Afraid to fart – no photos by request.

Yep its true I’m sick with some sort of bug, God knows what!   Don’t get me wrong, I am loving India and especially the people who have redefined  the word friendly, however it must be told that almost every city, town, village so far has open sewers on every street.  Streams and rivers look more like the local garbage dump, its a good thing the blog does not support smells of India. The trains also join in spreading everything along the tracks and I it appears to me  the toilets get busier in the stations and thus the stations kinda stink especially in the heat of India. We read a great article on the subject in the Hindu Times, calling on Indians to demand change. Tourists to India that fail to mention  the pollution and health hazards both in the cities and the country side are clearly seeing the world with rose tinted glasses. I was sure careful but was outwitted by a simple bug.

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India- Mamallapuram

Mamallapuram  faces south east across the Bay of Bengal and every morning the sun rises through a hazy sky and the light is a soft magical yellow colour, fisherman in small multi-log or painted high prow canoes paddle out through golden waves, not really surfable but the one surfer in town did offer to rent me his board, to bad the waves were never good enough.

India Madurai to Trichy

Trains are cheap about R 800 ($20.00) 2nd class to travel for around 12hrs, it varies if you go 3rd class it costs half that or less. Buses for the same distance are R 150 or less ie way cheaper and a very different experience, full of small towns and tea stops. So we took the bus again from Madurai to Trichy R70, about a 6hr ride.

Downhill for a bit…

    Oh my god the journey from Munnar down to the lowlands was like a scene from a Tintin book, narrow winding single lane cliff edge road with vertical  drop offs into the valley below, at one point we came round a hairpin bend to find a tractor sideways across the road. (on Video), looking ahead I could see where our road was going along a shear cliff and would have happily walked down if the bus had slowed down enough for me to get off.

High Tea

Mary surrounded by tea.

A long and winding bus journey, the local bus for us no air conditioned Tourist bus, figuring out the bus system is easy you just ask 3 people and hope they all agree on which bus we should  climb on, most of the ticket collectors on the buses seem to speak a bit of English and all are friendly.