Let the adventure begin!

I arrived in the middle of Friday night. Strangely, although my flight was on time as scheduled it had to wait for landing- because the airport was being cleaned. I figured this was my first introduction to how India does things.

(5 Jan)
For my first days I had arranged to stay with an Indian family friend from back home who was home visiting family for Christmas. In those first days (4 nights) I was treated like royalty. I was shown all the major sights of Cochin - Fort Cochin, the Chinese fishing nets, and the Kathalali dance performance; and spent a day in a houseboat on the Kerala Backwaters.

(6 Jan)
The Backwaters are listed in most the major travel guide companies as amongst the top to do things of the world. It's a series of waterways: lakes and canals, a 900 km network. Typically people travel the backwaters in a houseboat and with a group of 17 from my friends family we did a day trip on a 2 bedroom houseboat (with lots of lounging room up top the bedrooms were largely ignored). I loved it and I thought it was enough without staying overnight.

(7Jan)
The next day we departed from his family and, with a driver, headed to the tea plantations of Munnar. Whereas Cochin had a stifling heat and humidity, Munnar was wonderfully cool. We stayed in a wonderful resort outside of town, away from the constant blasting of horns, and with wonderful accommodations and foods. Unfortunately the tea museum was closed on Monday so I'm none the wiser about tea. We spent the afternoon driving to Top Station for the big views but it was shrouded in mist.
www.camelotmunnar.com

(8 Jan)
The next morning, despite my offers to take a bus, they drive me another 5 hours to meet my travel companion, Louise, in Madurai. The trip involved 17 hairpin bends in 30 minutes.
Louise had gotten tired of looking for accommodation and settled for something particularly horrible and my Indian host was horrified to see where he was leaving me.
As the guide book says, it's dank. It's also grimey and very unclean. But I have used my own sheet, pillow slip, mosquito net., eye mask, and ear plugs. I survived. Today we'll move on and in Trichy we'll find better (I promise!). But hey, this private room was $7 ... I might stretch the budget for something better.

Madurai has a most impressive Hindu temple which we visited already. Most funny is that the place has 4 gates for entrance and we managed to exit at a different gate to where we went in, but didn't realize. Before entering we had to remove our shoes and exchange them for a ticket... And we went to 3 different gates to request our shoes before we finally found the correct entrance way.

(9 Jan)
Today we move onto Trichy. Like most
places in India it has another proper name but I'm an Aussie, so I'll go with to easiest. Today will be my first Indian train!

Photos will be posted later. (I'm writing from a blogger application on my iPhone).