Kerala & Bangalore

The India leg of our trip is almost over. There's only one week before we fly to Kuala Lumpur, and I feel like I haven't updated this blog nearly enough!

To bring you up to speed with our 'adventure', this is what we've been upto for the past few weeks. Make yourself a cup of tea and get comfortable, this is probably going to be a long post:

The heat of Cochi - where Karl bought his dhoti - was a bit too much for us, so after a couple of days we moved up to Kumily in the Cardamom hills. Our bus driver made it his personal mission to overtake every vehicle on the road (including petrol tankers, and often on some very steep and scary bends) but the views were absolutely amazing, especially when we went past the tea plantations.



In Kumily, we lazed around a drank a lot of cardamom tea & coffee. Eventually we decided we should do something more productive, so we went on a tour of an organic spice plantation, guided around by owner Sebastian (who apparently goes by the nickname Baby, although I couldnt quite bring myself to call him this). The tour was brilliant - we got to learn about and taste loads of things, including cinammon, nutmeg, cloves, chillis, ginger, tumeric, coffee, tea, garam masala, cocao and cardamom.

Clove plant

Karl with 'Baby'

No trip to Kerala is complete without a trip down the backwaters, so we made our way down to Allepey, where we spent three blissful hours being paddled along the rivers while we watched river-side village life pass us by. The canoe paddler (i know that's not the right term) recommended a quiet little place on the riverbank to stop off for lunch, and we had a scrumptious thali meal - spicy fried fish, lentils, rice, potato curry, various chutneys and poppadoms - all served on a banana leaf, and washed down with some refreshing coconut juice. It was perfect, it was exactly what we'd wanted Kerala to be like. On the way back, Karl was invited to have a go at rowing - I felt a bit like a queen, reclining on my comfy cushions with a belly full of delicious food.


From here it was on to Bangalore, which seems cleaner and less chaotic than any of the cities we've visited so far, especially Mumbai. It was refershing to finally see some nice public parkspace, so as well as exploring some of the malls and shopping districts, we also chilled out in Lalbagh Botanical Gardens and visited Cubbon Park. We tried to visit a couple of temples, but Bangalore proved too difficult navigate with our crappy Lonely Planet map. After walking around past streets filled with rubbish and cow dung for half an hour, we found ourselves back where we'd started - at a big wall that smelt like sort of public pissing area - and decided to call it a day. How a city that's supposed to be modern and forward-thinking can fail to have any visible street signs is beyond me.

Also, it was while in Bangalore that we decided to try the Maharaja burger at McDonald's - Karl liked it, but I was a bit underwhelmed. The highlight for me was the Coca Cola, which I've become slightly addicted to during the trip. A visit to the dentist will definitely be in order when I get back next year...


After a tiring 35 hour train journey to Kolkata (Calcutta), where we stayed for a mere 24 hours, we've now made our way up to Darjeeling. We're here for 4 days and the internet's pretty decent, so I'll write again and upload some photos within the next couple of days.

Till then...! xxx