Freeze then burn, baby burn in Ooty

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We were slightly nervous about the train from Palolem to Mangalore - at just over 50p for a 5 hour train journey, something had to be wrong. We had visions of clinging to the train roof / door / windows as per horror stories of local Indian trains, but the reality was far more positive, with some friendly, interesting locals making the journey go past pretty quickly.

One group of men who were chatting to Sarah were absolutely fascinated by the Lonely Planet guide and took it in turns to read it on the journey. Another lot witnessed my pathetic attempt to lift my backpack over my head and onto the luggage rack and put it up there for me as if it were a massive bag of popcorn (rather than a tonne of bricks). These kind of things are really heart-warming and definitely renew your faith in humankind. The scenery on the train was really beautiful too and the ride gave me a chance to devour my book.

Mangalore is definitely a place to miss - a very nothingy place, with evil uneven pavements that conspire against you and deliberately trip you up. Also, there is building work everywhere and the dust turns your feet an alarming shade or orange, which is definitely not a good look. We ditched plans to stay an extra night to break up the journey and took a bus later that evening to Mysore.

We ended up taking a government A/C bus, which was quite comfortable, but any coach journey beginning at 11pm and ending at 6am has limited appeal in my mind. Waiting for the bus to leave, we wondered whether we would be driven insane over the 7 hour trip by extremely loud Indian music, an acquired taste at the best of times and definitely not lullaby material for the slumber-deprived. They did eventually turn it off, but a rather excitable bus driver swinging round corners and a big vibrating bus aren't high on my peaceful sleep wish list. We arrived about 6am and had a nightmare finding a hotel, but eventually found somewhere.

Mysore was really nice and we spent our time there at the palace, wondering around the amazing fruit and veg market, trying Indian sweets for the first time and having a seriously authentic banana leaf thali. In this particular restaurant, there are banana leaves as placemats / plates and they bring big saucepans and spoon blobs of curry/ rice etc onto your leaf! We were a bit worried that we would have to get quite messy, but they took pity on us and brought us little spoons to eat with. The fruit and vegetable market was just incredible, with whole alleys devoted to bananas, and mouth-watering displays of fruit. It was torture seeing all that fruit - maybe I can write to Jim'l fix it and get him to fix it for me to be let loose in there one night....

We got a horrible rubbish minibus from Mysore to Ooty - packed and the seats didn't seem to be screwed in properly. We are in Ooty now and have spent today doing a group trek into the surrounding hills. Ooty is a hill station in the state of Tamil Nadu and is seriously cold - I am sat here at night in a vest, 2 tops, a jumper and my waterproof jacket and I am just about warm. It is quite a strange sensation to be in India and to have to wear so many clothes. We are staying in Reflections Guest House which is really nice and the family who run it are really sweet. We organised our trek through them. The trek was lovely, although I got really burnt during today, despite having sun cream on. I am now a rather dashing shade of pink. It was great to get out into the countryside, have a walk and get some fresh air, a very rare treat in India. We also saw some tea plantations which was and some great views over the hills. A fun day. Tomorrow we plan to get the miniature train from Ooty, which is supposed to have amazing views, on our way down to Kochi, Kerala.

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