Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

7th - 12th March 2011



The bus to Mettupalayam was indescribably horrid, we had to fight to get on the overcrowded bus, I was fighting the women at the front and Djalma the men at the back, neither of us did particularly well. The idea that you should wait for people of the bus to get off, and thus have more space for yourself once on the bus, actively contradicted everyone's actions – there clearly was no rational thought except – eff you man I'm getting me a seat. Despite extensive training in the Moscow metro I found myself helpless in the throes of group aggression, it all left me feeling a bit sick and therefore my elbows were useless against the much hardened witches I was fighting against to get into the damn bus. Djalma got in before me, with all our bags no less, and I felt miserable at being there and miserable for having let him down. He was in a rage to make the group of ferocious Indians fighting for seats look like docile pussy cats and told one particularly annoying, pushy (and fat) man who was trying to push past him to get to a seat his wife had saved him, things about his mother that he had no way of knowing. This same annoying, fat pushy man, once in his seat broke into a glut of self satisfied smiles that he'd made it to a seat, meanwhile small children were getting crushed in the continued onslaught, grannies were getting trampled underfoot and women with babies were studiously ignored by anyone in a seat. One of these women with a crying baby on her hip caught the eye of my beloved who then shouted at the beaming fat idiot in his seat to be a man a give the woman his seat, he took the baby on his lap refusing to get up and made the small child cry even more. It was monstrous. The ticket inspector shouted out Djalma to get out of the stairs although where he was expected to stand I'd no idea, he then vented a hugely long tirade probably against stupid white tourists, which Djalma and I didn't understand and were the only two who didn't. A group of three ladies sat right under my nose started laughing uproariously at whatever was said and then had the nerve to try and make conversation and smile?! in the trip. The one sat in the middle was transfixed by the sight of my tongue piercing and wanted me to show her my tongue, I didn't of course, I just stood there looking down with evil glares thinking how ugly and horrible she was, I drank some water and she asked for some which gave me an excuse to lean over and tell her why I wasn't going to give her any water. By this time we'd all had a while to calm down but she had laughed the most at whatever the ticket collector had said and so I told her that she and her friends had been mean, that I didn't like her and at no time was she ever going to share my water. Bitch. I felt very unchristian. The bus ride lasted about an hour and at our stop I gratefully climbed off feeling subdued and tired, we trudged up and down the street near the bus station and found a cheap room for the night. After a much needed shower and some fresh clothes we had dinner, picked up some bananas for breakfast and walked to the train station where we would be catching the mini train from the following morning.

From Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

We got up early and left at 7.10am for our 7.20am train. The miniature train was a lot bigger than I was expecting and without a toilet (although this didn't matter in the end). It took five hours for the 46km to Ooty and we shared our compartment with a friendly Canadian couple, it was an exceedingly long but beautiful trip and stops along the way were very welcome, not least because we had tea and something other than our bananas to eat.

From Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

People that we met later commented on the fact that Ooty, short for Udhagamandalam,was a lot bigger and busier than they were expecting. And it was big for a quiet hill town but very colourful too, we walked up to the YWCA (The women's half of the YMCA – Young Man's Christian Association) and after an abnormally long wait due to the inefficiency of the receptionist we checked into a small fusty dorm room at the end of the hotel, it was especially creepy at night. Despite the long train ride neither of us were particularly smelly so we went out for lunch and a little look round the town where we picked up some water, biscuits and fruit for the following morning as well as a much needed towel (we'd been drip drying for a long time without a problem but it was significantly colder in the hills) and some suspicious smelling dandruff oil (I've yet to ascertain whether this helps or hinders the production of dandruff and at the moment I am sceptical). We walked back past the Rose Gardens, with a very promising sign 1km before the ticket office which was up a hill, only to find that all the roses had just been pruned and to see the stumps we would have to pay 20Rs, I was quite disappointed to say the least especially after a long walk uphill.

From Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

Back at the hostel we picked out a couple of books from the fusty old library (just in case you were wondering the YWCA seemed fusty all over) and sat in the upstairs drawing room which had a lovely ambience full of natural light in the afternoon, spoiled only by the huge menacing portrait of Jesus hanging at an odd angle over the door. We went down stairs for a small bite to eat before bed and while we were tucking into thin, oily, milky soup with tiny bits of carrot and something green floating in it we started talking to Monique an American with an affinity for India but managed not to talk out of her arse as so many seasoned travellers do.
One of the qualities I respect the most in person is the ability to do different/exciting/dangerous/selfless things but not lose sight of the small and relatively inconsequential day to day things or talk down at you as if they were an enlightened ninety year sage having experienced these amazing things. It was so nice to talk to a women who was volunteering with children who'd been involved in the sex trade from a very young age but didn't shove it down your throat or behave as though everyone should do these things (which really we should), she was funny and clever and had a passion for travelling and life and was completely unpretentious and lovely. I admit, I am fan – I was one of many, she had accumulated a small group of young English traveller the man of the group having quite a sizeable crush on her and we met them later after we had finished dinner. We sat round talking until it was too cold for shorts and flip-flops and Djalma and I went to bed.

The next day we got out of the wrong side of bed and took our aggressive selves for a walk around a big lake close to town. We stopped off for a bad breakfast and were a bit mean to the overly attentive young waiter which we then felt bad about as we continued around the lake. After deliberation we rented out a row boat instead of a pedalo and vented our hostility on the water. I was much better at rowing than Djalma and surprised myself with the smooth co-ordination and minimal splashing that had always been lacking in previous rowing attempts. As I rowed us round the lake, my man lazing and sunning his midriff in the bow, I began to feel more and more at peace, it was a beautiful day, the sun was out and we were pootling around a pretty lake in the midst of some lovely greenery. It was about that point I realised that having lugged my camera this far had left the memory stick back in our room and was therefore unable to record the beauty of the moment.
We decided to use up our deposit and spend the next half an hour in the boat, this time with Djalma at the helm, zigzagging us all over the shop and splashing me with stagnant pond water – it put him in a good mood too.

We got off the lake, ate some boiled sweetcorn and took a look at the world's first thread garden which was so full of itself in proclaiming to visitors at the ingenuity, originality, skill and all-round fabulousness of the project it actually made up for the abysmally lit dusty display of the different plants and flowers. There were plenty of huge boards proclaiming the projects grandness but none to tell the visitor what the flowers and plants were, and it was all over in under a minute. We walked further round the lake (apparently it was 10km round the circumference) and rented out another row boat in a different section, I was a little too enthusiastic about the boats and didn't factor in my sore palms which would have blistered if Djalma hadn't taken over. Feeling much happier we walked back into town and had a thali in a small hole-in-the-wall joint before walking back to hostel to rest our aching bodies and sit and talk to Monique and the kids and drink tea until the cold moved us indoors.

During a dinner of mildly horrible vegetable curry I started to feel quite ill and after we said goodnight and went to bed I didn't climb in properly because a part of me knew that I would be back out again and hugging the toilet. I was right and soon enough I was in the bathroom emptying one end and then the other getting bloody cold (I forgot to pick up a jumper on the way to the bathroom). I came back to bed, Djalma of course was sleeping soundly, and so was the guy who was sharing the dorm room with us. I popped a couple of pills and waited for the rest to make itself known so I could get that out and go to bed, I only had to wait an hour before I was back in the bathroom chundering and spurting bum wee, feeling sorry for myself, cold and miserable. A couple more pills and a sip of water and I decided that that was probably enough and I could safely climb in my sleeping sack without the need to run for the toilet again. Morning came round and I regaled Djalma with the story of my antics during the night and he went and got us a private room so I could be ill in peace. I spent most of the day convalescing and reading numerous books to pass the time in between napping.

From Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

The next day Djalma pestered me out of my sickbed and we got the bus up to the highest peak in the Nilgiri hills, it would have been an excellent view if not for the haze that covered Ooty but it was nice enough. We got back into the Jeep we took from the bus stop to the top and then the bus back into town where we had some really good fried tomato with parota (flaky pastry bread) before walking out to the Government Botanical Gardens to take in some more pruned rose gardens and flowers which were still attached. It was really peaceful and very beautiful although not as big as it claimed to be – on the sign by the front it said that it was one of the oldest and biggest Botanical Gardens in the world (the Indians do seem to be a bit too quick to use the suffix 'in the world' when comparing places and things to others). We walked back to our hotel and chilled out for the rest of the afternoon.

From Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

We left the following morning, I didn't want to stay in the cold any longer and wanted to get back down to the beach despite not having done any kind of trekking which is what Ooty and anywhere in the hills for that matter is famous for, so we got on a morning bus to Kannur, which is on the Keralan coast facing the Arabian Sea, prepared to elbow our way to some seats.

Pondicherry, India

3rd - 6th March 2011



Arriving on our luxury bus at about 10.30 at night we lucked out at a big ashram by the sea and got a cheap room for the night. At the reception desk we also discovered that we had left our wallet and 2600Rs behind, a wonderful start to a new city. After filling in our details we headed up the stairs as quietly as possible, had a MUCH needed shower and went to sleep.

From Pondicherry, India

The next day we woke up nice and early to take a walk along the beach and get some breakfast. We were both rather excited by all the French cafés and the promise of good food, when you travel for long periods of time, food breaks like this are a culinary blessing and we fully intended to make the most of the cheap booze (Pondicherry is it's own state and has relaxed alcohol taxes) and the steak (rarer than hens teeth in Hindu India). We stopped at a small 24hr café by the sea and were impressed by the wonderful French service (it was awful) and French cuisine (the coffee was good although bitter and I was flatly refused any garlic on my toast... err NO GARLIC!? Wasn't it a FRENCH café?!), it didn't do much to lift the awful mood I'd woken up in, especially because the mouthwatering smell of frying garlic was wafting out from the kitchen, bastards.

The sun at 8.30 was already roasting so I wandered back to the hotel to work on photos and my diary while Djalma sorted out maps from the TIO (Tourist Information Office) and an appointment at a stomach specialist so we could get a professional opinion on our on/off diarrhoea for the past two months. We went to this “specialist” together and filled him in on our symptoms, basically that for the last two months – the whole time we'd been in India – we'd had “loose movements” with brief reprieves courtesy of Immodium and the occasional course of antibiotics. He felt our stomachs looked down our throats and told us it was perfectly normal – I could just imagine my Mum reaction at his casual dismissal of what he deemed travellers diarrhoea when it had persisted for so long. After insisting that the shits were not normal for such a long time he relented and prescribed an ultrasound and suggested that a stool sample be tested. We went to collect pots for poohing in and were given one container not much bigger than a thimble – I've no idea what kind of stomach problems they deal with on a day to day basis but poohing into a container no bigger than the end of your thumb is just not possible on a normal day let alone an explosive one – we tried to explain this to the man giving us the container with less and less patience and in the end decided to leave when they cleared out a container holding some powder and handed it to us (um, shouldn't it be sterile?!). We cancelled our ultrasound appointment and decided to make an appointment at a Western hospital but not before fully enjoying Pondicherry's culinary delights (with the help of some Loperamide should it prove necessary).

*Our Ashram deserves a special mention. It has very cheap, very clean rooms I believe all have en suite facilities and working showers – not something to be taken for granted in a country which more often than not lacks the infrastructure for clean drinking water, flushing toilets or more than a dribble for a shower when not using a bucket. It is also decorated with life improving advice and noble ideas, which reek of self-righteous piousness. My favourite slogan, which is on the way up the stairs to our room, reads 'Be nice to people who drink and smoke because they won't be around us for long' what a load of patronising bollocks. Above a rubbish bin: Throw away; negativity, over self-confidence, gluttony... blah blah blah.

From Pondicherry, India

Wandering back through town we passed by several French cafés and stopped in one to feast on the most delicious food, I had some Darjeeling tea and an enormous almond croissant while Djalma got his mouth around a real French baguette filled with cooked spinach, sweet fried onions, sautéed mushrooms and borsalino cheese, they were both mouthwateringly good (and heavy on the wallet). My mood much improved with the tea and sugar injection we carried on back to the ashram to wait out the heat of the afternoon.

Around 5pm we headed back out, walking along the reinforced seafront dotted with ice-cream, coconut, souvenir and snack vendors.

From Pondicherry, India

We passed by the monument to Gandhi, the French embassy and a huge cathedral that lit up in neon when the night drew in. We passed through lots of slightly French flavoured streets teeming with very Tamil traffic.

From Pondicherry, India

We finally arrived at a small rooftop café serving cocktails and food and my snapping frenzy hushed up after the first sip of my blue lemonade which wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be (an excellent reason to sample the rest of the cocktail menu). We sat outside providing the local mosquitoes a smorgasbord of not so fresh foreign flesh and drank and chatted. At some point after an excellent dinner of baby squid, chips and salad, Djalma went off to get a scooter for the following day while I ordered another cocktail and was joined by a French girl, Gail. She was travelling by herself and was very talkative so we sat and talked and drank (her, coke, me, planters punch) until Djalma came back and joined in, I was feeling very pleasantly tipsy although slightly conscious about the difficulty with which I was focussing. This didn't stop me helping Djalma polish off his mojito before ordering one last drink for the road. Mistake.

From Pondicherry, India

We got on the little moped and made it back to the Ashram just before the gates were locked, thank goodness, and slept like babies for an early start the next morning.

The early start never happened. But we did make it out after papaya lassies, omelettes and garlic toast for breakfast. The early morning traffic wasn't nearly as horrendous as the evening traffic and we left Pondy behind on the open road to Auroville which we managed to completely overshoot and then spend about quarter of an hour trying to locate the turn-off to.

From Pondicherry, India

After stopping for directions countless times (we later fund out our assumption that they must not want to be easily found was true) we pulled up at the visitors centre, which is quite separate from where Aurovillians live, and met Mari who we knew of through Djalma's best friend, Pri. We wandered through the exhibition looking at their multinational photos and reading about the small “city's” philosophy. Contrary to my preconceived idea of the place it wasn't a new religion, or at least it wasn't meant to be, but a social experiment designed to unite like-minded people (a crucial point because not just anyone can roll up and live there) in a city where continued education and a drive for knowledge of the divine come first, where people can live together in harmony regardless of age, race, creed and social standing. This is badly re-worded from the mission statement but you get the idea. After getting slips of paper she took us over to the heart of Auroville, Matrimandir, a huge golden globe set in the middle of what will be twelve different gardens. Normally tourists or visitors aren't allowed in, especially just to look, you are supposed to concentrate or meditate, but we went inside the huge silent dome to a big white room. This was the only place I've ever experienced deafening silence, it was quite something. People sat round the edges facing into the middle where a huge perfectly round glass ball directed light from a hole in the roof to another ball below. Everything was white, the immaculate carpet, the cushions we sat on, the pillars, the walls and the ceiling and everyone was silent, almost – you could hear everything and when Djalma scratched his hairy leg I could hear his nails move across every single hair and shifting slightly on the cushions sounded like I was shifting gravel, we left the people contemplating life and retraced our footsteps, past the equally silent women watching the path to the dome, to the gardens outside.

From Pondicherry, India

Leaving the golden Matrimandir behind, the opposite to the centre of every other city on Earth in that it is a centre of silence and contemplation as opposed to chaos and disorder, we went for lunch at the visitors centre. It was surprisingly expensive, for the same price as a good steak dinner anywhere else the money would buy you a mushroom tart, not cool. The food was good although it took almost an hour for people to take our order (they were understaffed) during the time we waited we had what I would like to say was a good long conversation but was more of a question and answer session about life in Auroville for Mari. We asked about what life was like there, how the money side worked, how did it work with all the visitors or tourists. I was quite surprised about some of her answers and when she spoke about her frustration with, typically westerners, who came along for an hour and wanted to dissect and understand the essence of the project at Auroville which she said was too complicated to grasp in this time (and rightly so) I felt more than a little embarrassed at recognising myself in this group, I also felt more than a passing resemblance between myself and some the other annoying traits other, usually Europeans, show. It made me uncomfortable aware of how I think and conduct myself around foreigners, all a bit too English.

From Pondicherry, India

After a decent lunch she left to go shopping and we decided to go for a bit of exploring in the social experiment city. We didn't get very far, we were refused entry to the gardens around Matrimandir, which we had been in only a few hours previously, denied even for a few moments to take a photo of the gardens, we jumped on the bike to go to the lookout point, for which we did have a piece of paper but we weren't allowed to park the bike there despite there being plenty of room, we decided to just leave it and head back to Pondy and stop off at a beach somewhere on the way.

We left the private little city behind and halfway back ran out of petrol, fortunately for us a lovely man on a bike took Djalma to buy a couple of quart bottles, previously housing brandy, of petrol and we were soon on our way to the beach. We stopped off at a small hotel/hangout area which was actually fenced off from the beach and Djalma went off to the beach, in a roundabout way, while I sat feeling a bit like an intruder at a table. We left after a short while, Djalma dropped me back at our hotel, my legs were quite tired having been supporting my body against the bumps and turns and minor frights from a day on the back of a scooter. We rested for a short while before the call of the elusive Indian steak called us out from our room, we strolled to a bamboo filled outdoor restaurant ordered some fish fingers to start, some beers and the reason for our trip to Pondicherry STEAK. We kicked back and enjoyed our surprisingly tender slice of cow with chips and sad looking boiled vegetables.

From Pondicherry, India

We made the most of our room the next day not checking out till the last minute before returning the wonderful French café called Bakers Street for a mind bendingly indulgent breakfast. We had a quiche, a divine chocolate brownie (almost as good as my Granny used to make), a chicken baguette, the usual French baguette filled with fresh lettuce and juicy chicken pieces covered in a rich, creamy, peppery sauce (a welcome change from mayo), an éclair, another chocolate brownie and a sweet lime creamy mousse with chocolate and crunchy bits of heaven at the bottom and on top. I washed mine down with a coffee and had to ask Djalma to take me away before we ordered more and I exploded in a mess of over juiced taste buds.

From Pondicherry, India

We headed to a small expensive café/artshop (whose signature piece was a pierced elephant graffiti artist) with free but irritatingly slow wi-fi to spend the afternoon passing time till our train was due to leave. The food was so expensive that I went back to get another chicken baguette for dinner, I just couldn't believe that a plain old chicken baguette could be that good. After getting to the train station an hour before our train was due to arrive I left Djalma under a cloud of mosquitoes to get some baby wipes and some anti-mosquito spray which worked like a dream.

Our train arrived and we got on, leaving some of the best food I'd had in a while behind. We arrived at some other station where we waited on the platform watching a cricket match on the TV by the food stand before heading into a non veg restaurant to snooze until our 1am train. The three hours flew by and before I knew it we were boarding the night train with our unconfirmed reservation tickets hoping that at least one person hadn't shown up and that we could take turns sleeping in that berth. The train conductor for our carriage, as for all carriage, was a loud, rude and useless turd who refused to help us shouting at us 'no chance, no chance' until we found the empty berths ourselves.

Early the next morning, I was woken up at around 5am but waited until 6.30am until I woke up Djalma who had slept in another carriage, we sat together in the newly emptied train and watched the green misty world whiz by, well I watched it out the window while Djalma curled up on the seat and slept with his head on my lap extremely annoyed that I had woken him up just so we could sit together.

We arrived at our station mid-morning, possibly Coimbatore although I can't quite remember, and got a bus to Mettupalayam from where the toy train leaves for Ooty in the Nilgiri hills.

Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

2nd - 3rd March 2011



The early morning train went through ethereally beautiful misty green country side, we changed somewhere and got another train to a town a few kilometres from Vailankanni. On that train ride we met an old couple who started chatting to Djalma and ended up inviting us for lunch, then to stay in their home and then to a relatives wedding that afternoon. It was the first true hospitality we'd been shown since arriving in India – people had been friendly but no-one had invited us back for food, something we'd become accustomed to in Iran.

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

We ended up going with them to their new home (their main house was in Trichy, a bigger town/city) where I had a quick shower and washed the dirt from my hair before we went to the wedding. They were insistent that we stayed with them but after along day of travelling all we wanted was a mattress underneath a ceiling fan, their new house lacked a bed let alone a mattress and there wasn't a fan to stir the air so we decided to find a room after the wedding.

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

We got the bus for the short distance from their house into the centre of town where the big church was and although we arrived after the 4pm start time we didn't miss the bride's entrance. She was decked out in a jewel encrusted and gold thread embroidered sari with a white veil dotted with colourful embroidered flowers and dripping with half her body weight in gold jewellery. The church slowly filled up with friends and relatives to watch the couple make their vows and listen to the professional singers (no-one else sang). It took just over an hour by which time Djalma and I were more than ready to leave – the service was in Tamil, not that we would have understood Hindi but we had no idea of what was being said and the audience wasn't exactly involved in the service (like most weddings I guess).

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

The best thing about the wedding was the women who attended, they were all clothed in their richest, most elaborately embellished, colourful saris and looked like exquisite human peacocks lined up on the left side of the church, the jasmine in their hair scenting the air around them. The men on the other hand looked drab and uninspired in white, grey and brown shirts and trousers, boooooring!

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

We went to the reception were we were greeted by a couple of women with a small bowl of sandalwood paste and some dark waxy red powder and a box of jasmine strings for the ladies. We got painted and the beaming mother of the bride wound some jasmine round my messy ponytail (at that point I was grateful that I had had time to wash my hair). The father of the bride moved us from our seats near the back and put us in prized front row seats where we had a great view of the bride and groom being filmed and having countless pictures taken.

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

We watched different groups of family join the couple of stage to have their photos taken, all in in true Indian style (strictly no smiling and hands neatly by the sides) before it was our turn, it was very exciting and we grinned like idiots while sweating under the hot video lights. There was a band playing, the guy on the keyboard making full use of the programmed synthesiser and some sound effects I remembered from my own keyboard that I had when I was a child (and was convinced that I would absolutely learn how to play properly) and some singers who belted our tunes that blasted from the huge speakers directly into our brains. After sitting in the big room watching the poor couple stand there in front of the lights, as group after group went in front of the camera, we were taken downstairs to a big dining hall filled with rows of tables, canteen style, covered with banana leaves dotted with pickle and raita. We sat down and were promptly served a massive lamb biryani, pork, gravy and other different dishes. It was the first meat I'd eaten since arriving in India (I did try a piece of Djalma's chicken dish ages ago but spat it back out because it was all fat so it didn't really count) and it was delicious. We both declined seconds (a proper thali is an all you can eat meal) me because I couldn't fit any more in and Djalma because he didn't want to be such a pig (a first), we also tried some Badam milk, a rich super thick orange liquid/paste which although is everywhere in India, we hadn't tried before.

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

We rolled outside for some fresh air where we sat and talked to Maria (it's a man's or a woman's here) while we waited for Janya (no idea how to spell her name). When it came to leaving we had a very long and tricky process of extricating ourselves from their hijack hospitality. They were both very sweet but very persistent that we do things their way, stay with them, meet them in Trichy and stay with them for three days etc... Even assuring them that we could find our own room was a mission, but funnily enough having managed on our own for the last two months in India we didn't have a problem and even got a semi-deluxe room for the price of a basic room, result!

So we slept on a mattress under a ceiling fan and got devoured by hungry mosquitoes while we recharged our batteries. The next morning we saw the other churches grouped around the main church, the roads lined with icons and lines from the bible adding to the full on churchy atmosphere, which was a more than a bit full on and a wee bit scary. There were lots of people who had given their hair as an offering, a very noble thing to do as it degrades the beauty of a person, they had their heads covered with sandalwood powder to reduce the itching and redness of the close shave from the 'hair removers' lining the street to the beach. The church also had a huge system for receiving offerings, it was possible to buy special blessed oil bottles, blessed water, blessed oil, saris, silver, flower garlands and coconuts amongst other things, it all seemed very commercialised and profit driven. The mix between Christianity and Hinduism was quite startling, on the one hand we felt like we were on familiar ground and on the other hand things were done so differently it was hard to connect it with the religion we knew.

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

We waited for two hours for Maria to come and meet us to take us back to their house which although was close we didn't know how to get to. In the meantime we walked along the town's beach and then sat and waited in the shade.

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

Back at their house we drank fresh coconut water and planted some banana roots. We got their address and ate the best thali I've tasted, all vegetarian. We had to say goodbye soon after that with promises to call, assurances that we would TRY and make it to Trichy to see them again and managed to confuse Maria with our internet address – he just didn't understand the concept of electronic mail via computer and not the usual mailing system, he looked dubiously at my email address and said 'but there are lots of Sarahs...'. It really drove home how differently people live. They were both pretty amazed that outside of India people don't generally use coconut oil in their hair, wear saris, have coconuts or curry...

From Vailankanni, Tamil Nadu, India

We caught the bus to a larger town with better transport links and from there got a bus to Tranquebar further up the coast. We arrived there and checked around for a cheap place to stay, there was a spiritual centre that had a hot room so we gave it a miss but the only other option turned out to be more than 1000Rs. We decided to move on up to Pondicherry a French flavoured town three to four hours away by bus.