What a jump forward a 5 hour eastbound flight had made, after the leaving the very new< but sparse Cochin International airport on chritsmas day we arrived at the low cost terminal in KL courtesy of Air Asia early on boxing day. The culture shock is large after months of haggling and fending off people left right and centre (mainly just people wanting to
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As our time in India has come to an end we have thrown together a few random images from the last couple of weeks in the South. From elephants on the back of trucks, hay bale heads, and other daily occurrences that we came Continue reading
Finally we had arrived at our final destination in India – Cochin or Kochi as they call it nowadays. We had curtailed our romantic ideas of heading up into the hills of the high country and its capital Munnar. The combination of bus, rail, bus (local) for hours on end lost out to jumping in a tuk-tuk back on the beach within 2 hours. So back to Varkala we went for 3 more leisurely days, and in a small world Continue reading
For the finale of our time in India we bought tickets to the famous Keralan performance of Kathakali. A 12 hour religious ceremony that has been shortened (luckily!) for tourist performances. How we had avoided it so far we will never know, though unfortunately it turned into bit of a farce. We bought Continue reading
We tore ourselves away from the beach at Varkala to go exploring the Kerala Backwaters on a houseboat. We got a taxi to Kollam, about an hours drive away, where we met up with our boat and 4 crew (even though there was only two of us!) for our one day Continue reading
Although it was only a 20 minute taxi ride and then a very quick 40 minute sprint on the train to Varkala Junction through coconut lined lagoons and backwaters, it was a world away from our previous destination. Perched precariously Continue reading
Going back in time now to the previous country we were in. While we were slogging our way up to base camp at Annapurna a couple of months ago now, we had amongst the members of our group a couple of semi-professional Continue reading
Another overnight train journey and we wake up in another state of India, this time we have arrived in the far south – Kerala. The journey took us right down to the southern tip of the sub-continent Continue reading
We landed at Chennai Airport at 3 in the afternoon, and were met by the taxi driver we had booked to take us the 170 km down the coast to Pondicherry, or Puducherry (as its now officially called) or just plain old Pondy. Continue reading
Today we decided to drag ourselves away from the heavenly beach No 7 to do a bit of jungle trekking (and sweating) and also to see some more accessible sea life. Elephant Beach is on the north coast of Havelock Island and is only Continue reading
