Greeting from the land before toilet paper

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We left you in sweaty Kulkutta, growing more used to India as time went by and coming to terms with an overly exciting beginning to our journeys.
Just as we were feeling more optimistic the inevitable happened and Chris was struck down with the infamous 'Delhi Belly'. It made the last day or so in Kalkutta less enjoyable than it should have been.

Fortunately we were heading down to a little beach town called Puri the next day. We stayed at a beautiful hotel in a former Maharajah's house with a lovely shared shady veranda. Most of the other guests were long time visitors to India who had plenty of advise for us and also an interesting insight into India as most of them worked in India on and off. We had a few relaxing days in Puri then got our first Indian bus to the Sun Temple in Konark, it was an interesting journey with people hanging on the sides and occasionally the roof. Fortunately we got seats inside for the most part although the bus did pull away with Chris on top still securing our bags.

Our next step was a massive trip down the east coast to Chennai to get to the hills in the south before they get too busy. We had planned to stay in Chennai but could only get a train the next morning. So two hours seeing the city were followed by a night in the station retiring rooms, which were like every stereotypically American motel room you've ever seen: cockroaches, paper thin walls and stained walls and bed sheets. But it ment we had easy access to our 6am train

The train to Mysore was the best train journey either of us have ever had, 7 hours in cool ac train and they kept bringing us food every couple of hours all for about 10 quid.
Mysore is the nicest city we've been to so far, it is cleaner and calmer than the others and is based around the old Maharaja's palace, a huge building the scale of an English manor house but bedecked in gold and jewels, even with a solid silver door. We've seen a couple of the local museums and done our best to siesta in the afternoons to avoid the worst of the midday heat. Next stop is the mountain town of Ooty to avoid the heat.

No photos at the moment as Chris' camera has stopped working and Alice forgot her lead to connect it to the computer, so you'll have to bare with us...

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