HE SAID... We were leaving Madurai and heading west to Thekkady. Ren woke early and headed out to buy water and a few packets of electrolyte for me as I had been ill during the night. I hydrated, packed and made my way down to reception. I wasn’t feeling too bad, but I was looking forward to the destination more than ever. Ren was coming down with a cold/flu, so we weren’t travelling well. About an hour into the trip I started feeling back to normal, but Ren was getting worse. We were making our way westwards across the bottom tip of India, so we were travelling through rural landscapes filled with rice, palm, banana, sugarcane and cardamom plantations. We had a brief stop in Theni to buy some throat lozenges for Ren before we started ... read more

HE SAID... We were leaving Mahabalipuram and heading south to Pondicherry. We woke at 6.30am and headed out to a local chai wallah (tea seller) at Mother Chai Shop for a morning chai. The chai (tea) stand was tiny and the street was empty, so we were happy to be there. While Ren befriended a local dog who was after pats and scraps, I watched the wallah interrupt making our chai to give a young street kid a piece of cake. The kid just walked up to the stand and pointed to the glass jar the cake was in. When the wallah gave it to him, he took it in both hands, put it to his lips and kissed it before munching into it. It was an incredible act of generosity, especially as the wallahcould barely ... read more

HE SAID... We left Mudumalai National Park at 10.30am and continued our northward journey, this time heading for Mysore. India is often termed the “land of the farmer”, and we could easily see why as we drove through vast expanses of agricultural land of cotton, palm trees, bananas, sugar cane and rice. Every so often we’d drive through a tiny village, but most of the time the rural landscape stretched to the horizon. Slow agricultural machinery, trucks and farm animals were sharing very narrow roads with speeding buses, motorbikes and cars – which equated to very dangerous driving conditions. We came across an accident between a bus and a car, but it didn’t appear that anyone was injured. We dropped into the Chamundi Hill Temple on our way into Mysore. We wandered through the popular and ... read more

HE SAID... We woke early at 5am, once again beating the 5.30am call to prayer. We had a long travel day (seven and a half hours) ahead, as we were leaving Kochi and travelling north to Ooty (or Ootacamund as it appears on most maps). We sat down to a plate of dosa (thin pancakes made from fermented rice and black lentils batter) with coconut chutney for breakfast at 7am. Bowls of fresh bananas and watermelon were on the table, and I had a pot of masala chai (spiced sweet milky tea) while Ren had a tea. It was a great start to the day. We left our Fort Kochi homestay (Kaliveedu Lodge) at 7.45am and headed to the Ernakulam train station for the first of our two travel legs to Ooty – a four hour ... read more

HE SAID... We had a 6am flight and we slept in, which wasn’t ideal. It had been a fairly hectic lead-up to our India adventure, and the water pump blowing up didn’t help. We had no water in the house for two of the last three days before we left, so showering was impossible and making a coffee was logistically difficult. My work deadlines were looming and my empty backpack was a constant reminder that I needed to get myself organised! The day before our flight we headed into Hobart to drop Mia (the cat) off at her boarding centre, but a squealing brake drum and puncture on the way meant an unexpected detour to the service centre. Mia wasn’t overly impressed with the noisy mechanics, but we were relieved to get the puncture the day ... read more