Southern Circuit

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We left you in the fort town of Kochin, an oasis of European flavoured, if very humid, calm. A very nice town but not an exciting one, we spent most of our time in cafes and tea shops watching the world go by.
Shortly we trained our way to the town of Allepey slightly to the south, chatting on route to a middle aged Indian lady who had been in Channai to get a visa to visit her kids in America who told us about the Catholic church in Kerela. If there is one attractionsouth India is famous for, its the Kerelan Backwaters. So with as little ado as we could we hoped on a small chartered boat with with an Englishman we'd picked up at the hostel and spent a very pleasant morning weaving our way around the backwaters. They're like English canals, partially man made and partially natural, but with overhanging palm trees dripping coconuts into the river, villages beside the water with women cleaning clothes at the edges and people fishing for shell fish. It was an incredibly beautiful and calm way to spend a morning, rural India is pretty amazing.
From there we went to the town of Kumali to the east towards the hills and into the jungle. The town is the access to the Periyar wildlife sanctuary, our only experience of which was a 5 boat convoy around the lake (where we were required to wear massive life jackets for the full 2 hours, Chris was forcibly tied in to his by the crazy boat crew). The town itself was lovely, especially the homestay where we stayed, which including a beautiful balcony with hanging seat. We managed to get to a spice plantation which was fascinating (did you know cinnamon is the bark from the bay leaf tree? me neither) and to a south India cooking course which was amazing-it was at a tuk-tuk driver's home and we pretty much helped his mum and wife make dinner for us and their friends, a really great evening. We even managed to catch a Hindu procession moving through the town. Drummers played whilst men and women danced by with 3 foot needles through their cheeks and several 6 inch needles penetrating up through each eyebrow. It was amazing to see and a reminder of how incredibly spiritual India can be.
After a few days there we moved to the mountain town of Munnar. There was supposed to be a direct bus but it was canceled so we had to take 3 separate buses changing in progressively smaller and more obscure towns. As an example to how friendly we found most people in Kerela, while Chris was off trying to find out how to get to Munnar, two boys in their early teens (who had been sent over by their mother as they spoke English) came over and asked if we were going to Munnar, explained that the bus was canceled and told me which bus to get on first as they were also going.
Munnar itself isn't too special but its set amongst the highest tea plantations in the world, so, naturally, we did a tour of the tea and coffee, the sandal wood forests and a literally cottage industry sugar processing plant, naturally Alice was agog. We also got to the Chinnar sanctuary which we spent 2 hours trekking around, there are a few thousand wild elephants as well as tigers but we were there during the hottest part of the day so missed it all apart from the views.
Next stop the Thattekkad bird santuary, we stayed inside the park itself (archetypal jungle) beside a lake and went out on a 3 hour bird watching tour in the morning where we were lucky enough to see a couple hornbills and discovered the names of the birds we've been seeing for the last few days as well as coming across a Hindu temple used by the local tribal people in the centre of the jungle. The humidity in the jungle was unbelievable, neither of us have experienced anything like the heat.
As we'd done a circle we stopped back in Fort Kochin for one night and to organise our onward travel to Bangalore on an over night bus.
Bangalore is a world away from any other Indian city we've been to in some respects, there's tall shiny buildings with huge adverts for Cannon and Nike in the area where we're staying. A tuk tuk ride takes you back to traditional India but its very odd to be staying somewhere that feels so different to where we've been for the last 3 weeks.
One last thing
we had lunch today at a very odd restaurant. We went in and were directed to a man at a till, tried to order from the menu and were told they were only doing a veg set meal. So we paid our 2 pounds each and were directed upstairs to a waiting room where i handed over our ticket and was given a number. We waited half an hour or so until a whole list of numbers were called at once and went into the dinning rooms. We sat down with maybe 30 Indians at tables with a tray in front of us. Over the next 40 minutes or so a variety of men ladled from buckets a never ending range of curries, breads, pickles and vegetables. 5 hours later, Alice is still full, Chris is hungry again.
For those of you who facebook can see all of our pictures there, we're in the process of uploading the high quality pictures up on to here
http://s169.photobucket.com/albums/u222/tannhauser21/India/
at the moment, but bare with us as it takes a while.

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