the cold, clear night sky. Eventually we go to bed, which is excrutiatingly cold. We take hot water botles and climb beneath layers of blankets.

Day 97, Darjeeling [Saturday 8th March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

After porridge, omelette and fried egg on toast (and butter for an extra Rs. 12) at Glenary's, we set of walking from Chowrasta down the Tenzing Norgay jeep track towards Tiger Hill, 7km away. The path winds through tiny villages, each just a handful of houses beside the track, most with a little kiosk selling sweets and paan. All the way there are great views back to the tumbledown spread of Darjeeling.

We pass the Mak Dhong monastery. It was build in 1914. Preparations for something are in progress outside, and a man there tells us it's his sister's wedding. He unlocks the door and lets us inside for a look around. It's a fantastic place, with gold statues of Buddhas, rugs on the floor and the walls covered in intricate, colourful paintings of Buddha in myriad forms, including many flame-haired demons with skull necklaces. Our breath fills the air with mist. A tiny paper prayer wheel spins slowly over a gently burning candle flame.

We walk on, passing cheerful young children dressed up like old men, in trousers, blazers and wooly hats. Girls wash their hair directly under a tap by the side of the road. The water must be almost freezing, but they laugh and splash around as they do it.

Eventually we reach Jarabungalow, where we enter Singhal park, the source of Darjeeling's drinking water. We walk through a tall fir tree forest, with mist shrouding the trees branches. At the top of a hill sits the lake. Further up above it, isolated on the hill, is an eerie looking shrine.

As we return back down the hill and walk through Ghoom we see the toy train, part of the World Heritage listed mountain railways. It's sitting in the tiny station, its engine puffing thick clouds of steam and smoke into the air. We're just in time for the 'joy ride', a 45 minute trip up to Darjeeling which you can take insteatd of the 9 hour journey from Siliguri. We pay for our ticket through a tiny hole in the wall of the ticket office, and get in 2nd class.

Day 96, Darjeeling [Friday 7th March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

After a big bowl of porridge we go to sort out our permits for Sikkim, which involves going to the District Magistrate's office to present our passports and fill in a form, walking back up the steep hill to the Foreigner's Registration Office to have that same form stamped, and finally going back to the district Magistrate's office to get the passports stamped. We break up the process by having a flaming hot Thai lunch in between the stages. We also book ourselves on a trek to the Singalilla Ridge.

We take the long, winding path north of town all the way down the hillside until we reach the Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre. They have a great photo exhibition presenting thr startling facts of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s, to general international apathy. Using Tibet as a strategic buffer with India, China has since flooded the region with troops, nuclear weapons and ICBMs. The authoritarian and aetheist Chinese increasingly meddle in the affairs of the Tibetan Buddhists, to the point of 'disappearing' Dalai Lama-selected Lama reincarnations and replacing them with Chinese-approved individuals. The Tibetan government has been able to escape and set up a government-in-exile, thanks to India's help for these political refugees. Darjeeling is an example of ths help — the Tibetans have a school, hospital, orphanage and lots more. Their shop sells clothes, handicrafts, paintings, rugs etc with all proceeds going back into the Tibetan community. Kate buys a shawl and I buy some letter paper.

Afterwards we go to Glenary's for tea and chocolate brownies, looking out over the misty view of Darjeeling rooftops. We look thourgh the busy market, buy some windproof clothing at the only trekking shop in town and have a big dinner of momos and fried rice!

Day 95, Darjeeling [Thursday 6th March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

We arrive at New Jalpaiguri at 9am after a comfortable and quiet night's sleep on the train. From there we get a shared jeep up to Darjeeling — there are dozens of jeeps lined up in the large car park, waiting to leave. There are 10 of us in the jeep altogether: 7 locals plus me, Kate and a Dutch guy.

On the way up the tightly winding roads we stop for tea and get our first taste of Tibetan food — a hot plateful of steamed momos and chilli sauce (Rs. 10). As we ascend into the hills, so the temperature falls. Quickly. I'm starting to regret not changing out of shorts, sandals and t-shirt. In the bac kfo the jeep I root around in my bag and clumsily manage to pull on a fleece, socks and shoes.

We stop again shortly afterwards, this time due to a bandh (strike) by a group of unidentified persons. West Bengal is famous for its highly politicised working class, its left wing government and, particularly, its strikes. Prior to our arriving here there was a lot of news coverage of strike and rallies in support of independence for the Darjeeling Hills region and the Gurkha people.

Apparently the bandh will last for one hour. So all the cars have stopped, people stand in the road and chat, everyone seems used to this kind of occurence. We sit in the car and shiver. It's about 5 degrees centrigrade. Eventually we get waved on. We get stopped again shortly after. A passing local says it's just a political stunt, but we never find out the real cause.

Next to the road up to Darjeeling run the tiny tracks of the 'toy train', the Darjeeling Hill Railway. After about 3 hours we arrive at Chowrasta Square, the centre of Darjeeling. We are now at 2400m altitude and, weirdly, we both feel a little dizzy. We find our hotel, the Bellevue, a comfy, old-fashioned wood-paneled place with woodburning stoves and big helpings of porridge on the menu.

Darjeeling isn't a pretty town. Rather it's a rusting, damp tumble of shacks spilling down the hill. Every viewpoint is filled with the faded pastel colours of walls and roofs dotted all over the landscape, clinging on to the windy slopes. It feels incredibly foreign here, too. Foreign from India, I mean. It feels like another country. People's faces here are different, most Nepali, Tibetan and Gurhka. And everyone smiles! It feels really good to be up here, and so different. It's really, really cold. You can see the Himalayas from our hotel rooftop.

We go to Kunga for lunch, a tiny Tibetan cafe where diners are crammed in on benches in the steamy, pine-paneled room. The windows are fogged up, and the sweet smell of home cooking fills the air from the open kitchen. The serve nourishing, filling food here, and we get big bowls of chicken noodle soup and a plate of huge spring rolls. It all tastes so good.

We pass Glenary's , which features in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss. We browse through the brilliant Oxford bookshop, full of mountaineering memoirs, and Tibetan and Buddhist books. After dinner at Kunga (again! Chicken friend rice and more noodle soup) we light a fire in our freezing cold hotel room and climb beneath the dozen blankets which weigh heavily on our bed.

Day 94, Sunderbans [Wednesday 5th March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

5.30am wake up call! Amazingly, it's already light. We're thankful that at least we're getting our money's worth with these early morning starts!

We go out for another 4 hours in the boat, patrolling the lanes and channels of the mangrove forest of the Sunderbans. We spot some eagles and osprey. We talk to a middle-aged Canadian couple who have left West Bengal and become Canadian citizens.

Friendly and approachable, he wears knee length Hawaiian shorts and she sports a baseball cap. It's an interesting and revealing conversation. They tell of their deep sadness at the political and religious turmoil in India, and their ambivalence about 'traditional' Indian values of religion and family. Their satisfaction, bordering on smugness, at having 'escaped' is obvious. The man says, 'I only came here because I also have a return ticket.'

Late in the afternoon we get dropped back in Kolkata and get a taxi to Sealdah railway station, where we wait for about 5 hours for our train: the 10.05pm Darjeeling Mail to New Jalpaiguri. At Sealdah we have some of the freshest, most delicious ice-cream I've ever tasted. It's from a 'milk counter' on the concourse. The label on the little pot says it was manufactured today! Yummy!

We get into our 3AC berths on the train — no curtains around the beds, no reading lights and no water bottle holders, plus the beds are narrower! Still, it's perfectly comfortable, and we get our heads down and go to sleep.

Day 93, Sunderbans [Tuesday 4th March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

We get a 6.30am wake up call, followed by 'bed tea' delivered to the room — a thermos of hot, sweet masala chai and a plate of salty biscuits! Then we get on the boat and go on a long, 6 hour cruise along the wide, still waters of the Sunderbans. It's not a particularly pretty landscape — endless miles of mangrove forest edging onto claggy, wet, grey mud. The water is cloudy, milky and forbidding. But journeying along its endless hannels is hypnotic. Mile after mile of shoreline drifts by, endless cycles of sunshine and dramatic tides alternately drying and cracking the exposed mud and partially rehydrating it into a sticky mess.

We don't see any other boats for the whole day. We're on the water alone (the unsees eyes of over 200 tigers presumably blinking back at us from the darkness of the mangroves.) We see lots of bright blue kingfishers, including an apparently rare 'brown winged' kingfisher. We also see crocodiles, jellyfish and a couple of dolphins. These dolphins have round faces instead of the usual long snout.

As the hours go by it becomes clear quite how extensive the Sunderbans park is — we have only patrolled about a quarter of it, at most. The water channels are hundreds of metres wide. It's not at all like the maze of tiny nstreams and passages we were expecting, although we are in quite a big boat. With some trepidation we peer into the grey murk of recently exposed streams and gullies. The honey gatherers, victims of so many tiger attacks as they try to sustan their livelihoods, wear helmets with eyes painted on the rear, in an often futile attempt at convincing a hungry, menacing tiger that they can see them coming and are ready for them.

We take a look around the local village, and later, with coffee and snacks, we watch a DVD about life in the Sunderans. Narrated by an overwhelming, booming American voice, it stars one of our guides as he recounts surviving a tiger attack. It's a chilling reminder of the dangers experienced every day here. It also attempts to explain why so many tigers here are man eaters — scarcity of food, the salt-water diet, a historical lack of hunting giving htem no ingrained fear of man. But no one really knows why.

Day 92, Sunderbans [Monday 3rd March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

We make our way across town to the Priya Cinema, where we are getting picked up for our tour to the Sunderbans, a huge 10,000 square metre national park constituting the largest mangrove forest in the world, and home to one of the largest tiger populations in India. Many of the tigers are known man eaters.

It's a 3 hour drive on gradually degrading roads, followed by 2.5 hours on a boat, which takes us to the relative luxury of the Sundarban Tiger Camp. We get a delicious buffet lunch as soon as we arrive, then go on a short trip over the water to one of the watchtowers, from where we see our first wild tiger! Within 5 minutes of climbing the tower a female tiger prowls into view down one of the observation channels, areas which have been cleared of trees to enable easier viewing. She stops for a while, then lays down in the shade of a tree. Using binoculars we are able to watch her for as long as we like, and she's still there when we leave 45 minutes later. The guide with us says she looked pregnant.

We also see 3 giant water monitors — creepy, prehistoric lizards, although the move surprisingly quickly when they need to.

Back at the camp that evening we see some dancing and singing performed by people from the local 'Munda' tribe. It's different fro mthe other forms we've seen so far — the rhythm is basic and primal, the singing less nuanced, evocative somehow of the blues in its mournful expression.

Following that, dinner is great, again. It's some of the best food we've had in India so far. We retire to our cottage overlooking the duck-filled pond. On the verandah Kate refuses to sit with her back towards the paddy field, as apparently that's where they spotted a tiger last month, 4 days in a row. Finally, as a precaution, they had to to fire a tranquilizer dart into it and transport it back to the forest. They think hungry or desperate tigers resort to attackign humans for food. There are many theories why the Sundarbans produce so many maneating tigers, one of which is that the salt water, which they drink, sends them a bit mad.

The paddy field is part of a village, with no protection against the tigers. Our compound is surrounded by high wire fences, but the mud huts of the village have no such barrier. The tigers are a danger this area must live with permanently. Over 1000 people have died from tiger attacks in the Sundarbans. Recently some protective fencing has started to be installed along the edges of the waterways, and annual attacks have begun to drop. Already they are down from 80 to 35 a year.

Day 91, Kolkata [Sunday 2nd March 2008]

2009-03-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

We go and book in advance our train ticket from Kolkata (Howrah) to Darjeeling — the train is very busy, but we manage to get a 3AC ticket. It's very early in the morning and the city is so quiet. All the shops are shut and there is very little traffic on the streets. The only noise comes from the street hawkers waking up on their market stall tables, washing and dressing by the roadside and cooking breakfast. We take pleasure in just wandering around watching the place waking up. At one point we see a man pull up his dhoti, squat down in the middle of a roundabout and expel a long stream of watery shit.

We pass the famous Writers' Building, but get stopped when we try to take a photo. We wander through the leafy Park Street Cemetery, home to lots of Raj-era tombs. The're currently 'renovating' the memorials — part of the great, ongoing Indian beautification project.

We meander all the way from the north of the city to the south, getting the metro for part of the considerable distance. The streets are increasingly dirty and the area appears poorer as we approach the Kali temple, Kalighat. There are the usual stalls selling temple offerings, but the atmosphere here seems a little edgy. Kali is an aspect of Shiva, the destroyer, and takes the form of a terrible, vengeful demon with blood red eyes, spikey teeth and a drooling mouth. She wears a necklace made of human skulls and has snakes in her hair. They regularly perform got sacrifices at the temple, beheading the animal with a huge knife. Although we don't see one, we do see eveidence of Kali's followrs — she represents the baser values of Hinduism and attracts an 'earthy' crowd. The streets immediately around the temple are crumbling and poverty-stricken. The temple itself is particularly unfriendly, unimpressive, crowded and bland.

Afterwards we walk through a surprisingly affluent residential neighbourhood, with security guards outside gated apartment buildings with pretty gardens. We head to the Birla Academy of Arts, a fanastic private gallery. They have several shows on, focusing on contemporary artists from Kolkata and West Bengal. We even get to meet one of the artists while we are there. Kolkata feels cosmopolitan, educated, imposing, poor, historical, ramshackle, huge, culturally rich and full of contrasts.

Day 90, Kolkata [Saturday 1st March 2008]

2009-03-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

We go across the road from our hotel to get a cup of tea from the man who is there, on the pavement, brewing a sauce pan of it on a little wood fire. He has a wooden stall next to the fire, and a wooden bench for customers. On the stall sit some loaves of bread, waiting to be toasted on the fire once the tea is done and the pan removed. There is a boy, too, about 7 years old, who takes packages of tea and toast and disappears on errands with them - presumably takeaway orders. There is also a man sitting under he tree, next to the stall, completely covered from head to toe in soap lather. He is sitting cross-legged, a towel across his waist, having a bath in the street, next to the tea stall, across the road from our hotel.

We are sitting on the wooden bench, sipping the delicious, hot masala tea. When the man having the bath has rinsed himself off with his bucket of water he walks past us and reaches into a cupbaord which is adjcent to the tea stall. He removes a freshly laundered shirt, and behind the door gets dressed. He then takes over tea-making duties from the other man. We can only presume that he lives here, on the bench and in the cupboard, and that we are drinking tea in his front room.

We order some toast, which is grilled on the fire and comes buttered and sprinkled with sugar.

We walk through the Maidan, watching people play cricket, herds of goats nibbling the patchy grass, goatherds walking behind them with sticks, others just sleeping under the shade of the trees.

The Maidan is enormous, and we see the imperious Victoria Memorial long before we reach it. Eventually we arrive there, a magnificently imposing British monument plonked in the middle of a vast, flat park. Its immediate surroundings are filled with pretty gardens and landscaped water features. A statue of the elderly Queen Victoria stands in front of the building, and another one of her younger self stands inside the grand central court. The building is currently being cleaned, and sparkels bright white all along its facade except where the scaffolding still stands over on the right hand side. There worker scrub at the yellowed and stained stone.

Inside the are exhibits of Calcutta photos from the Raj era, painting collections from the same, and an extraordinarily details history of the founding of the city and its ensuing growth. It covers the trade, politics and wars of the 17th to 19th centuries, the ridiculous pomp of the Raj merchants and the consequential, simultaneous suffering and enrichment of the local population. It's a holistic, honest, provocative and through exhibition. We come away with a much clearer idea of Calcutta's place in the history of India, and of the Raj.

We go to a 'fast-food' place, Haldirams, which turns out to be anything but fast. In true Indian organisational fashion I end up queueing in a disorderly rabble for 10 minutes, just trying to and my money over to pay for what I want, in return for a series of vouchers. After that I need to then go and queue at 3 separate food counters to collect each of my dishes, and each counter has different food supply problems, and a different, or non-existent, system for dealing wth the vouchers. Some just take all the vouchers being thrust at them from all angles, and then rely upon memory to recall just who ordered what, and in which order. Others refuse to take a voucher until your order is ready, which results in a whole queue being held up waiting for one person's dish to be heated, or packed, or cooked.

After all that, at least the food is good.

We finish the day with a couple of beers at a rooftop bar in one of the hotels near Sudder Street. The bar is full of posh Indians ostentatiously drinking cocktails. We can see the famous Howrah Bridge from here. It's massive.

Day 89, Kolkata (Calcutta) [Friday 29th February 2008]

2009-02-28T06:05:00.000-08:00

Rickshaw to the airport, where we arrive 2.5 hours early for our flight to Kolkata (Calcutta). The traffic around Hyderabad has been so congested that we decided it would be best to leave as early as possible. But it turns out to be relatively quiet around 8am.

We sit drinking coffee until our flight finally leaves at 12pm. We're on a spacious, clean and comfortable Spicejet plane. The booking and reservation process was easy — we did it all on the internet from a cafe — although checking in was the usual disorganised Indian bureaucratic chaos, with our bags left in the middle of the airport concourse and while we go to the desk. Anyway, we fly smoothly up the east coast of India and arrive in Kolkata at 2.10pm.

I have to say that, after 3 months travelling around on trains and buses, I'm somewhat amazed that the bureacrats, engineers, politicians and everyone else on the never ending gravy train of Indian politics have actually managed to get something as complicated and ambitious as an airport up and running and an aeroplane sent from Hyderabad to Kolkata!

We get a pre-paid taxi (Rs. 210) from the airport to the centre of Kolkata. We sit in the back watching the scruffy, narrow streets roll by. Everything's a rusty, dusty colour. The streets are crammed with cars bumber to bumper, bikes, rickshaws (hand drawn ones) and the ever present crowds. We had a hotel room reserved at Hotel Neelam in Dr M Ishaque Road (Kyd Street), but when we get there it's small and dirty, with a sticky carpet. Eventually we find one over the road, Hotel Classic, which has friendly staff, porn film furniture and, as we find out, a selection of cockroaches.

The view from the window confirms that we're in an area of some considerable distress and poverty. The people crowding around the water tap look careworn, buildings are crumbling and the streets look aged.

After checking in we check out Park Street, the main area for restaurants in the city centre. It's just around the corner from our hotel. I get the local speciality — 'hot kati roll' — from a guy selling them in, quite literally, a hole in the wall. It's a paratha, fried in ghee and stuffed with paneer and a dizzying array of sauces and condiments, all rolled up and dripping with oil. Kate takes a look into the hole, looks at the kati roll, then watches as I bite into it, immediately regretting my decision.

We make our way past the handbag stall and magazine sellers on the pavement and go to Fleury's, a posh, high ceilinged coffee shop which sells delicious hot chocolate brownies and proper, strong coffee.

We spend a while in a great bookshop, reading about Himalayan treks. Kate buys The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, in anticiption of our trip to the Sunderbans.

That night we go to Peter Cat, an obscurely nmed local institution since the 60s. We get there just in time, as once we get a seat there is a steady queue of locals waiting to get in, at least 20 deep. I have chola kebab, which I later suspect of giving me the explosive diarrhoea I am suffering from. The kebab tasted very nice, but admittedly the light is so dim in here it's hard to tell whether anything is properly cooked or not.

Afterwards we venture down a dark alley to find the appalingly named Someplace Else, an Irish pub(!) in the basement of the modern Park Hotel. It's rammed in there, full of Indians, including women, drinking beers, cocktails and whiskey wih something approaching wild abandon, relatively speaking. There's a couple of tourists in here too, but not many. According to The Edge, a local music magazine, this is a famous rock venue. We have a couple of beers and wait for the band. We think they're called Hip Pocket, and there's seems to be some considerable expectation in the air. They eventally come on and trudge through a limp version of With A Little Help From My Friends. It doesn't get much better, so we pay our extortionate bill (Rs. 480 for 3 beers) and leave.

UPDATE: The band are indeed called Hip Pocket. They are a local institution, the Calcutta Telegraph have called them 'Calcutta's swinging sensation', and here is a piece about Someplace Else from the same paper.

Day 88, Hyderabad [Thursday 28th February 2008]

2009-02-22T10:14:00.000-08:00

Up early. Breakfast around the corner at Kamat, where I get my favourite — chow chow bath and coffee. Then we get the bus to Ramoji Film City, about an hour's ride away from Hyderabad. The tickets are Rs. 300 to get in.

First impression — it looks good, with big, white gate displaying the Ramoji name in huge letters. The surrounding country is dusty, hilly and boulder-strewn. It looks like a set for a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

The park itself is full of pastel painted sets and themed areas like 'wild west' and 'Mughal era'. They clain it's a working studiom but I'm not so sure. It looks suspiciously like a standard theme park. And it quickly transpires that the park is not very busy. Whole areas are quiet and unoccupied, waiting for vsitors to arrive so they can be brought to life. Everyone who arrived on our bus is herded from one show to the next, and if you stray off-course you'll find the area deserted, fountains turned off, shops shut etc.

We get a 'backstage tour' of the various film sets — a Hindu temple, an airport, a hospital, a European street (it looks more like Miami) anda jail. It's hard to tell if any of it is actually in use, but the tour guide says they do use it for TV shows.

Afterwards we wander around the impressive Mughal garden set, an enormous area with tiered lawns, banks of patterned flowers and gleaming white marble. From a fake Mughal terrace we watch a mass of excitable Indian boys down below, dancing together fully-dressed in a musical fountain.

We get a rammed bus back to the city, Kate does some shopping for a salwaar kameez in Big Bazaar and I browse the VCDs in Planet M (from Rs. 49, bargain!). I have a plateful of ragada samosa standing outside the mall, and after a cup of tea we head back to the hotel.

Day 87, Hyderabad [Wednesday 27th February 2008]

2009-02-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

We wake up around 7.30am, and it seems like the entire train carriage has slept in — usually there's hustle and bustle from 6am onwards, but today all is quiet, the curtains between beds still pulled shut. We have some coffee from the man walking through the train.

Most of the passengers disembark at Secunderabad, but we trundle on slowly for another half hour, going around the lake to Hyderabad itself. The hotels are very busy, and we walk between 3 or 4 without any luck before we helpfully get pointed in the direction of Suhail. It's large, basic but quite clean, and has a friendly, helpful receptionist. Hyderabad feels big already.

We get a rickshaw to Golconda Fort, site of the region's capital before it shifted to Hyderabad proper. We chug along in Hyderabad's congested traffic. At one point I count eight lanes of it.

The fort is an impressive structure, atop a huge hill with a commanding position and view over miles and miles of country. Apparently impregnable, it held out against the attacking forces of Aurangzeb's army from Delhi for 8 months, eventually being defeated only through internal treachery. It's well-kept, tidy and blazingly hot. The people who work here are also surprisingly, refreshingly friendly.

We go a few kilometres down the road to the Qutub Shahi Tombs, the burial mausoleums of seven generations of kings of this region. These structures are amazing — huge domes rising out of a woodland setting, seated on high, arched bases. Each one contains the coffin-shaped tomb of the king, in an immense, cool, otherwise empty room. It feels spiritually calming.

Each of these tombs is different, each one precisely proportioned. The whole area exudes a calm and quiet that is a world away from the big city craziness we drove through to get here.

We get a rickshaw to the Charminar, in the oldest part of Hyderabad. Its four minarets (the meaning of its name) soar over the old town. We pay Rs. 100 and go inside, climbing up one of the towers, passing two hysterically giggling and somewhat out of breath Indian women on the way up. It's a lovely building, with arches in the walls thourhg which you can look down to the courtyard and fountain below. Over precariously low walls you can look out over the crowded bazaars and rickshaw filled streets.

We browse thorugh the bazaars next. Shop after shop of silks and cottons and other textiles, glittering saris arrayed in every window, and inside several men sitting on padded cushions on the floor waiting to measure you up. We also visit the Mecca Masjid, a large mosque that's almost 400 years old. Unfortunately we can't go inside, and the huge nets keeping birds out of the building make it look rather ugly.

With only 2 days here we have to cram the sights in, so we get another rickshaw to the manmade lake, the Hussain Sagar, in the middle of which, on an island, stands India's largest monolithic statue of Buddha. After a strict security process, including being frisked, we get a ferry out to the island. It's a pleasing piece of art, its tunic rippling like sand on a seabed. It was carved by 40 artisans. As the sun goes down some speakers dotted around the island playing some surprisingly apt chanting music.

We get the boat back to shore and look around the bazaars and teeming market stalls some more. Then we go for dinner at Shadab on High Court Road, an old-school looking restaurant where we order zuban nihari — goat's tongue curry, sheermal — A foccaccia-like bread, seekh kebab, special chicken biryani and sweet stewed apricots. The food is delicious, the biryani much more delicate than those we have had previously. The service is friendly, and the setting is plush and comfortable, but obviously ageing.

We manage to stagger, stuffed, to a rickshaw, and from there onto Karachi bakery where we run into an English bloke of Indian descent who's on holiday. The first thing he does is recommend a place where we can get a good naan!

After that, buying water at a shop, we realise the bloke behind the counter is American, again of Indian descent. I point this out to him, and he explains that he's come here to get married, and the owner is his soon to be father-in-law, who he introduces us to. We walk home, smiling at the friendliness of this city.

Day 86, Tiruvannamalai [Tuesday 26th February 2008]

2009-02-22T07:45:00.000-08:00

At breakfast in the hotel in Tiruvannamalai a sceeching old Indian woman is loudly telling the waiter exactly which order he should bring cornflakes and fruit juice in. We have uttapams and coffee then get the bus to Chennai, a 3.5 hour drive away.

Chennai is huge, sprawling and flat. It takes us half an hour to get from the suburbs to the bus stand, following which we still need to get a bus to Chennai Central train station.

We only have a few hours in Chennai as we have a train booked to go to Hyerabad. So we leave our bags in the cloakroom and get a rickshaw to the Government Museum, which I've heard is good. But first we get a chicken biryani for lunch, in a modern place which brings it on coloured plastic trays.

At the museum we go straight to the 'Chola bronzes' gallery, a fantastic display of high quality, well preserved Chola-era bronze deities. They have a perfect Shiva/Parvati sculpture, split vertically to represent the pair as equal parts of a greater whole. It's a large scultpture, but elegant and, unexpectedly, quite sexy.

Looking through the collection I am struck by the humanity, serenity and also the otherwordliness of these deities. Between the 9th and 12th centuries having darshan (sight) of these strange beings must have been a truly transcendental experience.

We take a quick look thorugh the architecture and zoology galleries — lots of rock carvings and animal bones, including a blue whale skeleton! But we have a train to catch, so we hurry through and get the bus to the station.

We stock up on samosas and halwa for the journey, then catch the train to Hyderabad. There are three Hyderabadi businessmen in our carriage, and we go through the usual conversation with them — where we're from, how long we've been travelling etc. But in common with many of the older men we've met, they're not really listening to our side of the conversation, preferring instead to make assumptions about how much money we have and talk openly amongst themselves about this. The conversation is thus not a conversation at all, merely a means for them to confirm their horribly narrow world view. I find myself asking them questions I know the answer to, just to move things along — is the food good in Hyderabad? Can we hear Qawwali music there? — but usually they don't understand the question or the answers are inconceivably bland. Between these three educated businessmen the level of conversation is surprisingly light — how many byproducts a banana has, for example — but they chat away non-stop in Indian-English anyway.

Day 85, Mahabalipuram [Monday 5th February 2008]

2009-02-22T06:26:00.000-08:00

We set the alarm, wake up at 6.30am and watch a bit of the Oscars "Red Carpet" live broadcast on TV. Then we walk down to the Shore Temple. We are the only two people there, and its misty, early morning isolation, silhouetted against the sun, is quite beautiful. We pay our money to a man through a tiny slot in a wall, then go inside.

The first impression you get is that the temple itself is really small, capable of of holding only half a dozen people. There are two main structures, and further ones in the immediate area, though most in an advanced stage of decomposition. The external carvings on the main temples buildings are heavily weathered by the salty sea air, and the inner carvings are virtually unviewable behind their locked iron gates.

An archeologist would undoubtedly be more excited about these temples, but after having visited a series of living Chola temples for the past couple of weeks, the utter separation, lack of context and museum quality of these buildings makes the experience underwhelming.

Further down the road, the stone carvings of five rathas (chariots) are more rewarding. They were carved out of monolithic piece of rock and are now five separate, distinct chariots or temples. In the same collection there is also a lifesize carving of an elephant, and another of a tiger in the now-familiar gap-toothed gormless style.

We look again at the extensive carvings along a vertical rock face, knows as 'The Descent of the Ganges' and also as 'Arjun's Penance'. It features what apear to be angels in flight, and conjures up dynamic movement from this static medium. We walk over the hill, which look similar but are much smaller in area than those at Hampi, and much busier, and altogether not as nice.

In the afternoon, with some relief, we leave Mamallapuram, and catch a bus to Tiruvannamalai. Or, we try to. We get a bum steer from the ticket guy at the bus stand, and end up in a busy town on the wrong side of 'the bypass', which means, according someone at a foodstall, that the bus we really want doesn't come through this town. We have to get another bus instead, which involves getting in the scrum of people waiting for eveyr bus by the side of the road, shouting to the driver to see if he's going our way. In answer, we get several dozen "no's" and lots more confused expressions. Our pronunciation, evidently lacking some local colour, tends to evince confusion more often than recognition.

Luckily most passers-by take an interest in our predicament, which in turn sparks heated discussions between themselves on, presumably, the best route to take from here to Tiruvannamalai. Meanwhile the dhaba cook, on whose doorstep we've been waiting, continues to fry up huge handfuls of garlic and ginger, obliviously preparing fried rice.

Eventually, we get herded onto a bus, with instructions to change at a place we've never heard of and whose pronunciation we only have the faintest notion of. I have to keep saying it over and over again in my head so I don't forget it.

On the bus we watch the flat-as-a-pancake Tamil Nadu landscape roll by the window. Miles and miles of paddy fields punctuated by small villages, all of which look strikingly similar — clusters of thatched houses, shaded by trees, with groups of women and children sitting around a flattened mud communal area, or sitting inside the dark doorways. The houses are either mud walls or sometimes bricks.

Some of the women on the bus have green faces. By which I mean they have brown faces, but seemingly powdered with something green, enough to give them a strange hue. Kate calls them 'Grotbags', after the green-faced witch from children's TV. Later on we see people with green feet too. What's that all about?!

We arrive in Tiruvannamalai around 2pm, get a tasty banana leaf thali and check in to the delightful Hotel Trichul. When the weather has cooled down a little we walk around the Arunachala temple which the town is famous for. It is dedicated to Shiva. We walk up the Arunachala hill behind the temple, which Hindus believe is Shiva, and which features in the ancient myths as being the place where Shiva formed a column of fire with no top and no bottom — the column was so tall that not even the other gods Brahma or Vishnu could find its beginning or end. It is also the location of the marriage of Shiva to Parvati.

On the way up the hill we pass village houses which open up onto the path. It's stil baking hot, so we only walk up about halfway, but the view of the temple complex is spectacular. The gopurams rise up high above the Tamil plain. They gleam white, and the largest is about 66 metres.

Later, back down on the ground we go inside — it's heavily atmospheric, a long wide walkway through several gates until you reach the inner sanctum. Uniquely among the temples we have seen so far, this one is floodlit at night, so the public areas glow against the night sky with a warm, inclusive light. There are more beggars here than elsewhere too — men, women and children.

Kate lights some candles and we sit for a while in the central open space, watching people come and go. This temple has a strong sense of community, with people talking together, arriving on groups. It feels much more social than many of the temples we have seen in Tamil Nadu.

At the hotel we drink a beer and watch the Oscars repeat on TV. Around 11pm I go out to get some water. The town is deserted, it's streets almost all dark. I see man standing at the door of a roadside temple, silhouetted by a street lamp, his hands joined in prayer. He kneels down, lights a small wax candle on the doorstep, and walks away.

Day 84, Pondicherry [Sunday 24th February 2008]

2009-02-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

We depart Pondicherry for Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), 2 hours up the coast northwards towards Chennai, and site of a World Heritage listed 12th century temple.

Mamallapuram is a dirty, messy stinking hole. Only 2 hours from Chennai, it has an entirely undeserved reputation as a 'traveller's hangout'. Instead, it appears to be a prime target for daytrippers from the city. Sure, you can pick up an overpriced latte frapuccino if you like, but isn't that what you came to India to get away from?

Outside of the tourist resort hotels, the town's roads and environs are a disgrace. Plonked in the middle of all this, sitting above a dirty and unswimmable beach, is the Shore Temple. It's prim lawns, picked clean of both litter and leaves, are in stark contrast to its surroundings, where rows of trinket shops, food stalls and coconut sellers crowd the area, ankle deep in rubbish and wild animals. We can't visit the temple today, as it's closed, but we will go tomorrow. We stand on the beach and watch the hubbub for a while.

The hills around here are covered in rock carvings and tiny temples are dotted everywhere. Crowds of noisy children clamber all over the rocks. We look at the immense carving depicting the descent of the Ganges, which thankfully is fenced off lest the kids try to scale it. It's scale is huge — about 10 metres high, and highly detailed.

Day 82, Pondicherry [Saturday 23rd February]

2009-02-22T04:56:00.000-08:00

We have fried eggs on toast for breakfast! With proper toast! And a mushroom omelette. Lovely.

We go to the Aurobindo paper factory. They aren't actually making any paper when we visit, but we browse through the incredibly tactile selection of products in the shop and buy some letter paper to write home with. When you go in a shop most people generally say 'bonjour' instead of 'hello'.

Kate buys a salwaar kameez in the Auroville boutique, so today we've basically funded the Auroville weirdos' hippy dippy lifestyles some more...

We take a walk along the beach, and stop at a cafe where I inadvertently order a blue milky, minty drink. I think Rule no. 1 is surely 'never drink anything blue'. In the evening we have some beer and a wood-fired pizza.

Day 81, Pondicherry [Friday 22nd February]

2009-02-22T04:46:00.000-08:00

We take a delightful walking tour of the 'French Town' area, taking in the alliance Francais, Hotel de Ville, Aurobindo ashram and many other finely preserved or restored buildings.

We have lunch at a rustic little place cooking pizzas in a wood-fired oven. We see some of the confusing 'Farm Fest 2008' at the Botanic Gardens, a little walk outside of town, where the Forestry Department are displaying foxes and monkeys in tiny cages.

The organisers have decided that the best way to present an agricultural show in a natural setting is to segregate each section using ugly, opaque corrugated tin sheeting and play screeching music and unintelligble information announcements through loud, crackly, trebly speakers.

After a long, hot day we treat ourselves to dinner in the gorgeously restored L'Orient Hotel, part of the Neemrana chain. It's an old French/Tamil family's home. In a candlelit open-air courtyard we eat creole chicken, gazpacho, salmon mousse, chicken in mushroom sauce, a bottle of Indian wine and chocolate mousse for desert. It's all absolutely delicious, and the setting is magical. It's relatively expensive, but Pondicherry is quite expensive anyway compared to the rest of Tamil Nadu. Kate said she probably wouldn't drink more than one glass of the Indian white wine, though.

Day 80, Chidambaram [Thursday 21st February 2008]

2009-02-22T03:59:00.000-08:00

The hotel we stayed in last night was really good - and looked like the only decent one in Chidambaram. Excellent food, and really popular.

We take another look at the Nataraja temple, which is much emptier than it was yesterday. Our footsteps echo down its empty halls. But far from being an empty building, this temple hums with life, its ancient history still alive in its ominous stone presence. A powerful feeling comes over me when we're inside is atmospheric walls. I can't really explain it.

Ouside, Chidambaram is a mess, a chaotic cloud of rickshaws, dust, noise and crowds. Half the street is ripped up as part of a beautification project.

Then we get on the bus to Pondicherry, 2 hour's drive away. After a dusty bus ride culminating in an even dustier bus station, and a 20 minute rickshaw journey, the sight of Pondicherry is almost absurd. A seaside town and former French colony, it retains much Gallic charm, with wide avenues and townhouses with courtyards and shuttered windows. It really is inordinately French, everything about it reminds you of a French town, from the street frontage to the high kerbs. India appears to be creeping in at the edges — there are plenty of homeless, naked children, smelly streets, fried food and tea stalls — but the "French Town" quarter is quiet, clean and tidy, and very, very French.

The first hotel we stay in, a tall townhouse with balconies and sea-views, has no running water. The owner comes in and turns the taps on and off, repeatedly, confirming that there is, indeed, no water. He looks puzzled, and calls his colleagues to also turn the taps on and off, repeatedly. One of them looks underneath the sink. Eventually we pack up and leave, and find a friendly place a couple of minutes away: The French Villa at 51 Rue Suffren. This place is whitewashed, with AC, balconies and oudoor tables, and a cafe downstairs, XO, that sells coffee and cakes.

After a restful day we promenade along the sea front under a full moon, followed by a couple of beers at Le Space, an open-air art gallery and bar which is frequented almost entirely by French people. We eat lemon and honey roast chicken for dinner. Afterwards we walk home, quite tipsy, giggling at the surreality of it all.

Day 79, Tanjore [Wednesday 20th February 2008]

2009-02-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

We spend some more time looking around Big Temple in Tanjore, then get the bus to Chidambaram. I have been reading 'Perfume' on the bus, which is very apt book to have while travelling through India, one of the most fragrantly varied landscapes on Earth. Every corner tickles your nostrils wit a new smell. The streets are infused with the scent of jasmine, urine, wood smoke, human shit, fried food, spices and toxic exhaust gases. Wonderul.

At Chidambaram we visit the cavernous Nataraja Temple. It's big and square and dark, with long, wide hallways lined with carved pillars. It's really dark. It feels ancient. Did I mention it was dark? Everywhere bells are clanging ominously, but remain unseen, just the echoes arriving down the hall from somewhere. I feel very far from the outside world, separated by thick, solid stone walls. It feels like being in the bowels of something. An ancient, sleeping beast, perhaps.

People are streaming down the dim walkways towards a sanctum, and when we arrive there we see hundreds of people are gathered to watch an elaborate ceremony — the deity of Nataraja, a gleaming bronze statue, dancing on one foot and surrounded by a ring of flame, is being washed, chaotically, by a group of Brahmin priests. First, they pour bowl after bowl of flour over the statue. Nearby, a priest stands over a long metal spike, smashing coconuts down up on and collecting their water in big drums. Next they pour this coconut water over the statue, bells ringing and clanging. We watch for a long time, the coconut milk pouring off the statue, onto the floor and under our feet. It becomes hypnotic, and we could have stood there for hours.

But eventually, weak with hunger, we make our way back out into the freer, fresh air outside. There, talking to some locals, we find out that the celebration going on inside is a festival for the new Tamil month, of which there are 6(?). He tells us that later the statue will be washed in ghee, and after that in turmeric.

Day 78, Trichy [Tuesday 19th February 2008]

2009-02-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Early in the morning we climb the 600 steps of the Rock Fort Temple in Trichy. It's a temple unique in India for being split into 3 levels, with the sanctum sanctorum at the highest level.

There's a great view across Tamil Nadu from the peak. Plus the priest actually lets us inside, so we get to walk a circle around the deity, and get to see the view all the way around from the open windows! The view of Trichy's other temple is excellent.

When we descend we get dosas and coffee for breakfast then head off for Tanjore, a 2 hour bus ride away. Once there we check into an old Maharaja's guesthouse, which has been converted into a hotel. It's a bit creaky, but its bright and airy and holds some promise. It's set around a large, leafy courtyard, and has a grand staircase leading to wide verandas running the length of the inner perimeter of the building.

We walk down to the palace of the erstwhile Chola king Rajaraja. It has to be said it's quite bland an uninspiring. It suffers from the usual Indian problem of lack of documentation and information, absence of context and unsympathetic restoration. In this case it means that the murals have been 'repainted' by local artists, ugly security grills have been installed and the lack of ny furniture has left an inexplicably empty, echoing space.

There is, though, a fantastic collection of Chola bronzes, including a whole room full of Nataraja deities. There is also a library which is stuffed with esoteric etchings and maps collected by Rajaraja.

One other item that caught our attention was the 'woman's defence weapon cum betel nut cutter', which is plainly just a whacking great sword!

In the evening, once the baking heat has died down, we go to the impressive, World Heritage listed Big Temple. It has another, proper name, but everyone calls it Big Temple, which is fine by me. It was built by the 3rd Chola king, and is an spectacular feat of design and engineering. Carved from granite, it has a spacious, well-ordered feel. An informative exhibition within one of the corridors which line the temple in a square describes how architects think the Cholas might have managed to build the temple using fairly primitive engineering techniques. It also has reproductions of the intricate paintings and carvings which adorn the inside of the inner sanctum.

It was a royal temple, and the Cholas were great patrons of the arts. As such the temple contained the very best paintings and literature. The king even brought 400 dancing girls there and gave them their own accommodation.

As the sun went down, the beautiful golden gopurams light up so gorgeously it's enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Day 77, Madurai [Monday 18th February 2008]

2009-02-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

We set the alarm and watch the sunrise over the magnificent temple from our hotel room. The gopurams loom over the ancient city like silent sentinels. We wander down there, getting a cup of tea from a stall on the way. We pick up a little guide book which helps explain the various parts of the sprawling temple complex, and lends a little more shape to what we'rel looking at, instead of us just walking around rather ignorantly.

So this morning we notice the carving of Meenakshi's wedding over the southeastern gopuram.; the ceiling painted with gods outside the Meenakshi shrine; the 8 carvings of Shiva outside the Swamiyar shrine; terrifying statues of the bloodthirsty gods Agni and Kali, and another, delicate one of Meenakshi's wedding. We also see the doorway with 1008 oil lamps attached to it, and the carving near the Golden Lotus tank depicting the builder of the temple.

Around the tank we see several weddings — both bride and groom draped with heavy garlands, looking a little like shire horses. The southern wall of the tank is completely lined with rugs ready for the wedding parties to sit on.

The temple is busy with worshippers. Kate buy some tiny candles and lights them at 2 different shrines. The early morning sunlight streams though gaps in the high roof. Lots of small shrines line the walls like grottoes. Groups of people pray around pillars, the stone blackened by coconut oil. One such pillar features a carving of Hanuman, the monkey god, now covered in daubs of red powder from his devotees.

It's been a rewarding morning. With a little time and help it is easier to orient yourself and understand some more about how people use the temple and what part it has in their lives.

We get dosas for breakfast on the way back to the hotel, then pack up and get on a bus to Trichy, a three hour bus ride away.

The hotels in Trichy are busy — apparently it's wedding season. But we manage to get a clean, decent place opposite the bus stand, with a 'high class' veg restaurant attached. We head straight in there and get a huge, healthy thali served up on a banana leaf.

We get the bus to the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple. Designed in 7 concentric circles, it's absolutely massive. It covers over 150 acres of land. It once functioned as a citadel and housed 40,000 people, most of whom seem to have remained and are now cluttering up its streets and passageways. It's a scruffy old place that for some reason seems indifferent, even unfriendly. It has more beggars than we've seen in any temple or city so far.

We climb up to the roof, which is surprisingly flat and uninspired, but which has an excellent view of the enourmous, towering gopuram. It's 73 metres high and painted in pyschedelic rainbow colours. Learning from previous experience, I pick up an interesting English-language booklet about the temple, written by a French architect as part of their application to be listed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. The booklet details the temple;s ancient origins, the daily rituals and its place in the historical and present Indian religious landscape.

We get veg curry and noodles for dinner, both of which contain grapes and pineapple.

Day 76, Madurai [Sunday 17th February 2008]

2009-02-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

We pay our bill for Kairili Palace — Rs. 2750 for 3 nights' stay plus 2 dinners, 2 breakfasts and lots of coffee. It's an absolute bargain, and a great place to stay.

We walk across the border into Tamil Nadu — I hadn't realised we were so close! There's just a traffic barrier separating the two states. From there we get the bus to Madurai, several hours down the road. There we are going to see the Sri Meenakshi temple, the first in a long string of ancient temples which stretch out across Tamil Nadu. These temples are generally very large citadels, aligned in a square and surrounded by towering, colourful gopurams. They are built in the Dravidian architectural style, with stepped gopurams.

Initially I feel a little bewildered by the Sri Meenakshi Temple. Yes, the gopurams are colourful and gaudy, but they seem to lack the refinement of those at Belur and Halebid. The layout of the temple complex — confusing and disorderly. It's disorienting to walk around it, with endless passageways, rooms and temples seemingly going round in circles. But the difference is that this temple is alive. It's full of people, and is being used. And we're caught up in that. It isn't a museum exhibit, it's very hard to stop and observe it objectively.

The atmosphere around the temple is relaxed, while inside it's bustling with pilgrims and tourists, nearly all Indian. It's also very big. Big gopurams, long passageways lined with big carved columns, big statues. We decide to go back and have dinner, and come back for another look around the temple tomorrow.

We walk back to our hotel after a tiffin at a pleasantly ramshackle dhaba. After dinner we watch "A Good Year" starring Russell Crowe and Marion Cottilard.

Day 75, Periyar National Park [Saturday 16th February 2008]

2009-02-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

We wake up with the morning light, have a quick cup of tea then, by group decision, head straight our for another few hours of trekking. The weather is cool and we walk through thick clumps of elephant grass and damp forest. We see lots more bison, and tiger droppings which are reassuringly fresh.

The habitats in this park are so varied, it makes for constantly interesting, enjoyable and rewarding trekking. Back at camp later we tuck into poori and chana masala, tea and bananas. When we've finished and packed up we make our way, on foot and by raft, back to the park entrance, where we say goodbye to our guides.

We have a hot shower at Kairili Palace, and spend the rest of the day relaxing on the terrace. That night I walk down to the beer shop and queue up with the other thirsty men for my surreptitious, newspaper-wrapped bottle of Kingfisher. I feel sneaky, and quite enjoy it really.

Day 74, Periyar, [Friday 15th February 2008]

2009-02-08T07:58:00.000-08:00

We have omelette and toast for breakfast, then walk to the Periyar National Park entrance. The rest of the group turn up gradually — we're going into the park for an overnight hike. There's two Brits and a Swede. We all put on leech socks then head into the forest with our three guides — Pandya, the leader, another man with an antique looking rifle and a third, seemingly odd-job man.

In the next few hours we see macaque monkeys, sambar deer (they're everywhere!), giant squirrels, drongos and bison. The knowledgeable guide also point out cinnamon trees, sandalwood, wild cotton and wild curry bush, as well as pepper, coffee, cardamom and innumerable other plants, trees and spices.

Eventually we make our way onto a raft and push out into the huge man-made lake at the centre of the park. We paddle across to our camp, which overlooks the lake and the rolling hills of the park, great peaks surrounding the spreading fingers of water. The camp sits on a spur of land jutting out into the water, and our tents are surrounded by a deep elephant-proof trench, about 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep. We have to totter over a thin wooden plank to get in and out of it.

We feast on bananas, biscuits and tea, followed by curried tapioca and ginger yoghurt raita, all prepared by our guides on an open fire. Once the heat of the afternoon has passed we set out for a trek. We pass through thick forest, grassy plains and woodland dotted with clearings. We see two huge herds of bison, one of them numbering over 100, the other about half that. After they've run off we discover a baby they've left sleeping. We creep up for a closer look, and suddenly she wakes up, startled, and runs into the forest. Our guide assures us her mother will return for her. Later we see an elephant, briefly and tantalisingly close, about 20 metres away in the forest. It disappears quickly, though.

We trek on, arriving at a peak overlooking a karge swathe of the park — the lake stretches out to our left and right and the thick carpet of forest goes to the horizon. The scale of the park is huge — it's over 700km square. When we spot half a dozen elephants far below us at the water's edge, even their impressive size seems insignificant against the looming permanence of the landscape.

Back at the camp we have lemon tea, followed by a delicious thali dinner of rice, avial and various other veg dishes. We sit around a log fire afterwards and Pandya tells us how he and his colleagues used to poach cinnamon and animals from the park around 10 years ago, and how they curbed their criminal activities and came to organise eco-tours into the park instead.

We watch the stars and the fireflies, then one by one drop off to bed.

Day 73, Periyar [Thursday 14th February 2008]

2009-01-13T13:09:00.001-08:00

We take a long, hot hike up a hill overlooking the town, with views into Periyar National Park. We run into some trouble with the park security, who try to muscle us into signing up for a tour. We go round in circles a few times with the tourist office and the security guards. The tourist office shrug their shoulders and say,

"Yes, this is a problem. They are corrupt."

They ask us to write a letter to the Chief Minister or Tourism Department of Kerala state to complain, but suggest at the same time that it will inevitably be flatly ignored. It's infuriating, but we decide there's not much we can do about it right now, so carry on with our walk, making sure we keep outside of the seemingly arbitrary park boundaries.

Up on the hills people are drying small batches of coffee beans and pepper in the sun, laid out on sheets on the ground.

Back down at home our host brings us cups of sweet black coffee and bananas from her garden. That night she makes us another scrummy dinner, and her husband gives us a taste of his homebrew. It's dark brown, thick, and sweet like sherry.

Day 72, Kumily [Wednesday 13th February 2008]

2009-01-13T13:05:00.000-08:00

George makes us breakfast of pootu (steamed rice and coconut cakes) with banana and toddy syrup, which he makes us mash up togehter and which is deliciously sweet.

Then we wave goodbye and get the rickshaw to Kottayam, where Kate stops and buys "The God Of Small Things", the author of which's house we just drove past. From Kottayam we get the bus to Kumily, at the edge of Periyar National Park and close to the Tamil Nadu border, in the Cardamom Hills region. It's a 4 hour bus ride, after which we spend some time trying to decipher the geography of the town before locating our homestay, Kairili Palace. It's built like a traditional Keralan home, with a wooden upper story hewn from Anjali wood, the same wood the dragon boats of Kottayam are made from. There's a private seating area outside our spacious room, with curved, polished dark wooden benches. It's comfortable and interesting, with a view over the garden, which is full of fruit trees.

Spices are big business around here. Every other shop in the street is selling packets and sacks of cardamom, pepper, cinnamon. We ask our smiling host if she can make us dinner, and she obliges with a huge, varied meal of chicken masala, rice, and cabbage, carrot and green beans from the garden. Yum. We sit down with the family to eat and we meet her husband, who has an infectious hoot of a laugh, and her cheeky granddaughter Sara. They're a friendly bunch, with enough English to share a joke with us. We go back upstairs stuffed.

Day 71, Kottayam [Tuesday 12th February 2008]

2009-01-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

We get up and get out of the room by 7am and go for a walk around the village. Walking along the edge of the water, circumnavigating the huge paddy field next to the house, it takes us about 1.5 hours to walk around.

Everything and everybody is already lively by now — the sun is up and burning the mist of the water. Nearly every house we pass has at least one family member in the water, brushing their teet, washing their hair or having a bath. Schoolchildren are dressed and ready to go. TV's blare out the sounds of Bollywood songs or the news in Malayalam, old men sip glasses of tea on ther porch. Everyone says good morning, the sun shines through the coconut trees and it's already hot and steamy.

For breakfast George makes us potato pancakes with tomato chutney. His family are Syrian-Christian and over breakfast we talk about what this means. He is a progressive thinker and has strong, sensible views on how Indians should conduct themselves - no dropping of litter, no spitting, no urinating in the street. He also knows the problems of enforcing those views — lack of education, rebellion against authority. He says he has complained to the school headmaster about children begging around the village for school pens and money. However, he has ambiguous views on the caste system. He explains enthusiastically that due to the caste system in Kerala there are specific people for specific jobs like toddy tapping, paddy farming etc, and if others tried to do those jobs they would not be good at them. When I ask if he agress with the system he quickly denounces it and says it will be gone in 10, 15 years. There are pictures of serious looking orthodox priests on the walls. George's parents sit watching the 'serials' on the TV.

We relax for a few hours in the garden then get the local ferry to Cheepungal where there is a bird sanctuary. It is the only piece of land on the bank of the main waterway that is publically accessible — everywhere has been bought up by hotels and resorts. Opposite the sanctuary — which contains no birds — is the luxurious eco-hotel CGH Earth Coconut Lagoon, which has no road access but uses water taxis instead.

For dinner we have appam and chicken stew, a classic Kerala Syrian-Christian dish. It's not spicy but is deeply savoury. We meet two Americans who have come to stay, one of whom's husbad is in Chennai studying Carnatic music — she says the festival season there, which runs from November to January, has music concerts every night.

Day 70, Alleppey [Monday 11th February 2008]

2009-01-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

We go down to the boat jetty in Alleppey to check out the houseboats which this town is famous for. They are old converted rice barges and they take tourists out to cruise around the backwaters, a network of miles and miles of rivers and streams running roughly parallel to the Kerala coast.

We are greeted with an endless series of 'hello's as we amble along the water's edge, inspecting each same but different boat. But the touting isn't too heavy-handed. Most of the crews display no interest whatsoever in procuring business, their touting presumably being done for them in the town itself. Instead they lounge around on the overly flamboyant furniture watching DVDs. And there is the main problem with these boats — they're kitted out to resemble middle class Indian living rooms. Large, decorative wooden sideboards adorn the walls, groaning under the weight of display plates and carriage clocks. Huge, plush sofas sit fading in the sun, looking incredibly out of place. Most of the boats have a DVD player and massive TV, a stereo wired up to big speakers. Any remaining space is taken up by a sturdy dining table and set of chairs. One even had a Tata Sky satellite dish angled upwards at the front of the boat. The captain sits amid this cacophony of furniture, emphasising the fact that the only real privacy you can expect on a cruise is inside your airtight-sealed room, thus designed so your air-conditioning will work properly but which otherwise acts like a sauna. It's quite a sad and depressing sight.

We decide not to hire a boat in Alleppey, and maybe wait until we're at the southern end of the backwaters to see what the boats look like there — they don't look very appealing or comfortable here.

So then we get the local ferry to Kottayam, a 2.5 hour ride across the main expanse of water in the backwaters. It turns out to be a great way to observe life in the area. We see dozens of people coming and going at the various stops along the route. People ferrying building materials in small canoes, others with piles of grass balanced on their boats — fodder for their goats. We pass under manually operated drawbridges, the mechanism counter-balanced with rocks to make the job easier. Green expanses of African Moss blanket half of the great lake and the endless, tiny waterways. Mango and jackfruit trees overhang the water.

We had called earlier to book a homestay, and now the owner, George, meets us at Kottayam in rickshaw. After stopping at a supermarket for supplies we arrive at his house a few kilometres down the road. On the way George points out the family house from Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things'. George's house is at the water's edge, surrounded by cinnamon, nutmeg, mango and banana trees. The porch of our room looks out on an endless view of vivid green rice paddy, full of birds and fringed with coconut trees. It's beautiful. We laze on a couple of hammocks hanging between trees, until George calls us into the kitchen for a cheese sandwich.

That afternoon we go out in one of the neighbour's canoes to explore the local waterways. It's the perfect way to experience the rhythm of life in the area. We see household after household kneeling by the water, washing. Swimming children, women scrubbing clothes and cooking pots. We hear 'the fish man' shouting from his canoe as he glides past, his catch resting silvery at his feet. 'The egg man' also drifts by, as does the surreal sight of a man herding thousands of tiny ducklings along the water, all chirruping and squawking away. Most people see us and wave or say 'Hi!'. Sometimes whole families rush to the door, carrying babies, to wave as we go past.

Our canoeist shows us the huge 'snake boat' that won the local Nehru Race last year. It's massive, and holds 65 people, seeal of them drumming to set the rowing pace. A gang of kids jumps around us hyperactively.

After a dinner of paratha and egg curry George gets his rickshaw-wallah to drive us to the big Shiva temple about 15km away, near Ettumanur. There it absolutely buckets down with rain and we watch as they celebrate their temple festival, parading their deity on the back of two huge decorated elephants. The proceedings seem to be running a little late — we got George to check the timings in the Malayalam-language Manorama newspaper, and it said some Kathakali would start at 9pm, but it's 10.30pm and the temple elephants are still circumnavigating, rain pouring down threatening to extinguish their coconut oil candles. Trumpets and drums are blaring. Eventually the Kathakali stage springs into life and starts their own clanging drums, building to a crescendo when the curtain is dropped.

There are 2 performers, almost identically dressed , in green face paint — signifying a noble character such as a God or king — wide skirts and silver talons. They perform an extraordinary synchronised dance, tick-tocking their way through it with elaborate hand gestures and nimble feet. It's livelier and more 'dancey' that what we saw at the Kalamandalam earlier.

But we've kept our rickshaw waiting for long enough in the rain so we leave after not too long. Our drivers puts a kind of transparent raincoat over the top of the rickshaw and buttons down the edges, and we thunder through the lashing rain down tiny dark lanes all the way back to George's house.

Day 69, Alleppey [Sunday 10th February 2008]

2009-01-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

We get the train back to Ernakulam and change there for a bus down to Alleppey. There we stay in the Springs Inn (Rs 450) next to the river, which is clean and pleasant.

For dinner I have a beetroot-filled masala dosa(!) and the Indian Coffee House, a consistently down-at-heel but cheap chain of coffee places in south India. They have good, strong, sweet Indian coffee, an astounding array of snacks and waiters in tea-stained white uniforms.

Manchester City beat Manchester United 2-1 l live on ESPN, followed by Chelsea and Liverpool drawing 0-0. India beat Australia by 5 wickets in the ODI in Melbourne.

Day 68, Churuthuruthy [Saturday 9th February 2008]

2009-01-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

Banana pancakes for breakfast! That's pancakes, bananas, sugar, sultanas, cardamom and coconut milk, mmmmmmm!

We leave Fort Cochin today, so we get the ferry to Ernakulam, bus to Trissur, have lunch at Malabari — mutton dum biryani, veg curry and fruit salad — then get a bus to Churuthuruthy. There we take a look at the room we've reserved at the River Retreat hotel, decide it's not worth Rs. 2500, and leave. The River Retreat is some sort of spa resort, and when we get there a couple are having their overly dramatic wedding photos taken in the grounds.

When we reach the dusty main road of the town we see a sign for a Government Guest House, so we go up and ask if they have a room. We've obviously disturbed an important card game, as a roomful of grumpy civil servants turn to look at us as we stand in the doorway with our bags on our backs. Three of them churlishly rouse themselves from their seated or laying down positions around the office and get out a big reservations book, ask to see our passports, and grudgingly offer us a room for Rs. 220. Bargain! The room is upstairs in a large building surrounded by a veranda. We pass one room, the curtains of which have a gap in them, through which we can see several men laying on beds in the dark. Our room is big, and quite plain, with just a double bed, a fan and a couple of basic desks. It'll certainly do for one night, as we've come here specially to see the Mohiniyattam dance at the Kalamandalam, a major educational centre for the traditional performing arts.

Around dusk we walk up to the Kalamandalam theatre through the dark, dusty town. There's just one road going through it, and nowhere to eat, but we get some tea. The Kalamandalam theatre is impressive, its sharply angled tile roof and wooden slat walls resembling traditional Keralan temples. We peer through a gap in the ornate wall and see the spectacular interior, with carvings and pillars lit by candles. A boy in the shadows signals to us to walk around the other side of the building. We do so, and find that we are 'backstage'. A man sits on a straw mat, lit starkly by a single light bulb hanging down from the ceiling in front of his face. He is putting on thick makeup, and gestures to us to sit with him. He introduces himself, in English, as the principal of the Kalamandalam school. His face is yellowy-orange and he is painting on thick black eyebrows. He says the character he is playing tonight is Sita, from the Ramayana, the god-king Rama's wife. He says he will be performing a new theme tonight, a dramatisation of a poem wherein Sita is looking back on her life. He thinks this new item will draw a large crowd of his students form the school. altogether he has 400 pupils there, and 48 teachers.

He paints black wisps of hair on each of his temples, a large red bindi and bright red lips. He tells us he has performed in London, at the Nehru Centre in Mayfair (it's the Indian Embassy's cultural centre) as well as at many other venues around the world. After chatting for a while we go through the the main theatre and take a seat in the floor. The theatre is built like a temple, the traditional venue for Kathakali performances. There are grey stone pillars, wooden friezes of gods around the walls and oil lamps hanging from the ceiling. The stage is low, about 1.5 feet high, and the audience, nearly all young students, sit around us on mats.

First we watch a Mohiniyattam dance — 5 girls in identical white and gold costumes, with striking makeup and bells on their ankles. They perform a heavily stylised routine, with dextrous hand movements and expressive faces. Next up is a solo Mohiniyattam dance, which tells a story through the esoteric movements, a language of dance of which we understand neither the grammar or vocabulary. It's a pleasant spectacle, and the live sung vocals and music are piercing and powerful.

Then comes the Kathakali, stylized, drawn-out narrative dance performance. An oil lamp is lit at the front of the stage. A curtain is brought out and held at head height across the stage. The music starts — drums, cymbals and two mournful vocalists. It builds and builds, then the curtain is removed to reveal Sita, clad in a large flowing skirt, with long black hair and a medieval looking hair ribbon. She is sitting on a chair looking pensive. Over the next 2 hours she goes through cycles of recalling and acting out episodes from her life, occasionally coming back to the present day and the chair, sometimes laying on the floor clutching it in distress at the bad memories she is reliving. It's a clever dance, and compelling. Although the language of intricate hand movements and signals is incomprehensible the drama of the piece remains intact. Not least when Sita throws herself into the fire which is to become her funeral pyre, the roaring, sparking fire here represented by torrents of dropping rose petals.

We speak to the principal again afterwards and he asks us if we understood everything. We laugh and say of course not, but we got the general idea. He gives us his card and email address and says he hopes to see us again when he's next in London.

Meeting the principal, the ambience of the Kalamandalam theatre and the originality and drama of the Kathakali made tonight an extremely memorable night.

We walk back to the Government Guest House in utter darkness. There are no street lights and only one shop open where we buy some fruit for dinner.

Day 67, Fort Cochin [Friday 8th February 2008]

2009-01-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

We go to Ernakulam on the bus. It's a hot, busy city. We look for shoes for Kate, who had hers stolen back in Kannur. We shop around for a bit and stop for fresh fruit juice. We go into a posh hotel overlooking the sea, sit down, look at the prices of the lunch menu and get straight up and leave!

At 7pm we walk into the quiet lanes behind Fort Cochin, to find a kalaripayattu demonstration. Eventually we find a secluded shed, and we're the only 2 people there, but a group of boys waiting outside set up some chairs for us and give us a short, informative demo of their martial art. The quick, gymnastic moves are far too quick to catch on camera. With many forms based in part on the natural movements of animals, the boys are graceful and athletic. They demonstrate the use of sticks, swords and shields and knives. They explain that years ago people would stick leaves to their bodies before swinging sharp knives all around themselves, until the leaves lay shredded on the floor, to demonstrate their skill with a razor sharp weapon.

We talk to them afterwards and they are relaxed and chatty, explaining about the religious and ritual aspects of the art, the dangers and their relationship with their 'Master'.

We get beer served to us in teapots for dinner at a cafe by the Vasco square. I ask where the bathroom is, and a waiter leads me down the side of the building before pointing to a wall, grinning. We meet a couple from Alton in Hampshire and chat for a while about their travels in the northeast, which sounds very different to down here in the southwest - very mountainous, with heavy rain. Although it turns out that they're about to leave India after only 2 months as they're fed up with it!

Day 66, Kochi (Cochin) [Thursday 7th February 2008]

2009-01-05T16:29:00.000-08:00

Breakfast is great, especially the sweet coconut milk that goes with the light, fluffy appams. I think the milk contains fried cashews, sultanas and cardamom. It's soooo good.

We walk around Fort Cochin and see the Bishop's house, the Dutch cemetary, the Cochin Club — no booze, it's for playing cards only, St Francis' Church where Vasco de Gama was buried the first time around, before being moved back to Portugal. Many of the 16th and 17th century buildings are well-preserved, but the whole place lacks any considerable atmosphere. It's a tourist town, and painfully so — most of the food is European, and prices are high. The best preserved buildings are the 'heritage hotels', exquisite reproductions of the original rich merchants' houses, many using the original frame and decked out with expensive furniture, lots of teak wood and rattan blinds, plus a bar and a swimming pool of course.

We find Neemrana's hotel here, 'La Colonial', hidden behind a plain, cream coloured wall with only a tiny plaque next to a door for identification. We ask to have a look inside, and get a personal guided tour of the magnificent building. The whole place is completely empty, and a trio of staff show us each of the 8 rooms, including an amazing twin double room suite with a vast veranda overlooking the garden and pool. We ask where their guests usually come from, and if they ever have any Indian guests.

'We never have Indian guests,' the man smiles, 'Price are too high.' A sneaky look at the tariff shows that prices start at Rs. 5000 and go up to Rs. 20,000.

We get a tuna sandwich for lunch, plus coffee and a piece of chocolate cake then wander around the churches and parade ground some more. For dinner we go to the Italian restaurant run by a mixed Indian-Italian couple. We spend much of the evening trying to work out if the hostess is Indian, Italian or both! It's too close to call.

The 'imported salami' pizza is good. The espresso and vanilla ice-cream is even better.

Day 65, Kochi (Cochin) [Wednesday 6th February 2008]

2008-12-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

We buy a freestanding bell metal lamp in the Kerala Government-run craft shop, and post it home together with our other one. The cost is calculated by weight, and it costs a whopping Rs. 2000 to post. We have veg curry and paratha again for breakfast at Malabar Restaurant, then we get on a bus to Kochi.

We sail past endless jewellery billboards, full of ecstatic women dripping with bright yellow gold, arms and necks weighted down with ornate chokers and bracelets. Those women who aren't being conspicuously overcome by the voume and weight of their jewellery can instead be seen in the equally ubiquitous silk sari advertisements. These towering models loom over traffic all over southern Kerala, draped in the richest, finest, most embroidered silks that money can buy. Looking at these posters you can understand the wealth of texture and heritage that the saris provide.

Interestingly, the models in the ads are often inordinately exposed, more so than any woman I have seen in person in India. I guess sex sells here, even in posters and billboards advertising bridalwear.

As the bus thunders over a busy bridge we see a large sign saying "Welcome to Kochi". The sign is stuck into the ground and surrounded by small hills of stinking, rotting litter. The scene resembles a rubbish dump. We both crack up laughing, but we don't get the camera out in time to snap the sight.

We get the ferry to Fort Cochin, the old part of the city where swarms of Western tourists congregate. And it seems like all the hotels are full. We try 3 or 4 and get the same answer at all of them — full. Luckily for us one of the receptionists calls up his friend, who lives nearby and runs a homestay. 30 seconds later we have walked around behind the hotel and found it — Sithara. We negotiate Rs. 600 a night, a bargain! The owner, the pot bellied Harry, is friendly and a dry wit.

We take a quick look around the area — we are based a minute's walk from the parade ground. There are Western tourists everywhere, it's quite a weird sight. They even sell Diet Coke in the shops! There are barely any Indians aroudn except for shop owners. We look at the Chinese fishing nets, of which there are fewer than I'd imagined, then we go to a cafe and eat a tuna sandwich, cappuccino and blueberry cake!

Back at the homestay our hosts have made us dinner. We sit down at a table outside with two German guests who are staying in the other room here, and get served two different meals — one for us and one for them. Ours, I think, is spicier as we'd told Harry we'd eat anything. So, we get spicy king prawns, kingfish curry, chicken and sweetcorn sou, rice and a vegetable dish containing cabbage, potato, carrot and coconut. It's lovely, fresh, homecooked food. Afterward dinner Harry's wife Mary, the culinary genius, comes out to meet us. We say thanks for such a delicious meal, then we arrange breakfast for tomorrow. We ask for anything Keralan, and Harry suggests veg curry and appams, masala chai and pineapple juice. Sounds good...

Day 64, Trissur [Tuesday 5th February 2008]

2008-12-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

We get the bus to Irinjalakuda, where there is a large temple with a theatre within its grounds. Unfortunately as non-Hindus we are not allowed inside. But we do get a shop owner to decipher a Malayalam poster for the upcoming temple festival, the decorations and preparations for which are just beginning. The shop owner tells us that on Saturday there will be a Mohiniyattam performance, with the same again on Sunday followed by a Kathakali performance. Mohiniyattam is a traditional Keralan dance which is, I think, characterised by a lot of swaying.

A video showing a Mohiniyattam dance:

Next we walk the 500m to Natanakairali, a school for the arts which was set up by two of Kerala's finest performance. One, the woman, teaches and performs Mohiniyattam. The other, the man, performs Pavakathakali — an ancient form of puppetry. We speak to them and find out that there are no cultural events currently planned, but the woman does give me a written invitation, in Malayalam, to an event she is performing at on Saturday.

A video showing a Pavakathakali performance:

We get the bus to Nadavambaram, where there is apparently a small industry making the bell metal lamps that we can be found in temples and homes everywhere. Sometime you can watch the lamps being cast, but not today. We buy a small hanging lamp, plus a chain to hang it from, for Rs. 1300. The lady gives it a vigourous polish, wraps it up in newspaper and boxes it for us.

For dinner, back in Trissur, I have an underwhelming paneer and cashew cream dosa. Kate's American Chop Suey is so gloopy, sickly and bad she abandons it and orders something else.

Trissur town is based around a huge park, at the centre of which is Vadakunnathan Temple. This sounds appealing, but once you arrive you realise that the park is of standard Indian design — scrubby, dusty and poorly lit, host to large groups of squatting men and others urinating against trees. The temple itself is not accessible by non-Hindus. There is another, smaller park a short walk away, which houses some examples of one of my favourite features of the Indian landscape — excruciatingly bad statues of Gandhi. These figures, intended to praise and memorialise, usually render the Great Soul as a stooping, diminutive primate, his disproportionally large head framed by an even large set of thick black NHS spectacles. Knobbly kneed and clinging on to his wooden staff for dear life, these homages do their very best to devalue the great man's legacy.

Day 63, Trissur [Monday 4th February 2008]

2008-12-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

I get my trousers taken up at the tailor's. I also get a haircut which involves close, some might say excessive, attention around the ears, a head massage, talcum powder applied to the neck and a spritz of aftershave: a massive snip at only Rs. 30!

We have parotta (paratha) and veg curry for breakfast in Malabar Restaurant. The curry is creamy with coconut milk, and very peppery too.

We try the Kerala Tourist Development Corporation (KTDC) to get them to decode the Manorama — an almanac of events and festivities published each day in the newspaper, but only in Malayalam. And using the Malayalam calendar too, so it needs translating twice, once for language and the second for time. The woman at the desk reads for a while, then tells us that there will be some Bharatanatyam dancing at a temple called Kottankulangara, a Mahavishnu temple nearby.

So after dinner — fish curry and an amazing veg dum biryani, which is cooked in a pot sealed with a roti to trap the steam — we get a rickshaw out to the temple along dark roads. It's only a couple of kilometres, and we get an extremely friendly greeting when we arrive. "Welcome to our temple!" They have an 'elephant garage' here, which is full of elephant parasols, decorations, bells and everything else needed for a successful festival. We watch the chenda melam, a percussion performance. There is hypnotic, deafening drumming. The drummers and several elephants circumambulate the temple. Boys are stringing up shredded banana tree leaves as decorations. someone asks us to come back tomorrow — the festival will last for several days. Tomorrow, he says, they have 5 elephants instead of 3.

Trissur is crazy about shopping, and movies. The shopping must include lots of saris and gold. The movies must include moustachioed, angry men.

Day 62, Coonoor Coimbatore Trissur [Sunday 3rd February 2008]

2008-12-20T07:12:00.000-08:00

A day of travel. After breakfast at Mahalakshmi's in Bedford (in which we are, yet again, the only customers in a space built for 100) we get the bus to Coonoor, the another bus back down the hill to Coimbatore. From there, after both of us getting confused and irritated by the numerous bus stands and conflicting directions given to us, we finally get a bus to Trissur, back in Kerala. This bus is blasting out a Tamil film at speaker-ruining volume on a TV mounted behind the driver, who turns it up even further whenever there's too much traffic for him to hear it.

At Trissur, tired and once again very hot, we crash out in our room with a beer. I watch a Newcastle - Middlesbrough match (1-1) followed by the preposterous 'Deja Vu' starring Denzel Washington, who should know better.

Day 61, Coonoor [Saturday 2nd February 2008]

2008-12-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

We get a breakfast in Bedford (which is the area we're in — upper Coonoor) o dosa and coffee, and write home using some hand-painted cards we got in the Green Shop. After posting the cards and the box of goodies for Danny and Laila we visit Sim's Park, a lush botanical garden laid out in a steeply inclined natural basin. When we visit there are more workers than visitors, employed in those most Indian of activities — picking weeds from the grass and sweeping the leaves form under the trees.

It's a lovely park, with winding walkways leading downhill to a lake. Trees from Australia, Japan, America and India are all here and well signposted. Dozens of schoolchildren run around, waiting for the lunch tiffins to be opened by teachers. The climate here is so refreshing — bright sunshine and a cool breeze. You need a jumper. Back at the bungalow we have to swap rooms because of a prior booking. Our new room has one completely glass wall, like a conservatory.

We set out on a walk to the viewpoint called Dolphin's Nose. We walk through the smooth Astroturf landscape of manicured tea estates. Views of the sweeping valley on one side and misty mountain peaks on the other. Occasionally we pass settlements created for the tea estate workers. They are housed in small, one roomed dwellings, which invariably have women outside washing metal bowls and utensils. We stop at tea stalls for some intense, fresh masala chai. There's a strange sensation from walking amongst undulating hills whose surface is so pristine and ordered. This is the neatest place we've seen in India. It's like walking through Super Mario World. A couple of hours later, walking down silent tarmac-ed roads with the occasional bus thundering past, we get to Dolphin's Nose. We drink some more tea, then get the us back to Coonoor. We put our feet up for a while at the bungalow, and watch Bride And Prejudice on the TV, which is a lacklustre 'internationally produced' Bollywood retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Despite starring Aishwarya Rai, it's a bit duff, with forgettable songs and a cynical eye on international markets.

There being very few choices of place to eat in Coonoor we have dinner at Quality Restaurant again, whose food admittedly does bear some some of the characteristics its name suggests.

Day 60, Coonor [Friday 1st February 2008]

2008-12-07T13:38:00.001-08:00

We get up at 4.15am! The hotel staff are sleeping on the sofas in the lobby. We get the local train to Mettupallayam, where we change onto the narrow-gauge Nilgiris Hill Train to Coonoor. It's still dark.

We see the steam engine being warmed up before we start, then it gets shunted into place at the rear of the train, so it pushes the carriages up the hill instead of pulling them. The Nilgiris Mountain Railway is a UNESCO World Heritage site, grouped under Mountain Railways of India along with Darjeeling and Shimla.

We pay the extra for 1st class tickets, and get the very front carriage, with a huge window looking straight up the hill, which we share with a Japanese couple. It's spacious, smart and very clean. It takes 3 hours to climb the steep 19km to Coonoor. The train 'averages 10.4 km per hour and is perhaps the slowest in India.'

The scenery going up is stunning — deep valleys and misty peaks. Every time we go through a tunnel a group of Indian boys behind us whoop and shriek like monkeys. There are several stations on the route, and we pass through one with a smart wooden sign saying 'Runnymede'. The station, with its stationmaster's house and hanging baskets of flowers, would not look out of place back in leafy Surrey, although the waterfall and mountainous scenery might.

As we pull in to Coonoor there is a toothless old man dancing by the side of the track. There are also several photographers taking pictures, and we discover that the carriages of the train were brand new, and today was their inaugural outing.

We alight at Coonoor, and from there the train runs on towards Ooty. We get a rickshaw up to the top of the town and stop outside the Botanical Gardens. The area around the station had the usual Indian-ness — the grubby, rickety pavements, the grabbing rickshaw drivers, the crowds and the noise. But up here, next to a roundabout and a neat grey stone wall, overlooking the quiet hills, it immediately feels altogether different. I wouldn't describe it as specifically English, Scottish or British, but it's green, and quiet. You can almost hear the hills breathe.

We check into 'The Wallwood Garden' bungalow, a 'non-hotel hotel' run by a company called Neemrana. They specialise in characterful places staffed by local people, and their list of hotels includes forts in Rajasthan and a glasshouse on the Ganges. The bungalow is a gorgeous little place with dark wood floorboards, dark wood furniture, a four-poster bed and a garden with comfy chairs. It's got a tin roof too, a feature of most houses in the hills, and was built by a 'Scottish Major General, hailing from the village Blair Athol', before being bought by the tea company, Lipton's. The staff are lovely and it feels homely. It's a bit chilly up here, though, so they have a fire going too.

We do some tea tasting just a few doors down from the bungalow. The owner brings out armfuls of clear glass teapots, with a gradation of tea colour from pale ivory through to deep burgundy. Tasting them all in relation to each other it's easier to discern the subtle differences. We try Oolong, Silver Tips, semi-oxidised, oxidised, hand-rolled and green tea. Much of the tea grown in the Nilgiris goes to make up the granules which every tea stall in South India use, boiling them for hours before piling in the sugar and condensed milk. But some estates are making a more refined product. I think my favourites are the Silver Tips and the Oolong. Plus we even get a scone!

We also go to a High Field Tea Estate to see the tea being processed. One it's been picked by the field workers it's brought here, heated and dried, then shredded and sliced and compounded into granules. The whole process of making CTC (cut, tear, curl) tea happens very quickly, a matter of hours. We are shown around the pungent factory by an enthusiastic guide (entry Rs. 5) with a trigger-happy camera finger. We learn many interesting facts about tea production — the tea is picked every 30-45 days. The plant is a tree, not a bush. They plant large trees in the midst of the tea to aid water retension and prevent soil erosion. Our guide insists that we have many photographs taken together — picking the tea, carrying the tea, processing the tea.

At the Green Shop in Coonoor Kate buys a pair of warm, thick Angora socks, in preparation for the cold night ahead. The shop sells products made by the tribal peoples of the Nilgiri Hills, who have been continually displaced by development in the area.

We have a Keralan dinner at Quality Restaurant then head back for a good night's sleep.

Day 59, Calicut [Thursday 31st January 2008]

2008-12-07T13:33:00.001-08:00

We go to Calicut train station, where they have a wooden glass-fronted cabinet housing snapshots of repentant-looking and/or dastardly 'Railway Criminals', along with the sombre warning 'Beware'. We get the train to Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. It takes 6 hours, snaking through mile after mile of paddy fields, coconut palms and silvery shining rivers. The train is surprisinqly quiet. We talk to a man who is a 'personal trainer'. He asks me if I work out.

Coimbatore is a remarkable busy place. It's a transport hub, with a train station and 3 bus stands all located confusingly near each other. It's also a popular place for business conferences. The first 4 hotels we try are full of conferencees. Eventually we get a room in Legends Inn, a pricey but comfortable, modern hotel. After a meal on a tray at the restaurant at the end of the road — meat downstairs, veg upstairs — we watch the rather good Jennifer Aniston starrer The Breakup on HBO.

Day 58, Calicut [Wednesday 30th January]

2008-10-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

We get up at 6.15am and get a rickshaw to the nearby Kalari — the gym where boys learn and practice kalaripayattu, an Indian martial art.

Inside, the small room is warm and humid, its walls lined with swords, shields and daggers. A dozen small boys are oiling their bodies and being put through some manoevres by their 'master'. Good balance is certainly a requisite. Some of the moves are obviously meant to be aesthetically pleasing, and most of them are fairly athletic. We're not sure if our presence has disturbed them or not. Some of the boys demonstrate fighting with long sticks. It's fast, loud and impressive. Some of them make it look a lot easier than others. There is a small shrine in the corner of the kalari, where each boy prays or asks for blessings before he fights.

Afterwards we write some emails home, and discover the sad news that Kate's brother Nathan has been glassed in the face outside a pub.

There are rows and rows of gold shops here, their walls and windows dripping with astoundingly vulgar displays of the preferred precious metal of India — very yellow gold. Thee are also film posters everywhere, for 'South' films, as film magazine Filmfare likes to refer to them. They might also be called 'Regional cinema'. South films generally means films produced in the South Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andra Pradesh, and which are voiced in those states' vernacular. Success in South films and Bollywood, the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry, is not mutually exclusive. Many stars make the crossover between industries and languages, such as the actress Tabu and the director Mani Ratnam. The huge star Aishwarya Rai made her debut in a Tamil film. Down here they absolutely love the cinema. It's everywhere.

We get a rickshaw to a house, Tasara, which specializes in handloomed ecologically friendly non-violent silk. This means the silk is harvested without harming the worm that produces it. It's a steaming hot afternoon. The house is set in extensive grounds filled with coconut and banana trees. We even get to see the looms in action, thanks to a bevy of English ladies who are here on an extended looming holiday. They're old — the looms — and need regular maintenance to keep going. They also look incredibly complicated.

The silk they use is unrefined and so naturally much rougher and varied than we usually see. It makes for interestingly textured thick rugs and mats, window blinds etc.

The owner is Vasudevan, and he invites us to join him for lunch, which they have just started. Two meals are hurriedly brought out so we can sit down with everyone. When the ladies find out I work with computers I spend a while answering questions about wireless internet access plans available in India, as several of them have business they're trying to keep in touch with. Vasudevan is hospitable and friendly, and they house where eveyrone stays is bright and airy. After looking through loads of materials, Kate buys a scark (Rs 1300) which has been dyed with natural vegetables colours — in this case beetroot.

After leaving Tasara we try to go to an art gallery which is housed in the old house of V.K. Krishna Menon, India's first high commissioner to the United Kingdom, and the co-founder of Penguin books in the 1930s. Unfortunately the gallery is closed for renovation, but the builders let us into one room so we can see some of Menon's artefacts. He had lots of lovely pens.

We spend a few hours in the market buying souvenirs to send home to our niece and nephew Laila and Danny — we get a rickshaw toy, some bangles, a carved wooden elephant, some stickers of Hindu deities and a bag of stick-on bindis.

For dinner we go to Paragon, a huge restaurant and by all accounts a Kerala institution. It servies Mopilla cuisine, an Indian-Arabian and specifically Muslim fusion. It's located unpromisingly near a motorway flyover, down a dark alley. And it's incredibly busy — we have to wait in a queue for a while before we get in. But it's some of my favourite food so far — lots of fish, coconut, curry leaves and spices. Kate has a hariali chicken kebab and a hot, light nan. I have fluffy white appams with fish moilee — a spicy, creamy gravy — and fish polittchattu, which is Kingfish smeared in spicy sauce, wrapped in a plaintain leaf parcel and fried. The appams are so light and sweet, and the cremy moilee goes perfectly with the fried hot fish. A fantastic restaurant, recommended!

Day 57, Calicut [Tuesday 29th January 2008]

2008-10-26T02:56:00.000-07:00

We leave KK Heritage today. I get up extra early and go for a walk along the beach, where the soft sunlight shines through the haze. After breakfast we say our goodbyes and get a rickshaw into Kannur, which Ranji has to help push up the steep hill.

We get a local train to Calicut (also known as Kozighode). It's crowded, hot and sweaty. A Muslim man, back from working in the Gulf, describes in faltering English how Kate's uncovered head and shoulders are arousing him. I ask him, loudly, to stop being a pervert, and how would he like it if I stared at his wife's breasts the same way he was staring at Kate's. Several younger men on the train speak to him, and tell us to 'not speak to anyone like that'.

We check into the Beach Heritage Hotel, a hotel with a rich historic tradition. It has apparently hosted Jawaharlal Nehru, amongst others. We have a barnlike room, 7 or 8 metres high with dark polished floorboards, filled with dark wood furniture and wicker chairs. We have a large conservatory-style room facing the beach and overlooking the front lawn. At Rs. 1500 it's a little expensive, but a fine room anyway.

We walk down S.M. Street (Sweet Market Street) and look through some of the silk shops. Historically an important trading area for spices since medieval times, it is still an extremely mercantile city. Silk Street, Metal Street and other trade-based streets are testament to the city's importance as a marketplace. A local tells us there is a joke about Calicut that if Vasco de Gama, who first landed in India in 1498 just 25km away, ever came back he would still be able to find his way around.

We get a rickshaw to the Kuttichira area. This is a network of lanes surrounding a big tank, and where you can find 3 well preserved mosques dating from the 12th century. They don't share the well known Mecca style of design, of minarets and domed roofs. Instead they are built mainly from wood, and have something of a Chinese look about them, something pagoda like. Each floor and angled roof is progressively smaller than the one below it.

We ask some people near the door if we can go in. I'm not allowed to, because of security issues. The imam isn't here to ask his permission, so I must come back later. Kate just isn't allowed, full stop. But the people we speak to are friendly. They offer us tea and ask about England.

There's a large Muslim population in Kerala, much higher than in the rest of the country. It's the most pluralist state in India, as there is a large Christian population too, as well as Hindu. It also has a Communist government, the first freely elected one in the world. A fact which may or may not be linked to all of these things is that Kerala also has the highest literary rate in the nation - above 90%. It's also relatively clean, and has good public transport.

Back near the hotel we have an ice cream on the promenade next to the sea. Then we have a beer overlooking the sea from our veranda.

We go to local favourite Zains for dinner and sit outside on the veranda. Unfortunately they're out of most dishes, even though it's only 8pm. We get prawn biryani and chicken masala, both if which are ok.

Update: Calico, the textile, originally came from Calicut.

Day 56, Kannur [Monday 28th January 2008]

2008-10-26T02:06:00.000-07:00

Upma and potato stew for breakfast. We go and pick up my tailored shirts from Kannur, which are sturdy and well made. The linen trousers are a different story. Although the tailor took my measurements when we visited him the finished product resembles my body only so far as it has two legs, the length and width of which he appears to have made up on a whim.

Ranji picks me, Kate and Lisa up and we go to his house for dinner. They have a big bungalow the other end of Kannur that has been in Jyothi's family for generations. It has three bedrooms, but when I ask which one belongs to who Jyothi gently mocks her kids and says they all sleep in the same room! The kids look embarrassed and turn shy. They have a large kitchen and a garden at the front of the house which is full of fruit trees. In the hall is a shrine to Krishna, with a blue Krishna statue, a string of flashing lights, pictures of Krishna, Radha, Ganesh and Sai Baba (a phenomenally popular Hindu and Muslim saint), and an oil lamp suspended from the ceiling, flames flickering. The smell of incense fills the air.

We play Othello with Navya and Nandana, then Jyothi takes us into the kitchen and shows us how to cook Chinese fried rice. She asks us if we have a fridge in our kitchen — perhaps she thought it was so cold in England that we didn't need one! She has a special tool that clamps onto the edge of the worktop, with a dangerous looking rotating blade at the top for scraping the flesh out of coconuts.

We sit at the dining room table and again they serve us first, waiting until we have finished to serve themselves. We have masala chicken and Chinese fried rice, and kheer for desert, and Jyothi and Ranji continually urge us to eat more. It's such a privilege to be invited into their home to eat with them. They are a friendly, open family and the kids are both very sweet. We talk about family life, running the business, schoolwork. After dinner we look through their wedding album of photos. They haven't changed much over the years. Stories emerge about Ranji's varied past business ventures. He previously owned Costa Malabari when it was a textile factory. Before that, at the time of their wedding, he owned a fleet of private buses. Now, of course, he is a homestay entrepreneur.

Stuffed full of food and having had a great evening, it is time to go. Rani drops us back to KK Heritage, stopping on the way in Kannur to buy us each a bag of cashews.

Day 55, Kannur [Sunday 27th January 2008]

2008-10-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

Breakfast is rice dosa, scrambled eggs and green gram curry. Ranji tells us there's a wedding just up the road, and there's an open invitation. We're a bit hesitant about turning up unannounced at the wedding of two people, neither of whom we know. Even more so when Ranji says neither he or Jyothi are going. But I'm curious, having never been to an Indian wedding, so we dig out our best clothes - unironed shirt and dusty trousers for me, then - and at 10am walk up the lane.

The bride's house is obvious when we arrive, as it's decorated with a dais and canopy in the front garden, with bunting and signs put up all around the house. A priest sits on the dais, surrounded by flowers, burning oil lamps, bowls of rice, coconut tree saplings (?), wheat and other traditional wedding ceremony items.

As we walk in we see there is already a large crowd gathered. Men seated, and the women gathered around the doorway to the house, which by way of consolation for its lack of seats has the best view of the dais. There is a hum of activity, coupled with the quiet chanting of the priest. Embarrassingly, the guests rise out of their chairs to make room for us. There are also some guests here from Costa Malabari, so the front 2 rows of this couple's wedding are full of inquisitive Westerners.

Soon the groom arrives, dressed in a plain white, perfectly ironed shirt and lunghi (sheet worn like a skirt, also called a dhoti, in Hindi). The bride emerges from the house and together with the groom stands on the dais in front of the priest. She places a garland around the grooms neck, and vice versa. Whoops and cheers erupt from the family and friends who are now crowded around the dais. They then place gold necklaces around each other necks, to even more, even louder whooping from the crowd. It's much noisier, relaxed and vivacious than I was expecting it to be. The couple, however, still look nervous and contained.

The priest intones some prayers, then the couple walk 3 times around the dais, around the burning lamps and the wheat and the bowls of rice, the groom leading the bride. Then they sit and receive the long, long line of family and friends who queue to bless them, which they do by sprinkling rice grains onto their heads and shoulders. At this point we sneak off as it looks like the blessings might go on for a while...

It's a hot, hot, humid day. We take a long walk along the beach and buy some fruit.

Day 54, Kannur [Saturday 26th January 2008 - Republic Day]

2008-10-22T03:55:00.000-07:00

The alarm goes off at 5am, we get up and walk through the forest by torchlight. The moon is bright and insects create a shrill noise. When we arrive in the kavu — the clearing, or shrine — the deity Gulikan is already seated, having performed his theyyam already. There is a queue of people waiting to talk to him for a blessing or for advice. His mask and headpiece are huge, towering maybe 7 metres above his head. It has a wooden frame, with red material and gold metallic emblems running down the centre and the edges lined with palm fronds like stylized hair. His face is painted red, with shiny metallic inlays.

It is an astonishing and surreal sight, at 5.30am in the middle of a steamy, tropical forest lit by fluorescent strip lights, with a power generator chugging in the background.

Gulikan is seated on a chair, and has leaned the enormous headpiece against the roof of the temple. As people approach him one by one he reaches to his belt, which is festooned with flowers, plucks a leaf or some petals and places it in their hands. He continues to hold their hands while he talks.

Soon the character of Shastapam emerges from the small dressing room. Attendants hold a length of material over his face so we are unable to fully see him while they fit his headpiece. It is a wide, solid circle placed on top of his head and reaching down to his shoulders. It is designed with concentric circles of shiny metal are more red material. On his forehead is a gold-coloured plaque. Either side of his head, like two huge ears, are further pieces of red material and two large metal discs. He wears a white beard and has two silver hemispheres covering his eyes, with tiny pinholes in allowing him to see. He has metal bracelets and red material around his neck and wrists. A large, hooped skirt protrudes a foot in radius around his waist and drops to his ankles, which are decorated with bells and anklets.

When his costume is complete he is brought a mirror which is held in front of his face and lit by an oil lamp. We watch the eerie sight of a god contemplating his own reflection. He adjusts his moustache then waves the mirror away. He starts to move in a procession around the temple, sheltered by a large parasol held by his attendants, who also light the way with oil lamps. He performs his dance, directing the drummers to raise or lower the tempo as he works himself into a trance. After an elongated buildup, at a point of particular intensity, he walks in the burning embers of the fire which has been stoked all morning. He puts both feet into the fire and dances straight out again. It is brief but unmistakably hot and painful.

Following his dance Shastapam sits outside the temple to meet with people. Gulikan moves further away from the temple to accommodate him.

Finally Vishnumurthy appears, clad in a grass skirt and woolly red sleeves. He dances around the fire, swatting at it with palm fronds, is orange painted face and big black eyes looking simultaneously shocked and sternly admonishing. Then he has another grass skirt fitted, a larger one this time. But this skirt is fitted right up underneath his arms, so high that it forces his arms into an uncomfortable upright position. With his arms raised, he dances quickly and lightly around the shrine. At one point he fetches a chair an stands on it. He approaches the shrine and is presented with a sword with bells attached.

Speaking to Ranji about this we understand that this ceremonial gift giving is the exact moment at which the man assumes the identity of a god. Vishnumurthy dances around some more then he too takes his place on a seat in front of the temple. Jyothi and the children have all arrived now and there is a pleasant, social atmosphere which reminds me of the period immediately after mass on Sundays when we went church as children, when families and friends would gather in small groups to talk and say hello.

We make a donation to the temple and get a bag of prasad in return - a paper bag containing a banana and a cereal mixture of wheat and bran. We all walk back together to the house for breakfast of scrambled eggs, dal and fried puri. We spend the rest of the day reading, snoozing and playing card games with Navya and Nandana.

In the evening Jyothi shows me and Kate how to make a chicken biryani. It's amazing how she produces such good food out of such a tiny kitchen.

Jyothi's biryani recipe:

Grind to a paste and fry in ghee:

20 cloves garlic
8 green chillies
3 inches ginger
salt

Add to the fried paste:

5 small onions, chopped
2tsps turmeric
5 cardamom pods
some cloves
biryani masala powder

Add chicken, which you have marinated in yoghurt, coriander and turmeric. Separately, fry soaked basmati rice in ghee and coconut oil, add twice volume of water and bring to boil. When cooked add chopped corainder and layer in saucepan with chicken. Add mint on top and heat on low with lid on for 5 minutes 'to set'. Serve.

Day 53, Aadikadalai [Wednesday 25th January 2008]

2008-10-19T02:20:00.000-07:00

We get up at 7am and take a paddle boat up the river. There's a hazy morning glow over the river, and it's beautifully quiet. We see cormorants, cranes and kingfishers.

When we come back we see Ranji and the whole family on the bank waiting for us. We take Navya out for a quick ride. The kids have their school anniversary day today, which means they put on a show and give out prizes, and Jyothi has taken a day's leave to go with them.

We all drive into Kannur together where Ranji recommends a fabric shop for me. I want to buy some cotton to get a shirt tailored, and Ranji has been wearing some nice ones so I asked him where he got them. Most people get clothes tailored here - it's a better fit and cheaper than readymades. I come out from the shop with cotton for two shirts and linen for a pair of trousers, which cost me Rs. 1700. The boy in the shop walks us over to a tailor, but he's too busy, so we try another, and he also is busy. The third choice is is available, so he measures me up and tells me to pick up my clothes in 3 day's time.

We find a good bookshop, DC Books, and I buy "In Spite Of The Gods", a book which I had found on a shelf and first started reading back in Hampi. It's an excellent look at the state of India by a former Financial Times economist. We look in Green's Supermarket, which has rows and rows of shelves standing testament to India's insatiable appetite for snacking.

That evening we go back to the next village's temple, walking through coconut groves to get there. We see toddy tappers shinning up the trees, knives and bottles slung around their waist, to harvest the latest batch of fermenting sap.

At the temple te first part of the theyyam is starting. The theyyam himself appears partly dressed in his costume. He has not yet assumed the identity of the deity at this point, but is preparing for the ritual. We are able to see into the 'green room' and witness the intricate costume being fitted by several people. In front of the temple they apply coloured paste to his arms and face. Drums start to play, repeatedly rising and falling in rhythm. The theyyam prsents packages of wrapped leaves to the assembled priests and drummers, who touch his feet as a sign of respect. Then he spins around rapidly and points into the crowd at two men. The priests summon these men towards the theyyam and they too are presented with a rolled leaf - is it paan?

For dinner we have curried mussels, rotis and sambar. The mussels are deshelled and quite dry, mixed with lots of ginger and garlic. We have more payasam for pudding.

Around the dinner table there follows much discussion concerning the timings of the theyyam ceremonies. There are two more guests with us now. Antoinette, who we met and who recommended KK Heritage to us. And Lisa has come from Germany to study kalaripayatu. Ranji makes a phone call to one of the drummers and gets some inside information. We resolve to get up at 5am tomorrow to watch the ceremony. Apparently Gulikan, a theyyam with an extraordinarily tall headdress, will appear at 2am, followed by Shastapan at around am, and finally Vishnumurthi at around dawn. They will then stay until at least midday talking to people, offering advice and blessings, still in the identity of the deity.

Day 52, Aadikadalai [Tuesday 24th January 2008]

2008-10-19T02:04:00.000-07:00

After an early morning stroll along the beach, and a quick chat with the neighbours, we sit down to breakfast with Ranji — masala omelette, green gram curry, rice dosa and pootu, plus a few cups of chai.

We lounge around on the veranda reading books. Later we amble down to the next beach along, which is a tiny secluded alcove. Two fisherman paddle to shore with a canoe full of mussels.

A German girl comes and joins us when she realises she's being watched by a couple of locals, who are perched on top of a nearby cliff for a better view.

For lunch we go to the temple, where as part of their ongoing festivities they are cooking food for everybody. The whole village is here, queuing for food and lined up at tables eating. We get a plate piled high with boiled rice, sambar, coconut chutney and pickles, and a bowl full of kheer (sweet rice pudding). Afterwards we take our plates to the water tap to wash them up, and pass the giant cooking pots on the way. They re sitting on huge wood fires and are so big I could climb inside one. Stuffed full of food, we spend the day lazing around and playing Scrabble.

Around 6pm we walk through the woods to the next village's temple, where they are having a 'junior theyyam'. The world of theyyams is a mysterious one and hard to understand. Penetrating it involves numerous phone calls to temple committees, inside knowledge from members of the caste who perform the ritual, and local insight from people who will be attending. Despite even this array of information it is still entirely likely that you will not have a clue what is going on. Dates, times, names of deities and rituals will be mentioned, and still you will be no wiser about what is happening, where or at what time.

The temple people are very friendly, they come to meet us and give us a big ladle of payasam (sweet rice pudding, cooked with ghee and coconut oil) in a banana leaf. This is prasadam — a gift from God. The pudding came out of a huge pot, and is now spilling over the sides of my scrunched up banana leaf. When we manage to finish it all someone gives us second helpings! We're both groaning from overeating today.

Suddenly we are surrounded by a dozen children, all asking our names and explaining how to play 'hand cricket' — a version of scissors, paper, stone — and generally getting overexcited. Then the drumming starts, more rhythmic and musical than yesterday's.

Sitting in a clearing in the woods, the temple is sunk down about three feet into the earth. There are two simple, symbolic structures used in the theyyam which are lit by oil lamps and strung with fairy lights. The atmosphere is enchanting. The rest of the village is lit by harsh fluorescent strip lights attached to trees at angles, reminding me of an installation artist I once saw who used fluorescent tubes as material.

We hang out with the kids some more, then make our way back to KK Heritage, where we meet Ranji's wife Jyothi and their two children Nandana and Navya. Nandana is quiet but thoughtful and Nvya is slightly bonkers.

For dinner we manage to eat some mackerel curry, rice, sambar, 'leaf curry' and chickpeas. Ranji and Jyothi wait until we've finished our dinner to start their own. We wish they would eat with us, but I suppose that's etiquette here.

Day 51, KK Heritage, Aadikadalai [Wednesday 23rd January 2008]

2008-10-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

The two people we met yesterday told us that the homestay in the village of Aadikadalai, near Costa Malabari, was a better and cheaper option, so today we ring the place up and he's got a room available.

We have breakfast — appams, and some sort of rough idlis made out of rice and shredded coconut, and chickpeas. Afterwards Ranji from the homestay comes and picks us up. It's called KK Heritage and it's lovely. It's about 2 minutes walk further down the hill from Costa Malabari, set in woodland. Ranji owns a large house there, and the homestay is a small two bedroomed cottge with a red painted and polished veranda. It faces a field of coconut trees, followed by, over a large dune, the open sea.

Ranji takes us on a tour around the property — we meet one of his neighbours who is growing bananas, cashews, coconuts and cucumbers, on a vine up a tree. He has three daughters, each of whose name begins with a Su— sound, but I don't quite catch all of them. He smiles all the way through the introduction of both his plants and his daughters. They have a small house which looks directly onto the beach and the sea. Ranji is a talkative, friendly and excitable man who finds himself sometimes with the appropriate English words just beyond his reach. He's charming and solicitous.

The beach is very nice — long and secluded. We're the only people on it. There's a long line of palm trees at the back of it. There is a steep incline down to the shoreline, the waves are strong and the water immediately deep.

After a bit of sunbathing and swimming we walk back to the house, and Ranji brings us a plate of pineapple so sweet it's like candyfloss. He brings a bowl of the tiny, sweet bananas too.

At about 5pm there is the sound of a large banger going off. We make our way to the temple in the village, a 15 minute walk. The village is small, with a couple of tailors, one or two food ome goods shops and a sweet shop. The temple sits in the middle or a large dusty square. It is celebrating its anniversary — there are two elephants parading around, dressed up in ceremonial garb. There is a group of drummers also, manically drumming to an obscure mathematical algorithm. The elephants and the drummers circle the temple, stopping at each corner and at the midpoint of each side. Men sit on the backs of the elephants, one holding a parasol, one holding the tiny golden Sri Krishna deity and one at the back brandishing pompoms. We watch for a while. There's a low turnout thus far. Apparently this ceremony takes place over several days, each installment itself taking several hours to drum and parade to its mathematical conclusion.

So we go back to the house for dinner — we have fried tuna, tapioca (savoury, lumpy root vegetable, cooked in sauce with curry leaves) and rotis. It's all fresh, homemade and delicious.

Back at the temple we watch the conclusion of the tonight's celebration — the deity is brought down from the elephant and enters the temple, followed by the now massed crowd.

After the elephants have been led away into the night there is a stage program. A small stage has been erected next to the temple, and for the next few hours it is filled with a troupe of singers, dancers, camp cross-dressers and shrill comedians, all performing in Malayalam at ear crushingly high volume. The crowd — men, women, children — absolutely love it.

We stay until our ear drums burst and head back down the dark lane to the house.

UPDATE:

Ranji and KK Heritage's contact details:

Telephone: 9447486020 or 9447067408 or 0497274025
Email kkheritage@gmail.com

Day 50, Kannur [Tuesday 22nd January 2008]

2008-10-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

Photo by SanjuAfter a creaky night in the treehouse, which also has an exploding water pipe which explodes when you flush the toilet, the radio alarm wakes us up with a crackle at 6am. It's time to go for a morning trek into the park.

We have some much needed tea and coffee then pile into a jeep. The forest looks even denser and more alluring than yesterday — looming stands of bamboo surround silent lakes, and everything permeated by a thick mist.

We peer eagerly from the jeep, earnestly searching the landscape for the tiniest details which might reveal an animal on the loose. I begin to see elephants in everything - the grey trunk of a tree, a slab of rock. Unfortunately we don't see a single live elephant. But we do see lots of spotted deer and some peacocks, lemur monkeys and bison. We also see a swooping, slipping, white tailed bird called a Paradise Flycatcher. It ducks between trees and bushes, its bright, pendulous tail bouncing and flicking behind it like a streamer.

The guide tells us that bamboo is the largest member of the grass family. It flowers just once, and that might take 100 years, after which it produces seeds which can be harvested as bamboo rice. Then it dies.

Back at Pachyderm Palace we have masala omelettes and grape juice for breakfast. We hitch a lift in the Estonian's taxi, then get a bus on to Kannur. We ring Costa Malabari, a guesthouse with an owner apparently very knowledgeable about theyyams, a local form of religious practice. But he's full. So we eventually find the Mascot Beach Resort, right by the sea, and check in there instead. It's a fairly upmarket but anonymous place.

We go into Kannur for lunch, and get a pretty good, and very hot, Kerala fish curry at Sagar Garden Restaurant. The waiter asks us if we're here to see some Kathak dance, then proceeds to write, on a napkin, extensive details of a temple we should visit, which bus to get there, how much the bus fare will be and what time to go! He's a cheerful, helpful chap, and we leave him a tip. Kate was a bit upset about the Pachyderm Palace being expensive, and having an exploding water pipe, and getting ripped off to trek into the park, and this bloke cheered her up immensely.

We walk down to Payamballam Beach, and meet a couple of backpackers who ask us where we're staying. In turn they tell us about another homestay very near Costa Malabari, which is just as useful for getting to see a theyyam. The beach is full of schoolchildren, standing on the beach in their uniforms.

We get the bus, as suggested, about 20km to Parissini Kadavu temple. It is located on the bank of a river, at the bottom of a very steep, very long flight of steps. As you approach the temple the density of souvenir stalls increases, until finally you feel as if you are walking through a shiny, spangly, multicoloured, multifaceted tunnel.

As we arrive they have just started the theyyam. A theyyam is an ancient ritual in which a person of significantly low caste becomes the incarnation of a god. It is the product of an animistic religion, and many of the gods resemble creatures or natural entities like trees. We remove our shoes and go through into the main space. Crowds line either side of the room, with a multitude of priests in the centre, all focused on one in particular. At one end of the room is a large, ornate wooden building, about 12 feet across.

This theyyam is a muthappan, with the god in the form of Vellatam - the god of hunters. Vellatam likes a drink of toddy. Then he runs around with a bow and arrow, shooting things. The crowd are given gifts from the theyyam, such as leaves stripped from a branch. The dance he performs is highly ritualised and symbolic. Drums and bells clatter and ring insistently throughout and build to an extended crescendo. Afterwards the crowd gather around to be blessed by the theyyam, all waiting semi-patiently for the attention of the deity.

Although we didn't witness a giddy transformation that I was expecting, there is enough here to convince of the animalistic power of the ancient ritual. A ritual that predates even the misty beginnings of Hinduism.

Day 49, Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary [Monday 21st January 2008]

2008-10-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

We get a bus to Kutta or Tholpetty, we're not sure which, because the bus conductors don't seem to know, although they look like they have a pretty good idea where we're going. We're hoping to go on safari into the forest to see elephants in the national park there..

After the bus drops us off in the middle of a long, tree lined road, with no idea where we're heading, we get a bit lost. Eventually we find one of the ubiquitous sweet shops, and he walks us down the road we've just walked down and points out the place we're looking for — Pachyderm Palace. After a short argument about the correct pronunciation of pachyderm we go in, and find that our room is a small house built on stilts, in the middle of a coffee plantation.

The owner is a slightly camp man who provides answers to questions in little singsong riddles. He brings out some lovely homecooked lunch - fresh lime juice, veg rice, ginger and coconut chutney, papadums, tea and bananas.

I go for a walk around the edge of the park, just over the road from where we're staying. I feel dwarfed by the towering clumps of bamboo. The sun is low and slices through the trees.

We drive into the forest in late afternoon, the sun is very low and there is mist drifting through the trees. There is bamboo everywhere, with evidence of elephant feeding. When we stop driving, the forest is almost silent. Otherwise, our jeep is a crunching, cranking ball of noise, probably scaring off every animal within a mile of us. Amazingly, we manage to spot deer, lemur monkeys, giant squirrels and wild peacocks. The park is eerily gorgeous, but you must be accompanied by a guide at all times, which restricts your access somewhat.

There's a good bunch of people staying at the Palace with us: Germans, Dutch, Australian, Finnish and Estonian. We all eat dinner together - pumpkin curry, cabbage, veg curry, rice, beetroot and ginger chutney, raita, coffee and an enormous fresh fruit salad. There's so much of it he has to plead with us to finish it, even after we've all stuffed our faces!

We play a game of Scrabble, during which Kate lays down jury on the triple word score to win the match.

Day 48, Mysore [Sunday 20th January 2008]

2008-10-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

The internet connection at the Palace Plaza Hotel here in Mysore is pretty fast, so we upload a big chunk of photos to Flickr.

After breakfast we go to look around the mrket, but the overwhelming stench of manure and meat and chickens turns Kate's stomach, so we retreat. We go to the Jaganmohan Palace art gallery instead. This building used to house the royal family - Mysore was the capital of a large princely state, also called Mysore, up until independence in 1947 - although a new palace was built in 1912 and this one turned into an art gallery.

As we approach it we can hear the clatter of music coming from within the main auditorium. We poke our heads inside and it turns out to be the annual celebration day for a local dance school. Troops of girls appear on stage every few minutes and perform a routine to speaker fizzing, ear piercing Bollywood tunes. The front few rows are rapt, whooping and cheering the girls. Beyond that people are indifferent, distracted, talking to each other, getting up to walk around. We stay as long as our ears can stand it. On the way out a lady gives us each a bag of sweets.

The gallery itself has walls full of near identical portraits of various generations of the Wodeyars, the ruling dynasty. Upstairs they have some contemporary Indian art, some of which is interesting. Overall it suffers from a narrow range of subject matter - restricted almost entirely to Hindu deities - and much of it sticking to the usual syrupy, fantastical, sentimental style made popular by Raja Ravi Varma. There are some startling pieces concerning the darkness of Indian villages and the invisibility of women.

Kate wants to do a bit more shopping for a salwaar kameez or some other clothes. I think she's getting a bit fed up schlepping around in combats and walking shoes and just wants something a bit girlier. So we get a rickshaw to a large shop called Westside where she looks through the racks for an hour or two at the myriad salwaar suits - pants too tight, pants too baggy, pants just right but top too big etc. She buys some new tops in the end.

We go next door to Biryani House for lunch. I have the first big craving for meat since we've been here, and the place looks popular, so I get a chicken biryani. It's lovely, and it's so nice to actually chew something so, well, meaty!

On the way back we check the bus times to Wayanad National Park tomorrow, and buy some Mysore Pak, a crumbly yellow sweet particular to this area. It's claggy and bland.

At 7pm we go to Mysore Palace to see it lit up by hundreds of thousands of electric lightbulbs lining its contours. They blink on at exactly 7pm with a remarkable absence of ceremony. This is followed shortly by the pomp of an British sounding marching brass band.

The scene is so horribly gaudy and incongruous that I find myself with a big grin spread across my face. It's so busy here - every tourist in Mysore is probably here tonight. There's a big crowd and quite a sense of occasion. Policemen chase away boys selling popcorn and snacks.

Afterwards we go to the Maurya Hotel for dinner, where we have to sit in a queue for a table. Dinner is great, though, and worth the wait.

We've enjoyed Mysore a lot - it's a clean, handsome city, with wide roads, statuesque roundabouts, relatively little traffic and some friendly rickshaw drivers. Its many cream and white public buildings, colleges, hospitals etc are surrounded by gardens and give the place the air of a prosperous European city. There's also a large selection of street food here - I had once of my favourite dosas so far standing by the side of the street, eating it out of banana leaf held in my hand, while Kate phoned home from a PCO (personal call office).

They're cinema crazy here. I counted 5 cinema theatres in the city centre along. They were all single screen cinemas, showing the same film 5 or 6 times a day, for Rs. 40 a ticket. As you walk past you can hear the songs blasting out through the side doors, and the whistles and shouts of the men making noise at the screen. It adds a lovely filmi backdrop to your stroll down the street.

Day 47, Mysore [Saturday 19th January 2008]

2008-10-13T05:14:00.000-07:00

We have to move hotels as ours is all booked up for the weekend - I read in The Times of India that Mysore is the second most visited place in India after the Taj Mahal.

Photo by Sharmi Komal

After lugging our bags a few doors down the road, and taking a look around the new place, we go back to our old place for breakfast! They have something on the menu called Chow chow bath, which is a tasty, filling breakfast made up of two bowls of pudding - one sweet and one spicy and savoury. It's served with coconut chutney, and the mix of all the flavours is amazing, especially first thing in the morning. You can also get the two dishes seperately, as kesari bath (sweet) and upma (savoury), but you'd be missing out.

When they serve you coffee here you can have Nescafe or Indian coffee. When it comes it arrives in a small steel tumbler, which itself sits inside a wider, shallower steel tumbler. The inner tumbler is full to overflowing with coffee, often having dribbled some excess into the outer tumbler. The setup is reminiscent of getting sake served to you, which comes as a glass inside a wooden box, and where the overflowing excess is a sign of the hosts generosity. Before you drink your coffee, we learn through observing other people, you add as much sugar as you require - normally 4 to 5 spoonfuls - then pour the coffee between the two receptacles in great steaming arcs of liquid. Repeat this until the sugar is dissolved and the coffee has cooled down enough for you to drink it from either steel tumbler in loud slurps. Follow this with a mitha paan (sweet paan) from the vendor outside your hotel or restaurant and you have the perfect end to your breakfast.

We get the bus to the top of Chamundi Hill, where there is a temple to the goddess Chamundi from whom the hill gets its name, a hilarious museum, a big pirate and, halfway down the 1000 steps carved into the rock, a huge monolithic Nandi bull. The bull is blackened with coconut oil and adorned with flowers. We meet a couple from Mumbai here, and take photos of each other.

Further on down the hill there's a grey old guy sitting on a wall, a newspaper laid out next to him piled with cucumbers and pineapples. He peels and slices the cucumber into long batons, and does the same with the pineapple, then wraps the lot up in a sheet of newspaper and hands it over. Juicy, sweet and refreshing on a hot walk down a hill, all for Rs. 30.

We go to Mysore Zoo next. Built in 1882, it's a quaint mix of retro naivety like formal rows of small, artfully stylized aviaries and modern naturalistic environments where elephants, giraffes and monkeys roam relatively freely in natural habitats. It's clean and tidy and the animals seem mostly happy, with the exception of some of the big cats who are pacing restlessly and relentlessly. It's large and well kept and we easily spend an enjoyable couple of hours here.

In the evening we visit St Philomena's Church which is also, confusingly, called St Joseph's Cathedral. It has a soaring, Gothic spire and is as tall as it is long (165ft). It looks handsome in solid grey stone. Inside it is pristine white, and fll of people as a Mass is in progress. The sign says they say Mass in English, Hindi, Tamil and Kannada. The congregation sings sweetly as Kate lights some candles.

We spend an hour or two shopping in the silk shops and endless garment stores. Vendors pull out innumerable rolls of cotton and silk. They pluck packets of readymade salwaar kameez, all the time asking you questions about colour, or style, or length.

Everything they pull out for display is different, every request has to be made relative to what is already on the tble in front of you, a constant narrowing of the query and the search. It seems the best thing to do might be to buy a length of good material and get it tailored into a fitted suit - the tailors' turnaround time is usually a day or two and the price is reasonable. The material might cost Rs. 600 for cotton, and the tailoring another Rs. 150.

We finish the day with a couple of beers at our new hotel's rooftop restaurant. At one point the waiter asks us to hide the bottle because he's told a group of 14 strict Muslims who are about to sit nearby that no alcohol is served in the restaurant.

I watch the Newcastle - Bolton match on Star Sports, following the momentous news that Kevin Keegan is back in charge at Newcastle. They draw 0-0.

Day 46, Mysore [Friday 18th January 2008]

2008-10-13T04:11:00.000-07:00

We have breakfast at a place that specialises in dosas - it's all they make. When they arrive they are soft, almost like pancakes. The masala potato filling is lovely, and I have a second dosa. We wander around the broad streets of Mysore for a while. It's clean here, and very busy. There are several cows walking around, painted yellow.

We go to see the Maharaja's palace - Mysore's main attraction. The palace sits in expansive grounds, and is itself large, extravagant and occasionally gaudy. It is also curiously empty, as if waiting for somebody to move in. Unlived in, it feels lifeless and somewhat tatty, although the octagonal wedding mandapa (a pillared hall for public rituals) is particularly striking.

We eat lunch at Hotel RRR, where we get thalis served up on banana leaves. It's all too easy to overeat when tucking into a delicious thali - waiters come around every five minutes and spoon rice out, as well as bringing various veg dishes which you may or may not have already. Good thali places invariably have a big queue, and everyone piles in together so you're likely to find yourself on a table full of strangers, who may amuse themselves by watching you eat, or may ignore you completely.

At 6pm we get a rickshaw a little way out of town to the Maharaja Centenary Hall - a small college hall where the University of Mysore has put on a 5 day festival of Carnatic music. The percussionist tonight is apparently very well known. His name is Umayalpuram Sri K Sivaraman.

Here's a video of him playing, from another concert. He really kicks in around the 7 minute mark:

The other percussionist is playing what looks like a water bottle - a round clay jar that has a deep ringing sound but looks somewhat painful to play. There's is also a violinist and two singers. The concert is enjoyable, the violin in particular giving a strong, sorrowful performance. Weirdly, they keep the lights on for concerts here. Then, halfway through the concert, there is a loud bang and the power fails. The hall is plunged into darkness and silence. There are a few moments of inertia, then many people reach habitually into their bags to turn their torches on. There follows about 20 minutes of patient waiting while a generator is revved up, and eventually the concert continues.

There is a big selection of Carnatic CDs and live recordings for sale afterwards, then we walk back some distance in the dark before a rickshaw turns up to take us back into Mysore.

Day 45, Nandroling Monastery [Thursday 17th January 2008]

2008-10-13T02:36:00.000-07:00

Regrettably, it's time to leave Honey Valley. The owners Suresh and Susheela meet us to say goodbye, and we stock up on bananas and fruit for the road. On the bumpy ride down in the jeep we get some trekking tips for around Darjeeling from a Tasmanian couple, Rosie and Guy. At the bottom of the hill we catch a bus to Madikeri.

Bus rides here are endlessly interesting, no matter how long they are. If you don't want to stare out of the window at a passing landscape of rice paddies and dusty villages, you can watch instead the mayhem inside the bus. Women cram into the segregated women's section behind the driver and men fill the rest of the bus. Many travel with bloated bags of rice between their feet, or baskets of fruit resting on their knees. At bus stands, while the driver gets out to urinate against a well, hawkers push food and drink of all descriptions through the window bars: pouches and bottles of water, oranges, bananas, puffed rice, masala peanuts and cashews, tomatoes, cold drinks, toys, magazines, newspapers, VCDs, lotions and creams 'for health'. Men with trays hung around their necks, full of jars and tins of spices, make and mix bhelpuri on the spot. It's like a market on wheels. Sometimes there may be four or five hawkers on the bus, edging down the aisle shouting "Pani bottle, cold drink, pani bottle, cold drink". The bus suddenly jumps into life and pulls away, and any remaining salesmen unhurriedly finalise any transactions then make their way to the door, jumping off as the bus merges into the oncoming traffic. On school days the aisle is jam packed with schoolgirls, their pigtails squashed together and their bags piled in an enormous heap next to the driver. The bags are passed back over everyone's heads when it's time to 'step down'. The bus takes corners and overtakes so violently that if I'm standing up I'm have to hang on with all my strength, and am constantly in fear of going head first through the windscreen the next time the driver brakes suddenly for a cow, a rickshaw or a massive pothole.

We go to Bylakuppe, a Tibetan settlement for political refugees. We are aiming to stay in Sera for a night or two and meet some Buddhist monks, but when we arrive we see a sign stating that we are now in a protected area and need a special permit to stop overnight. We ask around and it turns out that we need to apply in writing to New Delhi for the permit, and it will take some time.

So, we visit the Golden Temple at the Namdroling monastery complex, 2km down the road. It's a large, dimly lit building reminiscent of a school hall inside with its glossy, tiled floor and high ceiling. At one end of the room are three very large statues of buddhas. The tallest is 60 feet in height. They are gold plated and inside them are hidden important documents, relics, ornaments and clay figures. The walls around the edges are full of psychedelic pictures of scenes from the Buddha's life. There are also scenes of tantric Buddhism and some terrifying portrayals of buddhas manifested as demons (this is the Buddhist equivalent of fighting fire with fire, apparently). There are two big drums either side of the entrance (no touching, monks only).

The temple is impressive, and the monks all approachable and friendly, but it is still hard to dispel the feeling that Buddhists have constructed a weighty and unnecessary apparatus of ritual, rite and doctrine around the humble and humanistic beginnings and ideas of the Buddha.

The toilets here consists of a line of urinals to wee in, faced on the opposite side of the bathroom by a line of squat toilets, open to the air, to poo in.

After a walk around the well kept grounds of the monastery we get a bus on to Mysore and check in to the plush-ish Hotel Maurya Residency.

Day 44, Honey Valley [Wednesday 16th January 2008]

2008-10-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

Breakfast here at Honey Valley is idlis with chutney, slices of watermelon and coffee. Afterwards we take a quick hike to a waterfall where we laze around in the cool shade.

We spend the rest of the day lounging around. Lunch is beetroot, chickpeas, veg curry, green beans, pulau rice and some seasame biscuits for dessert. We play some Scrabble and read some books. Kate's got Blue Bedspread and I found a fascinating collection of Salman Rushdie's essays and journalism, Step Across This Line.

At dinner we meet a funny couple who own a shop in Hawkshead in the Lake District.

Honey Valley is so relaxing. Vast, sparse hills all around at times remind me of the Alpujarras region of Spain, and sometimes of the rugged north of England. But, it is completely Indian - the densely packed plantations, the spices and fruit, the noisy night time wildlife. It feels like a holiday within a holiday!

Day 43, Honey Valley [Tuesday 15th January 2008]

2008-10-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

We have breakfast in the Capitol Hotel - idly, masala tea and coffee. The restaurant/bar is full of men drinking rum or whisky diluted half and half with water. As in, half a glass of whisky, half a glass of water. They don't spend long enjoying it, just pour it down their neck. It's 9am. As we sit there enjoying breakfast a policeman comes in and does some business with the manager. There's no one else here.

We catch a bus to Honey Valley, a homestay deep in the Coorg where we are going to spend a couple of days. We had to ring up and arrange for them to meet us in a jeep as it's quite remote. It's a steep climb up rocky roads to the top of a hill, where we meet the owners Suresh and Sushila. They run Honey Valley in an extremely environmentally friendly manner - all the water comes from natural springs, and they also generate their own electricity from a discrete hydro generator connected to a stream.

They've got all sorts of accomodation from dorms to huts and cottages, and we take a little cottage with a verandah overlooking the trees. There's plenty of good walks accessible from here, and it's so peaceful and quiet this far into the forest.

We brought a couple of beers with us from Madikeri as we weren't sure if they'd have any here. I also bought a huge bag of crisps covered in chilli powder from the crisp man - a guy in a little booth with a huge box of freshly cooked crisps. You can even buy them hot.

All the meals here are served buffet style, the food is all veg, varied and tasty. All the veg is homegrown from their vegetable patch. The communal tables are lively and chatty and it's a great way to meet people. There's a mix of Europeans and a few Indians. They've also got a great bookshelf full of classic Indian writers (Rabindranath Tagore, Salman Rushdie, Raj Kamal Jha, Kiran Desai).

Day 42, Tadiandamol [Monday 14th January 2008]

2008-10-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

We wake up with the first light at around 6.45am, in our hut in a misty, dewy field surounded by rice paddies.

I have a quick wash in some freezing cold water, then we walk over to the house. For breakfast the lady has cooked us some kind of ricecake, like idlis but denser, thicker, heavier. They're fried too, which gives them a sticky, crisp edge. We also get a bean curry, which is dark and smoky. It's so rich and meaty that we have to ask if there's any meat in it. But we have some language trouble asking the question. Just then Nachappa turns up at the door and translates into Malayalam for us - he confirms there's no meat in it, only veg, and it's a dish from Kerala.

We pack our lunch that the woman has made us - more beans, wrapped up in rotis - and head off to climb the highest peak in the Coorg. Tadiandamol is 1750 metres high. Nachappa says mol means hill in Malayalam. Tadiandamol is set in the middle of dense forest containing tigers, elephants and deer. Although we don't see any tigers or elephants we do see lots of deer. We also stifle laughter as Nachappe points out 'forest cocks' in the darkness of the trees. As giggly as we already are we've got tears in our eyes when he starts trying to attract them - by loudly blowing raspberries.

The climb is hot and steep, but worth it. We sit with shaky legs and devour our lunch, which tastes even better than it did this morning. We can see hazy, bumpy hilltops all around us, smooth rippling earth like a green moon. We can even see all the way to the Kerala backwaters on the horizon.

We sit for a long time. On thw way back down we walk through miles of plantations again, and Nachappa points out cardamom and pepper, mango, coconut and betel nut trees. We stop in to see a retired army captain, who has a beautifully tended garden, a patio filled with vines and trees - vanilla, oranges, lemons. He also keeps honey bees.

The last few days have shown us a region which is lush and alive, not the sort of landscape either of us expected to see when we came to India. Nachappa was a friendly and knowledgable guide, and I recommend him and Friends Tours in Madikeri.

We get a bus back to Madikeri. The driver has a tight perm, and along with his moustache this makes im resemble a comedy scouser. On the relatively quiet roads back to Madikeri we nevertheless notice that he has a choice of two differently pitched horns, available via two different levers. There doesn't appear to be a pattern to his honking. It's mostly repeated, short rude bursts sporadically interrupted by a jolly, tuneful fLourish.

We stay at the Cauvery Inn, an old time hotel which has a carpet that you'd rather not step on.