In the UK it is generally thought rude to honk one’s car horn – it’s almost considered ‘road rage’. No such reservations here in India where honking is considered a normal part of driving. In fact it is actively encouraged. In the UK many lorries have stickers on the rear advising cyclists not to get caught in the drivers ‘blind spot’ or saying the vehicle is restricted to a certain speed. Here most lorries have a sticker saying ‘honk your horn’, not that anyone needs any encouragement!

It’s like an organised chaos with everyone driving in the most erratic way but somehow mostly managing to avoid hitting each other or anybody else. The honking is almost like a kind of automobile bird song, as if the vehicles were all talking to one another. It also has an almost contemporary symphonic rhythm to it – if Philip Glass or Steve Reich did honking, it might sound a bit like this. 

In the days before we had our fur babies (the dogs), we would regularly spend weekends up in London. A particular favourite location was Hoxton in the east end near the city. We would book the Hoxton Hotel (when it was cheap) and hang out in all the east London ‘hipster’ haunts. The area around Hoxton, Spitalfields and Old Street is known for hi-tech start-up firms that have clustered in the area. As a result the area around Old Street roundabout has been nicknamed ‘silicon roundabout’. Wherever you find a hi-tech start-up employee hipster-type, you’re sure to find great (organic) coffee shops and more vegan eateries than you could shake a tofu kebab at! Hence it was our kind of place.

Bengaluru is actually know as India’s Silicon Valley due to its high number of hi-tech businesses. We were staying close to an area called Trinity, and it certainly felt that there were a lot of young IT professionals there, and with them the trendy coffee shops (there was even a Starbucks) and eateries. In my research for this trip, I created a vegan eating page on our planning spreadsheet. Using the internet and the very useful ‘Happy Cow’ website, I found as many potential vegan cafes and restaurants that we could eat at in the different places we could stay at as possible.

In Bengaluru I found a vegan cafe called Copper + Spice, it was quite close to where we were staying (and where Mike had found a barber for a haircut and beard trim) so we thought we’d try it for lunch. It was situated on what largely felt like a quiet residential back street. In fact, when we reached it, it could easily be missed were it not for the sign as it was behind a white painted wall and what looked like a front garden.

Inside the wall was a modest two story house that had been converted into a cafe and small collective of other trendy little stores. The cafe was 100% vegan (result!) and so we took a seat in the front garden and drooled over the menu. We chose a few small plates to share, a smoked cauliflower, beetroot humus, pea humus, sour dough bread and a peanut Asian salad. I had a watermelon juice and Mike had bottled water. 

As we waited for the food, I admired the beautiful little garden – a great example of gardening in small spaces. We also watched amusingly at the guy on the table behind us. He was on his Apple MacBook, EarPods in, on a conference call – while in a vegan organic cafe, how hipster can you get?! The food arrived and was a blaze of colour. I can confirm that it tasted as good as it looked. We devoured it, and as a bonus, when Mike went to pay the bill, he found some vegan chocolate for sale – we had found a small piece of vegan paradise in a Bengaluru backstreet, who would have thought it?!

Thursday 30 January

Bengaluru

Our second day exploring Bengaluru . We had the suite on the seventh floor of the the Radisson – just like last time. It’s a lovely room – with a coffee machine and an amazing view (and remote control curtains!), so we had coffee and watched the sun come up. The gym is on the same floor as our room and Matthew went over there to do his RED run (we don’t know how he’ll get to run tomorrow as we’re going to be on trains heading north for a lot of the time with a break of a few hours in Hampi). 

The Radisson in Bengaluru is opposite Lake Ulsoor and I could see from our window that there was a path alongside the lake. I thought that running by the lake would be nice and tried to persuade Matthew to join me, but he wasn’t having it (he says that he doesn’t really like running with me – which is a bit sad). I’m still recovering from a sprained foot and it aches from time to time but last time I ran was on the beach in Kerala and I managed 3 miles on one day then 4 miles the next – in the heat and on the sand); it’s much cooler here in Bangaluru and it’d be flat, so I wanted to try for 10k/6 miles. Finding my way onto the path was tricky but once I was beside the water it was a wonderful run. Quite a few others were out running – and it’s always nice to wave, nod, smile, give a thumbs-up as we pass each other. There were also lots of speed walkers and people doing yoga. It was a shame that the path didn’t go all the way around the lake, though- I had to run back and forth around half of it a few times to get the miles in – 6.7 miles to be exact.

I could see our hotel room from across the lake.

After breakfast we lazed about a bit, read up on Hampi and decided what to do with our day in Bengaluru. Matthew wanted to try a vegan cafe that he’d found out about, I wanted to get a haircut and beard shave, and Matthew wanted to explore the city centre a bit.

I found a barber nearby and Matthew decided to have a trip too. It’s very nice feeling less like a shaggy old grey dog! Then we took the metro to Indiranagar from where it was a short walk to Copper + Cloves … a wonderful vegan cafe in a lovely old house with a pretty garden.

It was so nice to have a choice from an entirely vegan menu!

After lunch we headed to Cubbon/Sri Chamarajendra Park in the centre of the city – it’s huge! The park was originally laid out in 1870 and has been extended so that it now covers 1.2km ².

There are formal gardens, rocky outcrops, fountains, wooded areas, naturalistic planting, a bandstand, a fern house and shrines. The central library is in the park as is the archeological museum.

Nearby were the Courthouse and the magnificent legislative assembly of Karnatika building (known as the Vidhana Soudha) that was completed in 1956.

We’ve some long train journeys coming up, so we needed to get some food supplies in and collect our bags from the hotel. We took the metro to the train station, but got off a stop too early! Thankfully we had plenty of time and took the next Metro. My token wouldn’t let me out at the railway station because I’d not paid enough – it took a bit of explaining that Google had told us to go to the previous stop for the railway station.

While we sat on the platform at Bengaluru, I was wondering where my jacket was. I asked Matthew if he’d packed it in his bag. He realised that he’d hung his jacket and my jacket in the wardrobe in the Radisson and forgotten to take them out and pack them. Oh no! We’ve emailed the hotel to see if they can post them on for us. Fingers crossed!

As mentioned previously I’ve often thought that Michael is similar to my dad in many ways. However, I’m beginning to wonder if rather than having ‘married my father’ as the saying goes, I have in fact ‘married my aunty’.

Aunty Janet has an unbelievable knack of being anywhere, anytime, and still be able to make friends. On a train, a park bench, a supermarket – anywhere, Janet will make acquaintance with total strangers, and within minute, she’ll have extracted their whole life story.

It turns out that despite his protests of being a very ‘anti-social person’; on this holiday he’s channeling his inner aunt J. Whether it’s visiting ancient monuments, in a hotel restaurant or on public transport, Michael has been striking up a conversation with lots of complete strangers. If it turns out they have a dog, bingo! He can exchange dog stories with them for as long as they like.

It’s actually very nice to watch, and in a slightly odd reversal of personalities, it’s me who is quite reserved when we’re with new people. I’d rather hang back, listen, get the lay of them before I dive in. I’ll leave Michael to find out the back story, and if they sound nice, I’ll join in later. Go ‘aunty Michael’.

Wednesday 29 January

Mysuru – Bengaluru

A much quieter day today than yesterday. And our last scheduled day with Vaishakh. We decided to wear the new shirts that Vaishakh had given us yesterday – they’re lovely and cool.

Matthew did a short run … he’s almost at the end of RED January and he’s really stuck at it, even though finding suitable places to run here in India has been challenging. I’m very proud of him. 

We had breakfast with Stephen and met his lovely cat, Billet-Doux, who seems to be a little lost and confused about the absence of her housemate, Lucie.

Vaishakh had originally proposed that we leave at 05.00 – but his next passengers were delayed, so we didn’t need to leave until 08.00. The drive to Bengaluru was uneventful and we arrived at the Radisson at 11:30.

Sad to be saying farewell to Vaishakh, his advice and help was far above and beyond what we could have ever imagined. He went off to collect his laundry and see his mum before meeting his next passengers.

A couple of days ago Matthew was engrossed on his phone (as is often the case, I think). When I asked him what he was doing, he became quite cagey and told me to mind my own business! Turns out he’d found a vegan bakery in Bengaluru and they could deliver to our hotel. We’d not found any deserts other than fruit that were vegan so far in India, so he ordered a little raspberry and mango cake and it was waiting for us at the Radisson hotel. The cake was in a little cardboard box and as we were checking in one of the reception staff brought it over to us, saying “Here is your cake.” Obviously I had no idea what was going on and I imagined that maybe this something that they do here … bring people cake when they check in! So I told them no thank you! She looked a bit confused and Matthew had to insist that it was ok – and took the box from her. Up in our room (the exact same one we stayed in last time we were here!) he explained what he’d done. We had some tea and cake – very civilised!

We’re taking our first overnight train tomorrow and Matthew has signed up to a train food ordering app … but we’re not confident that there’ll be much available that we could eat – I think it depends on what’s close to the  intermediate stations. Vaishakh told us about the Fresh Pick store in the 1MG – Lido Mall, which is very near our hotel, that he thought would have vegan food, so we went to check that out. In the mall Matthew was a little distracted by the Gap store – he used to work for Gap in Bristol in his student days, but Gap pulled out of the UK several years ago – so it was a curious trip down memory lane for him. There was also an M&S in the mall, too – we had a look around there, too. It’s very good value here – but I’m trying to dissuade Matthew from buying stuff that we’ll have to carry for the rest of the holiday. We saw another likely vegan store opposite, Nature’s Basket Artisan Pantry  – they had loads of nice vegan stuff, too, and a nice restaurant on the top floor with plenty of vegan options – I went for more dosa, Matthew didn’t want dosa three days in a row, so he went for the pasta arrabbiata – not very Indian!

We have bid farewell to Vaishakh, which is sad. He has been absolutely amazing and taken us to places that we would never have visited had we been travelling alone. He dropped us off at our hotel in Bengaluru this morning before he headed off for another job. I suspect we may still be calling on him for advice during the rest of our trip! Poor man!!

We’re staying at the Radisson again, we were here just over a week ago. although we’re only sleeping one night, I also booked for last night as we were arriving early so it meant we could check in rest, shower etc rather than having to wait until 2pm. I only booked a standard room, but they must like us as they have bumped us up to the corner suite on the top floor again with panoramic views of the lake, and the circular bath (be warned, I might actually use it this time).

One thing we haven’t has so far this trip is cake, and we were starting to crave it (just a little bit). We’ve seen some lovely cakes but all had egg, butter, cream etc in then, so no good for the vegan traveller. However, fear not – I am pretty good at sniffing out vegan cake. During my research into vegan eateries, I found a place in Bengaluru called the Digital Chef. it’s a vegan pizza place and vegan patisserie. I know, and odd combination, but this is Indias Silicon Valley, so if your going to find and Indian hipster vegan, it’s likely to be here.

It’s based quite a way out from where we are staying, but fortunately they do deliveries. Unfortunately they are closed on Wednesdays (today). Fear not a hatched a cunning plan. Yesterday in Mysuru, while we were in the back of a tuk tuk, actually, I managed to place an order for a raspberry and mango cake to be delivered yesterday to our hotel. I had to do it via an app called Swiggy, it’s a sort of Indian Uber Eats. I never use any of those back in the UK, well I tell a lie, I did once to order three Pizzas for a Eurovision party. I didn’t get on with it, we ended up with 12 pizzas being delivered! 

Thankfully I had better luck this time, the order went through and I was able to track our cake being made, dispatched and delivered to the hotel. I had emailed the hotel to make them aware of the delivery yesterday and asked them to keep it for us until we arrived today. We’d just checked in when a member of the hotel staff came up with the cake in a box in a paper bag saying ‘some cake for you sir’. Mike was just about to say ‘no thank you, we’re vegan we can’t eat the cake’, when I took the back from her quickly and said thank you very much and headed for the lift. Mike looked slightly perplexed.

Up in our suite I revealed the surprise – a whole vegan cake all to ourselves. we popped the kettle on and sat down to enjoy our first cake in India with a nice cup of green tea. I feel very pleased that my cake plan has worked out, and even more amazing that a whole vegan cake delivered to our hotel cost the equivalent of just £7. I would probably get two slices of vegan cake for that price on my local high street. Thankfully for our waistlines, they only deliver in Bengaluru, so we shall enjoy it while it lasts (which won’t be long) before our cake famine resumes.

The trip around Mysuru Palace was extraordinary, such a lovely place with intricate patterns and decorations everywhere (oddly most made in Britain!). What made it even more special was that Vaishakh had used his contacts to get us a tour of some rooms that are not open to the general public.

One was the amazing armoury where the resident historian guided us through the beautiful, but often quite gruesome weapons. Then they took us into the next door trophy room – which we were far less keen on. It was filled from floor to ceiling with the King’s hunting trophies, all stuffed and staring at us from every angle. I couldn’t help think that of all the thousands of visitors in the palace that day, we were probably the two who would least like seeing that room. We both felt a bit sick and very sad to see all these beautiful creatures that had been killed and stuffed just for fun – truly horrible. 

Thankfully we didn’t have to stay long in that room, and we’re back in the armoury where the historian was very intrigued to be told by Vaishakh that we were both vegans (hence not very keen on the murdered animals next door). I think he thought we were some kind of religious sect, but Vaishakh did his best to explain that we just liked animals and didn’t want to see them exploited or treated cruelly by humans. No pictures of these two rooms as they don’t allow it, but here is the door – which was padlocked shut again when we passed it later on our way around the rest of the palace.

Tuesday 28 January

Mysuru

Today was a truly wonderful day – Vaishakh lives in Mysuru and is very rightly proud of his home city.  Vaishakh showed us many important sights in and around the city and we talked a lot about the city, his friends and our families. He’s a truly good man who works hard and is very kind. We were fortunate to meet him and it’s thanks to Bharath and Shubhi who we first met in Bristol last summer and who suggested that that Vaishakh could be our driver.

We began the day with breakfast at our homestay (Mysore Bed and Breakfast). There were 9 around the table: a British couple from Warsash, (near Southampton), a young French couple from Paris, a German and Indian couple with their small boy, Stephen the proprietor and Sowbaghaya who cooked breakfast. It was nice chatting about India and Indian trains. Most of the other guests were leaving on the Hampi Express later today.

Vaishakh arrived at 10 to collect us. We’d sent him home last night with a gift for his one-year old son, Dhairya. Dhairya had some stuffed animal toys and Sindhoo said that Dhairya was a bit obsessed with dogs – he referred to his stuffed animal toys as dogs, but we noticed that he didn’t have a dog – there was an elephant, a unicorn and a cat …so we had fun choosing a cute dog soft toy for him. Vaishakh said that Dhairya loved it and showed us a lovely picture of him with the dog – so cute! We drove into the city centre and parked near the Devaraja market, so we could explore the market itself and the centre on foot. The market is fantastic – really big and with stalls piled high with all manner of fruit and vegetables and spices and flowers – it was heaven. We saw some couples who were getting married and having parties of their wedding videos made there – it was nice to see them. We tried a lovely sweet fruit that’s in season – Vaishakh bought some for us to eat on our train journey to Hampi in a couple of days.

After visiting the market, we headed to Mysore Palace.

Vaishakh told us that his neighbour worked in the palace … we thought that this might give us privileged access … but unfortunately she wasn’t working today. Then he thought that he might know someone else who worked at the palace and went to see if he could find them. I had spotted a sign to the restroom, so I used the opportunity to go in search of the toilet … I followed the signs around the corner where the path forked, but there were no more signs that I could see – I walked in one direction past a green and a temple and was at a big gate with guards on it … I didn’t see and more restroom signs, so I went back to the other road that went in the other direction but I was walking further than seemed plausible and wondered if I’d walked past the toilet without noticing, so I turned around again and slowly retraced my steps. Still no restroom! Eventually I found them at the end of the second path and near the entrance – it would have been much quicker if I’d walked in the opposite direction to the signs. I’d just settled in when I heard Vaishakh calling my name – he realised that I was probably lost and had come to find me!

Vaishakh did know someone who was working and they did arrange for us to visit some closed off rooms. She was lovely – was an accountant (I think) and said that her brother studied in Leeds! She arranged for us to have our own guide, who was really knowledgeable and explained what we were looking at. First of all we went into an army room and then a room full of stuffed animal hunting trophies (this second room was quite an unwelcome place for me to be!). Our guide even pointed out where the bullets had gone into the tigers, which was really quite upsetting. Matthew did point out that there wasn’t much we could do about that now! Vaishakh was super sensitive and realised that we didn’t want to be there, he explained to the guide that we were vegans – it sounded like it took quite a lot of explaining! We were allowed to take photos in these rooms that were not normally available to visit. We then toured the rest of the palace – it’s magnificent.

There are seven palaces in Mysuru – (the city is often called the ‘City of the Palaces’), this was the main palace as it was the official residence of the Wadiyars until Indian independence. The first palace inside the Old Fort was built in the 14th century. The previous palace burned down during the wedding of Jayalakshammani, the eldest daughter of Chamaraja Wodeyar in 1896. The new palace was designed by Henry Irwin, a British architect and built quickly between 1897 and 1912. Mysore Palace has over three million visitors every year and is the second most visited tourist attraction in India – only the Taj Mahal has more.

After the palace we went to the bus station for the 201 to Chamundi Hill. While waiting for the bus, one of Bharath’s and Vaishakh’s friends, Suprith, arrived – just to say hello (and to have a picture taken with us for Barath I suspect!).

We’ll see Suprith later – he used to work for an NGO with Vaishakh and Bharath. Suprith is an amazing guy … and a man after my own heart, he’s walked over three thousand miles along a river and is planning to walk from the west coast to the east coast of India; that sounds fantastic!

Chamundi Hill is a sacred place – we alighted from the bus by a big statue of Mahishasura – who was killed by the goddess Durga and Mahishasura is the origin of the city’s name – Mysuru.

Alongside the Mahishasura statue is the beautiful high Chamundeshwari Temple – named after the goddess Chamundi.

There were wonderful panoramic views of the city and the temple can be seen from many parts of the city. We descended from the top of the hill using the Chamundi Hill steps – constructed in 1659 with 1,000 steps. Halfway down we passed a huge and beautiful granite carved Nandi (god in form of a bull) – carved from a single piece of granite. Vaishakh had ordered a tuktuk to take us back to his car in the city.

Vaishakh drove us across to the area where our friend Bharath grew up – we also saw Vaishakh’s old house, then Bharath’s father’s old shop. We stopped at Grape Juice Corner – the chilled red grape juice, was sweet and delicious.

We changed some more sterling to rupees – the exchange rate seems to be pretty good for us at the moment then went to the Mahesh Prasad Hotel for bonda soup, and dosas (two kinds – rava onion dosa made with semolina, which made it very crisp and crunchy, and also Masala dosa with a potato and onion filling). All delicious. Our dosas have usually been served with small pots of daal and coconut chutney … sometimes with additional chutney that are usually too spicy hot for my tastes. Matthew has a go with them though!

After dinner we headed over to Kukkarahalli Lake near the university to watch the sunset. The park was lovely and the lake has a path all around it – we’ve not seen so many runners in India . The sunset was beautiful.

Then back to Mysore Palace for the evening light show. Pret extraordinary!

Vaishakh bought us gifts – handmade cotton shirts – what an unexpected and lovely surprise! Thank you.

Back at our homestay we chatted with Stephen before bed – nice to learn more about India and his situation. After his wife died, he lost the right to live in India indefinitely – which seems horribly cruel. He’s exploring ways of staying on in the house that he and his wife made into the business that it is is today.

Our day exploring Mysuru ended with a return trip to the palace. Chatting to the English couple at breakfast they told us that the thousands of individual bulbs that decorate the facade of the palace are only turned on at weekends now (a cost saving measure from the state government). 

As it was Wednesday we thought we would miss this spectacle, but when we visited the palace earlier, Vaishakh’s friend who worked there told us that the evening light show at the palace (7-8pm each night) concludes with all the lights being turned on for just ten minutes. The light show itself was narrated telling the story Mysuru (sadly not in English so we weren’t really able to understand), the lights were turned on and off to relate to the narrative. Even not being able to understand the story, they were pretty to watch. 

Vaishakh knew when to tell us to get our cameras ready for the finale when all the lights came on. It was beautiful and worth the wait. Some of the bulbs had blown so it reminded us of when the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol used to be lit with individual bulbs like this – when some of them blew, the illuminated bridge looked like a smile with an occasional missing tooth. Watching the lights on the palace was a perfect end to a perfect day.

It is day 29 of RED (run every day) January, just three more runs to do to complete the challenge. It’s been a RED of two halves – running in the cold, wet and dark in the UK, then the opposite, warm, sunny and humid weather in India. The latter has been quite tough, firstly finding places to run, then coping with the heat. It’s meant I’ve only managed very short runs here – just enough to keep up with the challenge. 

Our bed and breakfast in Mysore was in a lovely residential area. The street had three small parks running along it, bisected by residential streets. It was lovely and quiet and all the trees in the park made it nice and cool. It was the perfect place to do an early morning run around the three parks.

I was awake yesterday around 6am so had donned my running gear and was out the house by 6.30am. I wasn’t the first up, there were several locals doing their morning walk around the park. At the end of one park was an outdoor gym and a few people were doing their exercise routines. To go between the parks I had to dip out onto the road. It’s a very quiet street so hardly any traffic, but what is still a surprise is that there are cows wandering around freely.

In India, cows are considered sacred and are a symbol of wealth, strength, and abundance. They are revered as givers of life and so are let out to roam freely in the streets during the day. They’re treated with respect so are perfectly safe from the crazy traffic, and for festivals they are decorated with flowers, ribbons and colourful turmeric powder that turns them yellow. Several of the cows we’ve seen have still been adorned from the recent festivals. 

Yesterday I ran with just my watch so wasn’t able to photograph any of the cows. Today I took my phone with me, but typical, there were no cows in sight. They were either having a lay-in or knew I was coming and were feeling camera shy. Fortunately, I took a photo of one yesterday on our walk around Mysuru – and just as we were driving off one appeared so I caught a shot through the car window. I’ll need to keep my eyes out for more cows on the next stage of our journey so I can make a moo-vie next time (sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

The first stop on our tour of Mysuru with Vaishakh was to the market – and what a market. It was a vast sprawling network of lanes and stalls. To keep them cool from the sun, different coloured tarpaulin were strung over the alleyways. The light that passed through the tarpaulin created a wonderful mix of colours that added to the amazing atmosphere.

My mum loved a marker, the mixture of fresh produce and the ability to barter over the process. She was a bit cheeky like that my mum, I think I’ve got that from her – the ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’ attitude. Michael would run a mile from having to barter – he’d rather hand them his wallet and say ‘take it’ than have to haggle over a price!

The smell in the market was just as amazing as the look of all the produce. Fruit and vegetables piled high in baskets and on mats. Some familiar ones but also more exotic varieties too. Things that are not so common in the UK are heaped in vast piles here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so many coconuts all piled up in one place before.

Part of the market is where you can buy the flowers for the garlands that are used in religious festivals and rituals. They don’t come in bunches like in the UK but rather in great big piles or baskets of flower heads. They are sold by weight and then are threaded onto strings to make the garlands. I watched one boy as he neatly threaded the flowers onto the string. The finished effect was just beautiful.

I was getting lots of tradespeople offering me their wares – but I resisted in the knowledge that I had to keep the air in my luggage until nearer the end of our trip so not to be carrying so much. I kept thinking, aunty Janet wouldn’t be so restrained! I did let two stall holders apply some scented oils to my arms – sandalwood on one and lotus flower on the other. Leaving the market with no produce but in a cloud of sweet scent.

After we were unsuccessful in our first attempt to buy tickets for the blue toy train from Ooty to Mettupalayam , our early start yesterday meant that we got to Coonoor by just gone 11, plenty of time to catch the 12.35 shorter train ride to Ooty.  This time I’d booked our tickets online, so as not to miss out. 

I’m quite a dab hand on using the very frustrating Indian railway booking system now. We were chatting to an English couple at breakfast in our B&B this morning, they were impressed I had booked all of the trains myself, they’d used a company to do it for them. I said let’s see if they all work first! Apparently one of the trains they had booked had been running two hours early – departed two hours early! That was a useful heads up, I shall check the online live train times now to make sure nothing departs without us!

We had a little wait at Coonoor station, but it was a pretty place with a small station garden at one end of the platform. I admired the plants while Michael went off to explore the station and the goods yard. I then sat people watching and spotting the other English tourists – mostly one women dutifully following around after a train buff husband, looked familiar. My own train buff husband soon returned from his exploring, just in time to watch our train be reversed onto the platform.

We found our seats in the first carriage easily,  although there was a moment when another couple tried to occupy our seats. Fortunately they were in the wrong carriage. Phew, I panicked for a moment that I’d messed up the train booking.

The train ride itself was quite short just over an hour to Ooty, but it’s a lovely ride. The climb is steep and windy and the views are amazing. The best bit was our fellow passengers in the carriage. There were an Indian couple with their grown up daughter and a retired English couple from Milton Keynes. We chatted and shared stories and jokes the whole journey, it was great. 

When we arrived at Ooty it was a bit chaotic as we all tried to get off and lots of people waiting on the platform were trying to get on at the same time. Vaishakh was waiting for us on the platform and took this great video if our train arriving. Back in the car we set off on the last part of drive to Mysore, Michael very content that he’d got his train fix – the first of many he’ll get over the next few weeks.

Monday 27 January

Marari Beach – Mysuru

We packed our bags after dinner last night and went to bed early ready for our early start today. Matthew decided to get up and go running on the beach at 2:30! Crazy – he’s taking his run every day (RED) January very seriously – he said that there were some people still on the beach, a couple who’d made a fire and some people fishing … they would have been quite bemused to see a White European running about on the shore. 

The reception staff came to collect our bags in a little electric buggy at 3:30am I had some coffee in our room and Vaishakh was waiting for us at 3:45.

While Matthew was settling the (quite sizeable) bill, I chatted with a couple of British women who were sat outside surrounded with their luggage and waiting for a taxi to take them to the airport in Kochi. They said that they were getting a flight to Muscat … I thought Wow! And I asked them if they were on a round the world trip … turns out that they weren’t, they were catching a flight from Muscat back to Heathrow! They were from Lancaster and I told them that we’d been there to cycle coast-to-coast from Morecambe to Bridlington (in the years before dogs!).

We set off in the dark and as expected, the roads were very quiet. As the sun rose on our right it illuminated the beautiful Western Ghat mountain range between Kochi and Madukkari on our left.

The vegan breakfast boxes from Marari Beach were beyond underwhelming – two apples, a small banana and a small carton of mango juice.

We were making good progress and stopped for breakfast at Sri Annapoorna (Veg) at Odandurai, Nagapattinam – yum! potatoes and onion dosa, an onion pancake, a savoury donut (Vaishakh will know what these were really called, so I may be able to update this later).

A short time later while we were stopped at a toll point there a tap on the front passenger side window of Vaishakh’s car – it was a traffic policeman. Uh oh. Vaishakh lowered the window and he asked if we were going to Ooty – we are. He wanted a lift there! Phew! Vaishakh seemed uncertain and asked us what we thought I was all for it, I used to hitch-hike a lot in my late teens and early twenties. Hardly anyone hitch-hikes these days but it’s always nice to be able to help someone who has to get somewhere. Plus, there had to be some advantage to having a traffic policeman in the vehicle – you never know! He was 59, smart in his uniform with two stars and some bars on his epaulettes. In India people normally retire at 60 and he was planning to farm some land when he retired.

As the road climbs up to Coonoor there are dozens of hairpin bends and some wonderful views.

Vaishakh dropped us off at Coonoor railway station and offered to wait with us until the train arrived – that would have meant that the traffic policeman would have needed to find another lift. We had booked tickets, so we were confident that we would be able to get to Ooty, so we suggested that Vaishakh carry on and meet us in Ooty.

There was over an hour to wait for the train … that gave us plenty of time to explore the station – and the adjacent marshalling yard. Just like in Ooty, the station was being renovated. There were some chalk decorations on the floor left from Republic Day.

The marshalling yard was brilliant – lots of trains, including steam trains being cleaned and serviced.

There was a neat little railway police office at the end of our platform that had a lovely small garden and a big green wall just outside the station.

Our train arrived and station staff opened every door before we could get on. Each set of seats facing each other have their own door and there was no corridor inside the carriage – this maximises seating space. We met a couple of Brits from Milton Keynes and a lovely Indian couple with their daughter. We all chatted a lot throughout our journey about work and travel and marriage and India.

Vaishakh was waiting for us on the platform in Ooty – he filmed the train coming in. 

The last part of our loooong journey today to Mysuru went back through the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve. We saw more elephants, some of them in captivity – chained and working, which I found upsetting. They’re magnificent, sensitive and sociable creatures that should never be in captivity, treated cruelly or taken away from their own. 

We also saw some baboons and some giant Indian squirrels for the first time; more monkeys, peacocks and deer. 

We’re in a homestay in Mysuru – like a bed a breakfast. Stephen is the owner and he’s a lovely, sociable person – originally from Sheffield, but here in India for 15 years now. Our friends Ann and Dave in Bristol recommended that we stay here. Stephen likes to cycle, which is a plus. I was looking forward to meeting Lucie, Stephen’s dog. When we arrived, Stephen told us that Lucie had died yesterday. That was dreadful news – I don’t know how he was holding things together – I guess he was working and trying to get on. Lucie was old and had been struggling a bit recently, so her death wasn’t unexpected. 

We went out for something to eat – our first auto rickshaw ride! And then back to bed and a good nights sleep.

Our stay at Malari Beach came to an end today as we bid farewell to cottage 32. It was a very early start as we had to be ready to hit the road at 4am. You know how it is the night before you have to be up early and you just keep waking up thinking you’ll miss the alarm. That exactly what was happening to me last night. I gave up in the end and got up at 2.30am and decided to do my run every day session out and back along the beach. 

It’s slightly weird running on sand in the middle of the night, in the dark with the waves crashing on the beach. What’s even weirder is that I wasn’t the only one on the beach at that hour. First there was a fisherman preparing his boat, his figure emerging out of the dark. Then there were a couple of people sat around a camp fire – they looked like they’d been there all night. As I ran past, they were a bit startled and shone their torches at me. Finally, I came across a group of street dogs on the beach. They were also a bit surprised to see me and one of them woofed at me. I took that as a sign to turn around and head back. It was only a short one mile run, but the main point was I did it and kept up my 27 day streak of running every day.

I got back to the cottage, showered, made Mike a coffee and then put the bags out ready for them to be collect. Bang on cue at 3.45 a porter driving the electric tuk tuk turned up and loaded them onto the back to take them to reception. Vaishakh was waiting for us as we arrived. I paid the last of our bill and checked out. Slightly sad that another chapter of our adventure was closing, but excited about what’s still to come. 

I did something yesterday (not sure what) that has made my lower back a bit stiff. Not ideal when tomorrow we’re heading off on a very long car journey. Fortunately it was early yoga again this morning and that always helps stretch me out. Michael joined me this morning (somewhat reluctantly). He does enjoy yoga when he does it, but it just reminds him how knackered and inflexible he feels when he can’t stretch and flex like others can. I think the yoga class leader could see that my back was stiff as he did lots of moves that were good for loosening the lower back.

Yoga was followed by breakfast and then at 11am I’d booked us both a massage in the on-site Ayurveda centre. I thought this would also be good for my back and a nice treat on our last day here. As we wandered over to get our massage I was a little anxious about the possibility of being massaged by women. Don’t get me wrong, I do like women, but it’s been a very long time since the female hand has been laid on my body – and that was not a good experience. Several years ago, one of our ex-neighbours, a slightly nuts Swedish women by the name of Anna invited us to a fancy dress party. I went as someone from the band Dexys Midnight Runners. Later in the evening, after she had dunk far too much alcohol, Anna quite unexpectedly slipped her hand inside the back of my dungarees and started to fondle my bottom, which was most unwelcome. The memory of this encounter has left me with mild post traumatic stress (PTSD) and the thought of a female masseur was slightly triggering.

Thankfully my fears were not realised, as after a quick questionnaire with a doctor to check my blood pressure, cholesterol, toilet movements etc were all ok, I was introduced to a young boy (he was probably a young man, but he looked like a young boy to me!) who showed me into the massage room. There was massage table, a side table with oils and towels, a separate bathroom and a rope strung across the room from one side to another. I wondered what an earth the rope was for, fortunately I didn’t get to find out.

When I’d booked the massage I asked what I should wear. I was told to just wear normal clothes and that a loin cloth would be provided for me to wear during the massage. I had visions of a nice cotton cloth similar to the sort worn by Ghandi, I was miss-sold! The boy instructed me to undress completely and then pulled out what could only be described as an oversized disposable face mask. He proceeded to wrap the string around my waist tieing it behind, the fabric part dangling in front. Then reaching between my legs he pulled the fabric up and tucked it into the string around my waist. Think cheap sumo wrestler outfit. As a slightly oversized teenager, some of the kids at school used to call me Sumo (a distortion of Symo, while also playing on my chubbiness). If only they could see me now – looking like a poor man’s sumo wrestler!

The boy invited me to sit on a stool where he began with the head massage. Oil was applied and his fingers started to whiz around my scalp, my neck and my ears – it reminded me of when I go to the hairdressers. I love having my hair done, it sort of sends me into a relaxed trance. After about ten minutes that part was done. Next he put a metal bowl on the floor by my feel and one by one lifted them into the bowl. He poured water over them from a metal jug, then with what at first I thought was a stone – turned out to be a slice of lime (yes my eyes really are that bad!), he rubbed one foot at a time with the lime then rinsed with the water before patting them dry with a towel.

Next it was time to lay on the massage table, first face down. For this part we were joined by a second male masseur with a bright smile and gapped teeth. A very sensible safeguarding precaution I thought. The string holding the ‘loin cloth’ was untied and the fabric part rested on the table. Then warm oil was poured from a small metal watering can all over my body. The two masseurs then started to work the oil into my body. Blimey, they were speedy and very coordinated. I thought, if this was a Charleston on Strictly they’d get 10, 10, 10, 10. It also vaguely reminded me of taking a car through a car-wash, the brushes whizzing and whacking each side. Not that they were very harsh, in fact it was a lovely relaxing sensation. After a good workout on the back half, the loin cloth was retired and I was asked to turn over onto my back.

A similar process of applying the oil was carried out followed by two pairs of hands basting me up like a good roast potatoe (non-vegans can imagine your own alternative). All was well until one of them started on my tits. It felt like he was a contestant on bake off rolling two dough buns into shape. The spirit of Frankie Howard washed over me as I could feel laughter buildings – titter ye not! For those not of a certain age, Frankie Howard was British comedian during the 1950s-1980s – he famously made lots of risqué double entendres in his stories then would feinen shocked innocence when the audience laughed at them – he was hilarious. Anyway, I bit hard on my lip to suppress a laugh, which was quite a struggle, I though ‘think if something serious’. My brother Andrew’s red face came into my head – No! That was worse, quickly before I spurted out a guffaw I thought of the dogs. Phew, the laugh was suppressed and the tits were left to rise! At the end of the front massage there was a gentle slapping of the body from head to toe – also quite similar to knocking the air out of dough.

The final stage was the head massage. The boy applied small drops of cold oil onto my face. They smelt slightly scented, like Body Shop Mornigea body wash. He proceeded to gently massage all my face, around the eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, chin, the full works. Then that was it, I was done. I did wonder for a moment how I was going to get from the massage bench to the bathroom without looking like some B-list celebrity on dancing on ice. Thankfully they’d thought of that. Before I stood up the boy wiped down my feet removing the excess oil, then advised me to tread gently to the bathroom where I could wash the oil off.

Fully dressed and very relaxed I was escorted back to the reception area where I was reunited with Michael who’d been sent off to a separate room for his massage. The young boy applied a bindi to each of our foreheads and we were invited to sit and drink some sweet herbal tea before departing (too sweet for Michael, he’s sweet enough!). 

Looking out the window I asked about the potted labelled plants and whether they had herbal significance. I was informed that yes, they each performed a different function and that there were 100 potted plants around the Ayurveda centre that formed a herbal garden, which was used regularly in the different treatments. Tea consumed, I signed the bill and we left feeling very relaxed.

Today (26 January) is Republic Day in India. The staff in the restaurant were wearing badges of the Indian flag to mark the occasion. It’s interesting to read how the Indian flag contains a lot of symbolism and its use is quite controlled.

Wikipedia informs me that before the amendment of the ‘flag code’ in 2021, the flag was by law only to be made of khadi; a special type of hand-spun cloth or silk, made popular by Mahatma Gandhi. As of 2023, there are 4 places in India that are licensed to manufacture the flag. Usage of the flag is governed by the Flag Code of India and other laws relating to the national emblems. The original code prohibited use of the flag by private citizens except on national days, such as the Independence Day and the Republic Day. In 2002, the Supreme Court of India directed the Government of India to amend the code to allow flag usage by private citizens. Subsequently, the Union Cabinet of India amended the code to allow limited usage. The code was amended once more in 2005 to allow some additional use including adaptations on certain forms of clothing. The flag code also governs the protocol of flying the flag and its use in conjunction with other national and non-national flags.

The current Indian flag with the central Ashok Chakra was designed by Badruddin Tyabji in 1947. Gandhi first proposed a flag to the Indian National Congress in 1921. The precursor to the current flag, the swaraj flag was designed by Pingali Venkayya. In the centre was a traditional spinning wheel, symbolising Gandhi’s goal of making Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing, between a red stripe for Hindus and a green stripe for Muslims. The design was then modified to replace red with saffron and to include a white stripe in the centre for other religious communities (as well to symbolise peace between the communities) and provide a background for the spinning wheel. However, to avoid sectarian associations with the colour scheme, the three bands were later reassigned new meanings: courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry respectively.

As someone who trained in textile design hearing about the type of cloth prescribed for the flag and the symbolism of the spinning wheel at its centre is facinating. Here at Marari Beach there is a spinning wheel used in the creation of a different kind of yarn. In the Coir Hut it’s possible to see how the coconut fibres are spun into yarn and then turned into coir rope, mats etc. Coir is a very tough and hard wearing fibre – we have had coir carpet in our hall in the past. For the women spinning it, it will certainly toughen up their hands! 

Saturday 25 January

Marari Beach

It’s our second full day at the Colonial Club Marari Beach Resort. Matthew was up an out early as usual – an early run and then yoga followed by  breakfast then a trip to the Butterfly Garden – a really lovely area on the edge of the compound where plants are grown to specifically attract butterflies and insects. 

We had a nice, well-informed guide who explained the development of the garden and how they work to maximise different local species of butterfly. There were many butterflies and our guide advised us to return later in the day to see even more.

There’s a family from the USA on site – parents and four kids. They were at the Butterfly Garden too. The woman and the kids are quite chatty – they’re from Utah, just moved to Kochi for two years for dad’s work in computing. He seems to be rather studiously not speaking to us … I can’t imagine why!

Then some more time in and by the pool. And then at 1800 time for the ‘Farm Kitchen’ experience – the main reason why Matthew wanted to come here – a guided tour of their large vegetable gardens, selection of vegetables with the chef and then they’re cooked and served up for us.

It was wonderful – Ajo was our chef, he was sweet and I interesting – said that there are 60 chefs on site! He thought he’d be an engineer, but his brother is and advised him against it. Ajo came into being a chef through a hotel management course. He made us some wonderful food – Matthew has already written about that. It was really nice to sit down together and eat, talk and be quiet. A lovely evening.

Finally, after dinner a wander back to our cottage for a drink. A lovely day.

Around a year ago I was at home perusing the home and garden section of the Guardian newspaper. There was an article by Allan Jenkins about an organic vegetable garden in Kerala. Slightly oddly, it didn’t say in the article precisely where it was. I did my own internet research to find that there was somewhere called Marari Beach Resort with a five acre organic vegetable garden, where it’s possible to tour the garden, pick vegetables and the chef would then cook a meal with the produce. So when I was planning our trip an opportunity to visit a vegetable farm and taste the produce was high on my wish list.

It was another one of those ‘pinch yourself’ moments – we actually did it. At 6pm last night we met Ajo, the chef in the farm kitchen garden and he took us on a tour to learn about and select the produce that he then turned into our dinner in a beautiful outdoor farm kitchen, What a delicious dinner it was too! I’m not generally one for posting pictures of my meals, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception.

The first course was a simple soup made from some onion, garlic, curry leaves picked from the garden and blended with coconut milk. They were simmered gently for about 30 minutes. Instead of using a pan lid, a banana leave had the duel effect of keeping a lid on the pan and also telling when it was cooked as the leaf changed as it cooked – ingenious!

Next it was a banana cooked in a sauce of onions, spices and coconut milk. This was served wrapped in a banana leaf. It was delicious and had a beautiful almost nutty flavour.

Next was a refreshing salad made using three types of spinach leaves. The dressing was made from passion fruit juice – it was so sweet. Pomegranate seeds were sprinkled over the salad with some small batons of what I think were a yam.

The main course consisted of two curries; a wet pumpkin curry with coconut cream, and a dry aubergine curry with chopped fresh coconut. It was interesting that Ajo prepared the aubergine by chopping it into very small pieces and cooking it directly, this is very different to how we generally cook aubergine at home (sliced, salted and baked to extract liquid before they are grilled or roasted). I’m certainly going to try his method. The curry was accompanied by a hot pickle and chapati.

Desert was a creamy coconut pudding infused with hibiscus flower and mixed with chopped cashew and dried fruit. It was the perfect end to a delicious meal – and our first desert in India (if you exclude fruit!).

It was a fantastic experience and meal. We wrote a great review for Ajo, we’d definitely recommend this experience.

Ajo our very talented chef

We’ve been staying at Marari Beach for two nights and we have two more to go before we hit the road again with Vaishakh. It is a beautiful place, but quite detached from the real India. The place sells itself as an eco-resort. All the rooms are little individual thatched cottages set amongst beautiful lush green grounds.

The gardens here are more like a botanical garden as we’d know it, rather than the actual botanical gardens that we’ve visited so far in India. The trees and shrubs each have little green plates telling the English and local names.

There are near green lawns (well they look like lawns but it’s actually a close growing ground cover). The only reason they are green is because the sprinklers come on in the early morning and late evening each day.

There’s a big beautiful saltwater swimming pool that is not cold, but cooler than it is outside – so it’s very refreshing to swim.

Around the complex is an earth hut with lots of info about the wildlife around the site and where daily talks/tours start from.

The restaurant is housed in a large open sided thatched building, but there are fine wires running down the sides to stop birds flying in. The high exposed roof have low overhang eaves to keep it cool.

Big fans hang from the ceiling and because it’s quite dark, there are small wall lights around the edge. The restaurant is where we go for an extensive buffet breakfast and dinner (dinner can be buffet or a la carte) the staff wear blue in the morning and white in the evening.

There is also a choice of the poolside snack bar, the beach bar with pizzas and other drinks and snacks, or the the fisherman’s grill.

Across the site there’s also a yoga hut, games room, therapy spa, club house (with a tv if you’re desperate – there are deliberately no tvs in the cottages).

There are lots of natural activities including the Owl Parliament walk (which we did on our first morning and it was absolutely fab), a butterfly tour in the butterfly garden (second morning ) archery (gave that a miss), afternoon tea served on the lawn (Matthew did, Mike didn’t), and an organic vegetable farm (more about that later). Then of course there is the palm fringed beach just a short stroll from the cottages.

All this luxury does of course come at a price – but this is the ‘special treat’ for our trip. We certainly have never stayed anywhere quite as luxurious as this before (and are unlikely to again unless I win another cash prize competition!). The luxury is wonderful, but also quite an awkward contrast to the real India we’ve seen elsewhere. I said to Mike the other night when we were having dinner that the whole place has the air of a colonial club house in the mid 1950s. The look of the clientele certain fit that (including us). The guests are mostly white European, mostly older couples (the resort could pass as a retirement community with a small number of younger visitors!). Many of the guests have big boobs and big bellies (and that’s just the men – to be fair, the women tend to a bit more stylish). All the staff (who are without exception lovely) are of course Indian, which just adds to the feel of colonial British rule clinging on here. 

It’s been both odd and nice to experience this slightly surreal piece of gated paradise (I didn’t mention the security guides at every entrance did I?) But I think four nights (three days is enough). We’ll be glad to be travelling again with Vaishakh and seeing a more authentic side of India from tomorrow.

Friday 24 January

Marari Beach

A quiet day at Marari Beach for us today with no travelling. Beginning with Matthew heading off to the yoga centre for an hour – we’ve both done yoga in the past and enjoyed it (sort of) and definitely felt that it did us good, but I’m nervous about damaging my already painful foot that I sprained about 6 weeks ago. I might risk it tomorrow. 

We also sent off some of our first week’s clothes to be laundered. After breakfast we went for a tour of the ‘compound’ that showed us some of the wildlife. The event was called ‘Owl Parliament’ (there are many species of owl on site), but we looked at butterflies and turtles, too. There were about 10 others in the Earth Lab building where the tour started.

Our guide was fantastic – I’ve no idea how he did it, but he could see all sorts of birds in the trees …. And even when he painstakingly described exactly where to look and what to look for I usually couldn’t see what he was pointing out. Fortunately, he had a super-powerful monocular on a tripod, which he’d set up and train on a particular bird and we could all take turns to look.

What we saw was truly astonishing and his next phenomenal skill was that he could focus our phone through the monocular and adjust light levels to produce some fantastic photographs … we are not responsible for these at all – but this is some what we looked at.

We chatted to some of the others – some from Manchester, some Yorkshire and also Plymouth. We all talked about missing our dogs! Some people are flying home tomorrow and there’s a storm hitting the UK – Storm Éowyn – thousands of flights have been cancelled … mostly in Northern Ireland and Scotland as far as we can tell – but it could move south I suppose and they might be delayed.

After the ‘Owl Parliament’ we went to reception to book some activities over the coming days. We wanted to spend some time on a houseboat – but there was no availability between now and when we leave (I’m starting to sense a theme emerging now). Instead we’re going a shorter boat tour, which is available the day after tomorrow. Also, Matthew wanted to tour the organic garden here and then the chef will cook us dinner using the produce that we harvest – so that’s booked for tomorrow, evening.

We spent a couple of hours in/by the pool and then went for a 5k run along the beach. Matthew has set himself a challenge to run every day (RED) in January  – he’s mostly done that in hotel gyms, or in their grounds while we’ve been in India. Today was my first run in India and it was lovely to run together – and by the Arabian Sea! There were a few stray dogs on the beach and I was a bit nervous that we might alarm them and be chased -,there were no major dog-incidents, although one did woof at Matthew. I wanted keep as far away as possible and ended up too close to the sea – a wave went over both of our  feet and we had to squelch along for 4.5k! Next time we’ll go barefoot.

Last night’s dinner was ordered from the a la carte menu … it was enormous and I could only eat about a quarter of it … a terrible waste of food and I felt guilty about it. So tonight we used the buffet so we could have smaller portions. They have a drummer and string player entertaining us with traditional Indian music while we dine – which is lovely. We were almost finished dinner when all the waiting staff paraded in with a cake and were clapping – the young couple at the next but one table were on their honeymoon – sweet – they seemed a little embarrassed.

After dinner we walked down to the beach bar for another drink (tonic for Matthew and a Mocktail for Mike). It was lovely sitting in the warm, the sound of the waves and pretty lights all around the bar. A nice end to another lovely day.

When water closets (wc or toilets) were introduced into UK homes in the late nineteenth century, it was not considered hygienic to have them inside the house, but rather to have them in an outside space accessed by leaving the house, usually into a back yard. These outside loos can still be found in some very old houses, but are now considered very primitive. Most people prefer the luxury of a fully heated inside lavatory nowadays. So it’s quite funny here at Marari Beach to find that the bathrooms are located outside – considered decadent and luxurious here in contrast to the outside loos of old back home.

Enclosed by a white wall, with a thatched palm roof, the shower, sink and toilet are covered, but there is an open section in the corner where rain (if there is any) can drain onto a pebbled area with a banana palm planted in it. The temperature here is very warm, so there is no danger of being cold in the outdoor bathroom, but there is one predator to be wary of. In the evenings the mosquitos are particularly hungry – and no one wants a bite on the bum when they’re on the throne! To deal with this danger, guests are advised to place a citronella joss stick in the pebbles beside the loo and let the incense burn to deter the mosquitoes. The incense burns through the night, so for the older gentlemen among us (that’s both of us, I know) we can pay our nighttime visits safe in the knowledge that the mosquitoes are (mostly) being kept at bay.

A reminder of how much precious water we waste

Our garden cottage is very comfortable, especially the bed so we both slept well. I woke up early (as is my normal) so I was able to head to the yoga hut for 7am yoga (Micheal stayed in bed snoozing). I do occasional yoga at home using Apple Fitness, but to be honest, I’ve not done it for a while (life is too busy). I had thought I might do it every day in India, but our busy schedule means today is the first opportunity I’ve had.

I arrived at the yoga hut almost bang on 7am. It was already almost full – I counted that there were 16 of us in total. Everyone else was already sat on their mats waiting, the yoga teacher hadn’t arrived yet. I was looking around to see where the mats were, but I couldn’t see for looking. One women realised what I was looking for and indicated with her head to the hooks just under the eaves of the straw roof where the rolled up mats were stored. I took one and set it out in one of the few spaces left.

The yoga teacher arrived shortly after. He must have been about the same age as me, but boy, was he flexible! If only I were half as flexible as him! He clearly knew his audience though, as he didn’t really do anything too taxing until the final few moves. There was a lot of stretching, just what i needed after yesterday’s long drive. One of the moves was focussed on stretching our hamstrings and involved six people at a time spaced around a chest of drawers he’d pulled into the centre of the room. One leg at a time we had to stand sideways onto the drawers and lift our leg onto the draws, foot facing up, then stretch our hands up and lean over towards the foot on the draws, repeating several times while taking a deep inhail of breath and then slowly breathing out. We then repeated with the other leg.

The final move was the hardest. Sitting on the mat sideways with our front leg folded up with our foot tucked into our crotch. The back leg slightly bent and our front hand slightly forward but in line with our back leg. We then had to hold our front leg toe with our back hand, and in a sort of sideways ‘plane style’ take off, elevated off the floor with our front hand and back foot still on the floor. If holding that wasn’t hard enough, we then had to extend the leg while our other hand was still holding the toe. My legs are very long so there was no way I was going to extend it fully, but I did my best, while still balancing on my hand and foot. When the yoga teacher demonstrated it, everyone laughed in a ‘you really expect me to do that?’ expression. It was me and the only other guy in the session who actually managed to do it first and we had had a ‘good, well done’ from the teacher!

The whole session lasted an hour and ended with the usual relaxation and Savasana chant. It was another ‘pinch myself’ moment to think I was doing yoga in India, in a straw thatched hut, with open sides (apart from mesh to keep the mosquito at bay). All we could hear was the wildlife and the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach in the background. The white birds just pottering around outside – magical. I just need to persuade Mike to get up and have a go tomorrow.  

Thursday 23 January

Wellington – Marari Beach

We were at Ooty station to buy our toy train tickets at 07:30 – the station building is lovely – but covered in scaffolding as it’s being restored.

The ticket office opened at 0800 … already there was a long queue of people waiting.

I feared that we might not get a ticket. So while Mathew and Vaishakh queued, I explored the station – they have an old Swiss Railways steam locomotive on display – and it’s possible to walk across the railway lines to get close to it.

The Nilgiri Mountain Railway was opened in 1908  – it took almost 60 years to complete. It’s 46km in length and since we’re so high up, it includes some of the steepest track in Asia – a maximum gradient of 8.33%. The railway is narrow gauge, with a rack and pinion system on the steepest sections between Mettupalayam and Coonoor; it still uses steam locomotives. In its early days, the railway used locomotives built by the Avonside Engine Company that’s based in St Philip’s in our home city of Bristol! In 1994 the railway was given UNESCO world heritage status. The scenic mountain views from the train are spectacular – and there’s a possibility of seeing lots of wildlife, including elephants, monkeys, bisons and leopards. 

When I returned to the ticket hall, the queue wasn’t much shorter – it can takes ages to buy a railway ticket! Not long after, and as I’d feared, it was announced that the train was sold out. Vaishakh said that the maximum number of tickets that anyone could buy was four and that lots of people were buying four tickets. It was also obvious that coach loads of tourists were arriving having bought packages that included transport, accommodation and a ride on the toy train. No wonder it sold out!

I had considered telling Vaishakh that he could just leave us at the railway station and head off to meet us at the other end in Mettupalayam – he wouldn’t have agreed to that, I know, and thankfully I hadn’t suggested it – or we’d have had to ask him to come back to Ooty to collect us! Without the train, we were all going by car to Marari Beach – near Kochi, on the west coast in Kerala. A journey of nine hours! Vaishakh seems to take these sorts of drives in his stride – but it horrifies me!

All is not lost on the Toy Train front – we may be able to reserve seats in the opposite direction – from Mettupalayam to Ooty when we return to Mysuru in four days time.

The drive brought us down from the mountains – lots of tight hairpin bends, dense mist, monkeys and waterfalls. In fact, lots of what we would have seen if we’d been on the train! As usual Vaishakh drove with enormous skill.

We passed through the Coimbatore – a huge textile centre, known as the ‘Manchester of South India’! Palakkad, which has an enormous 18th century fort. Thrissur, which has a very large number of temples and other religious buildings – it’s thought that Christianity, Islam and Judaism came into India through Thrissur. The Catholic basilica in Thrissur is an enormous bright white edifice and it’s the largest Christian church in India.

We stopped for breakfast in a busy ‘family restaurant’ – really nice and being with Vaishakh meant that we didn’t need to struggle to order vegan food – It’ll be a nightmare when we part company with him next week! 

On to Kochi, which is the most populated area in Kerala – a beautiful city bordering the coast and an ancient and historically an important centre of spice trading with the Romans, Persians, Arabs, and Chinese. From the early 1500s Kochi was colonised by the Portuguese who built a fort here. Dutch colonists took over (!) in the 1660s and the British arrived after the French revolutionary wars/British victory over Napoleon that enabled Britain to return land that the French had taken from the Dutch to the Netherlands in return for Dutch handing over land that the British wanted – including South Africa and here in Kerala.

Vaishakh told us that Kochi is the only city in India to have a water metro – electric boats connecting Kochi’s 10 islands with the metro system – it looks great!

Also, Cochin International Airport is the first in the world to operate entirely on solar power. We also saw the Chinese fishing nets along the waterfront that are a symbol of the city.

I noticed on our journey that there seemed to be far fewer stray dogs in the road – when I commented on this, Vaishakh said that the local authorities rescued them and had shelters/re-homed them. I hope that’s the case – I was reading about some animal welfare charities in India … one boasted about how many stray dogs they had sterilised (a good thing to do) but then said that they returned them back to the streets (not a good thing to do!). I sense that there is a very troubling indifference among many people here to animal and human suffering – it’s unexpected and bothers me … but I don’t live here and I’m very aware that what tourists glimpse from their air conditioned cars and hotels does’t really give us the ability to come to meaningful conclusions.

We arrived in Marari Beach around 5:30 (having left Ooty at about 8:30. Our ‘hotel’ is really a gated resort – we have a little bungalow to ourselves with an adjoining bathroom open to the sky. It’s lovely and warm here in the south. It’s also very White here in Marari Beach Resort, which we didn’t expect. It’s luxurious, artificial and there’s some discomfort about feeling the echoes of the colonial past.

We walked through the ‘compound’ in the dusk – a beautiful sky and nice to see the stars – then on to the beach. The beach was almost deserted and there was the Arabian Sea – it was breathtaking … in less than a week we’ve travelled from the Bay of Bengal to Arabian Sea  – that’s 700km/450 miles.

We paused for a drink at the outdoor bar (pineapple juice for Mike, tonic water for Matthew) before heading to the restaurant for dinner

I know that it has been said before, but it should said again, my husband has many similar characteristics to my father – or as us sometimes remarked, I married my father! Not least is his pleasure in seeing a steam train (utterly baffling to me). He was in for a treat today as we made a last minute plan to catch the miniature ‘blue toy train’ from Ooty to Mettupalayam where we’d be picked up for our onward journey to Kerala by Vaishakh. Sadly, it was not to be.

When I was planning our holiday I didn’t think we’d have time to travel on the miniature blue train while we were here so I’d not booked ahead (all our other train journeys have been booked months in advance). Unlike the UK where you can just turn up and get on a train (even if it means standing as it often does), here reservations are necessary if you want to guarantee a ticket, especially on the miniature train where capacity is limited.

Vaishakh picked us up early from our hotel, just after 7 to get us to the station to join the queue for limited on the day tickets that went on sale at 8am. He was slightly delayed as he came across someone in the road who’d been his by a bison! He drove them to a nearby hospital to be checked before picking us up. Bison attacks are not something we have to worry about in the UK thankfully. They are big strong beasts so you wouldn’t want to get into a fight with one. There are lots of signs warning drivers to go slow to be aware of wildlife crossing, but if you’re on foot (as this guy was) and an angry bison crosses your path, you’re in trouble. Thankfully Vaishakh thinks he’ll be ok, and will only have bruises – but safer to be checked out.

When we got to the station at Ooty there was already quite a queue but Vaishakh was hopeful we’d get two of the 50 or so tickets available. Unfortunate we were unlucky. People could buy up to four tickets and by the time we got near the front all the tickets for the 9.15 train had been sold. Ah well, at least Mike got to clamber over the tracks to see the train on display at the station (clambering over tracks is not permitted in the UK). We still have plenty of train trips to come including the Himalayan Queen that will take us up to Shimla – so Mike’s train fix will be satisfied!

After a very, very, very long drive – all credit to Vaishakh – we have safely arrived at our beach hotel resort. This will be our home for the next 3 days (4 nights), so now it’s time to relax and recharge. We arrived around 5.30 and after a slight panic that I’d lost our passports (I hadn’t) we were welcomed with a pale mark on the forehead and some delicious cold blue tea. It tasted slightly of blueberries, but they told us it’s brewed from these blue flowers growing around the gardens here.

We’re staying in a garden cottage with a thatched straw roof. Air conditioned inside, thankfully, as it is 27 degrees (at 8pm!). The bathroom is outside in a small garden enclosure. They advise lighting citron incense sticks at night in the bathroom to ward off mosquitos (no one wants a bite in the bum when they pay a late night visit).

Although it was dark, we wandered down to the beach to see if we might be able run on the sand tomorrow. It feels firm enough by the shore, so that’s something for tomorrow’s RED January. Dinner in the restaurant isn’t served until 7.30pm and we were a little early so we wandered over to the beach bar. There was a guitarist singing as we had a drink (Mike a mocktail, me a tonic water) and perused the range of free activities we can enjoy while we’re here. I think it’s going to be a lovely few days here.

Wednesday 22 January

Wellington/Ooty

A much shorter day today with much less driving. 

Breakfast at the Sleeping Beauty by Nature Hotel was a little underwhelming – no non-dairy milk available … and when I asked if it would be possible to have some for tomorrow morning, they said no! So dry toast and jam and some fruit it had to be! It’s occurred to me that it’s actually been more challenging than I expected to be vegan – in this part of India at least (and Kerala where we are heading to is likely to be even worse – they eat a lot of dead fish there). Here at Sleeping Beauty, after we told them we were vegan and explained what that meant, they asked us if we would like an omelette for breakfast! Matthew had been wondering whether we should stay here for an additional night – it is a stunning location in the hills and among the tea plantations, I’ll admit – but on the strength of the breakfasts, I said no thanks!

The plan for today was to visit a tea factory and the botanical gardens in Ooty. Vaishakh collected us at 8:30 and we drove through Ooty and up to the Benchmark tea factory (they also made chocolate there). The drive on the road up the hill was amazing – terraces of tea bushes – with lots of different shades of green looked wonderful.

At the tea factory a young man explained to us how white tea and green tea and black tea all come from the same bush – the white tea comes from the bottom of the leaf which is handpicked. Green tea comes from newest, tender leaves that are steamed before processing. Black tea comes from the darker/older leaves that are dried and ground. It was interesting and we could see the machinery operating through windows, but we were out fairly quickly.

We were given some tea to drink and had opportunities to buy tea and chocolate! Matthew was considering buying some chocolate, but we were not allowed to taste any of it, which I thought was a little odd-and I was reluctant to buy something that I wasn’t sure whether I’d like it or not (I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth). Vaishakh wanted to buy some chocolate for his wife – he bought some for us too, which was very kind of him! It tasted good too!! Thanks Vaishakh!

The drive back to Ooty to the botanical gardens was nice and we discussed how tea might be made in smaller, more traditional business businesses. Vaishakh asked us if we would be interested in visiting a more traditional tea making business, and after the rather commercial and noisy tea factory we thought that would be a really good idea. He said he would try to arrange something while we were in the botanical gardens.

The botanical gardens were more like a Victorian British park – lawns, glasshouse, formal bedding, cascades and tree-lined paths. Not unpleasant, but it didn’t feel particularly Indian. We had to pay to get in and while Matthew was doing that, I looked ruefully at all the signs and notices at the entrance – there are a lot of signs telling people how to behave and what to do everywhere we’ve been – and they’re often ignored by the people that they’re directed at and I wonder if everyone else, like me, just finds them really oppressive?

Matthew will write separately about the Botanical Gardens – he knew all the plant names and can describe it better than I can. 

Before leaving Ooty we went to the railway station – I’m very excited about tomorrow because we’re taking the Ooty Toy Train (or Nilgiri Mountain Railway to give it it’s proper name) we’ll be on a three hour ride to Mettupalayam. We went to the railway station in Ooty to book our tickets.

I was disappointed to find that all the bookable availability was sold out! However, we can buy walk-on tickets in the morning, so we’ll be back at Ooty station at eight tomorrow morning!

We walked back to the car and Vaishakh had found a small tea plantation and factory that we could visit – the Glendale estate. We drove there past the huge Wellington Cordite factory, it looked pretty forbidding – surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. Someone who working our hotel told us that they make munitions for the Indian military at the site here.

The Glendale tea plantation was beautiful – an 85 year old factory and surrounding fields of tea buses being worked (mostly by women workers). The factory was closed for a holiday, but we were allowed to look around – the machines looked very dangerous with unguarded mechanisms. It was fascinating to get so close to the process and the people working there – the previous factory was interesting but more commercial.

After the second tea factory of the day, we headed back to our hotel. One of the staff offered to walk us further up the hill to see the sunset – he was a sweet local man … he asked us about our relationship and while I was contemplating whether or not to tell him that we’re married, he said “You’re soulmates.” I happily agreed with that.

It was becoming more misty in the valley and so there wouldn’t be a good sunset to see. We could see lots of sold plots on the hillside – with tea bushes still growing on them. It’s likely that these plots will be built on and it was really sad to think that this beautiful natural landscape and space for wild buffalo and leopards will disappear forever.

This trip has a lot of gardens on the itinerary, but I also wanted to visit a tea plantation. Today that wish came true and it was spectacular. We visited a tea factory this morning and that was interesting enough, but it was very commercial. Vaishakh suggested that he could take us to an authentic tea estate further outside Ooty where there would be no tourists. Boy did he deliver.

The estate he took us too was called Glendale (or so the hotel porter said when we showed him our pictures), the oldest in the area, established over 80 years ago. The factory wasn’t working today as it was a holiday, but they were happy for us to look around. It was like a time capsule with much of the machinery looking like it was also 80 years old. Certainly made way before the sort of health and safely rules we have in the UK, barely a safety guard in sight. My boss would have a fit!

The factory was really interesting, but it was the tea plantation that stole the show. Although it was a holiday for the factory workers, the workers picking (almost all women) were still working as they were paid depending how much they picked. As one said to Vaishakh, no work today, no food tomorrow. It struck home how hard they work for very little, and how privileged we are.

The tree bushes grow for between 40-50 years. It’s just the fresh leaves and tips that the pickers want, and they repeat the picking of every bush every 15 days to keep them in shape. All the tea picking is done by hand using a sort of pair of garden shears with a dust pan attached. As the shears chops, the tips collect in the pan. When that’s full they go into the sack. It was mesmerising to watch. I had to pinch myself to prove I was really standing in an Indian tea plantation. The tea bushes went on for as far as the eye could see, it was stunning.

As we were leaving we passed an amazing red bush. I had to look twice to realise that it was actually a huge Poinsettia. Here it was happy as Larry growing on the edge of the tea plantation, extraordinary!

I’m sure some of you are thinking of me as ‘Queen of the Hills’, that perhaps I’ve acquired some sari fabric and have hi-jacked a bus so that I can sit on the roof, with a long length of fabric flowing behind me as we drive through tea plantations much like Pricilla Queen of the Desert. Sadly, nothing quite so glamorous or camp. Queen of the Hills refers to Ooty, allegedly referring to it as the finest of the British ‘hill stations’. Sadly the days of Ooty as a rather stately and dignified place have passed. If Ooty is a Queen today, it’s more of a tired drag queen, with perhaps a bit too much makeup on. The mass commercialisation of the centre of Ooty means that it’s actually pretty tawdry. 

Thankfully – after a tip off from Bharath and Shubhi we avoided booking accommodation in Ooty and instead opted for a small hotel perched high up just outside Wellington. It is a spectacular location – the views are stunning and the air is clear. It’s only a short drive (around 30 minutes) into Ooty so we were able to visit the Botanical Gardens there today.

In the UK,and many other countries, a botanical garden is a place where plants are preserved (often from extinction in the wild) and horticultural research is carried out. Here they seem to be more like public parks and very English ones at that. You could have picked up Ooty Botanical Garden and dropped it down in an English seaside resort like Eastbourne or Bournemouth and nobody would bat an eyelid.

The botanical gardens in Ooty were full of lots of features you might find in British parks. A glasshouse – here filled with lots of common garden flowers you’d see in the UK, Busy Lizzie, Pelargoniums, Impatience and Salvias. There was lots of clipped hedging (mostly Lelandi) and neat flower beds. A conservatory for succulents (currently closed for refurbished), a fern house (also closed), ponds, an Italianate terrace (again think seaside bedding) and a bandstand. There was also a lot of green lawn of course. The whole garden must take an enormous amount of watering to keep it looking so green. Also lots of labour – but that’s very cheap here.

The plants around the garden were very familiar, in fact I have many in my own garden. There were hydrangeas, ferns, Arum Lilly (Zantedeschia), fuchsias, and lots and lots of bedding. You got a real sense that when the garden was created in the 1840s they were creating a little bit of England in India to remind them of home. They certainly achieved that.

We’re staying at the small but lovely Sleeping Beauty hotel near Ooty, it lives up to its name. We slept well after a long days travel. We woke to the most amazing view from our balcony. The hotel is so-named after the Sleeping Beauty mountain – although we’re not sure which mountain it is (there are quite a few around).

The restaurant is in a separate block to where our room is so it’s just a few steps to breakfast. The room is cantilevered off the hill so it feels like we’re floating. A wall of floor-to ceiling glass adds to this feeling and provides a spectacular panorama of the valley and mountains. The glass wall makes it hard to distinguish where the room stops and the view begins. It’s definitely a room with a view, but could equally be described as a view for a room.

Tuesday 21 January

Bengaluru – Wellington

Today we continue our journey from the east coast to the south west, from Bengaluru through Mysuru, to stay for two nights in a nature reserve (hopefully to see monkeys, elephants and even leopards and tigers!) in Wellington, (between Ooty and Coonoor). It’s about 180 miles and that’s 6 hours driving here!  But first, Matthew wanted to see the garden festival in Bengaluru.

Breakfast at the Raddisson Blue was served from 0730 and we were up, packed and ready to eat so we could get away early. Our room was lovely and included a pod coffee machine – we had some soya milk in little pots, so we could have coffee as soon as we were awake.

After breakfast Vaishakh was waiting for us and we drove to Lalbagh Botanical Garden, on the way we passed the extraordinary local legislative assembly building.

The flower show in the botanical gardens was in a glasshouse (which really reminded me of a miniature Covent Garden market building). The park itself is lovely – very obviously designed by the British colonialists with fountains, big lake, statues and formal flower beds with winding paths.

The garden show was nice – not too busy and as well as the formal displays there were stalls selling food, gardening paraphernalia and food. 

Vaishakh had been on his phone quite a bit and he said that he had a surprise for us – I thought that he might set up a video call with  our friends Bharath and Shubhi back in the UK. Anyway, while I was preoccupied reading about some of the mythical stories that inspired the flower display, Vaishakh tapped me on the shoulder and said “I want you to meet someone.” I turned around and there was Shubhi! I was amazed!! I knew that Shubhi’s family lived in Bengaluru and I knew that she was coming to to India, but we were talking a few weeks ago she’d said she was returning to the UK from India on 15 January, so we thought that we’d miss each other. Last night when we were driving to the market and Bugle Rock Park, Vaishakh had said that we were in the area that it was where Shubhi lived – I asked him if he’d seen her when she was here in India a few weeks ago. He said “No, I didn’t know that she was here.” I was a little mystified by this, but didn’t pursue it. I just told him that she had been here, but that I thought that she’d gone back to the UK last week. Now we know that this was all a big fib and that Shubhi had decided to stay on in India and they’d been plotting for this moment all along – the pair of scamps!

It was such a wonderful surprise to see Shubhi – she looked so beautiful in her blue Sari and we talked about Bengaluru and the flower show and what she’d been doing in India. We had some delicious street food: fresh mango with salt and a little curry powder, some popped rice with onion and tomatoes; we also tried gooseberry tea (yuk). We talked about Barath and his work. We visited some of the stalls. We saw some more monkeys in the park and we watched some of the park rangers capturing a big snake that was in the grass and putting it in a white bag. Shubhi assured me that the rangers would take the snake to the woods, away from people and release it  – not kill it. This was such a wonderful, lovely surprise – I didn’t want this part of the day to end. However, we had a long drive ahead – so we said our goodbyes and set off to Mysuru.

Vaishakh lives in Mysuru with his wife Sindoo and one-year old son. We’d been very kindly invited to his house for lunch and we were also going to leave the fabric that Matthew bought for Janet’s kurti with Vaishakh’s cousin who’s a tailor and will sew it for us.

Shortly after leaving Bengaluru we were on much quieter roads and surrounded by palm trees, forests and fields full of sugar cane. We passed lots of trucks piled high with sugar cane and we stopped to buy coconut from a stall.  

Lunch in Vaishakh’s house was delicious – lovely crisp rice flour pancakes, coconut chutney and salad. I picked up a child’s book to help teach them English words – I thought that it was extraordinary that it was published in India yet all the photos of people showed White people – but as I looked through there were some even more alarming things:

We met Vaishakh’s cousin and Matthew gave her Janet’s measurements along with a photo of Janet to work from … should be ready for collection at the end of the week.

The final leg of today’s journey was breathtaking, bringing us on a very quiet road through the Niligri Biosphere – a UNESCO environment programme. Mudumalai National Park and Tiger Reserve was the first wildlife sanctuary in India. We passed through a Eucalyptus tree forest and travelled high up to the Nilgiris mountains through the hill station of Ooty to Wellington. The views were spectacular and the setting sun and we had fantastic views of the misty mountains and the river valley as the road twisted and turned uphill. Vaishakh’s driving was superb – some very tight bends and steep turns to negotiate! 

At the start of our drive through the wildlife sanctuary we saw a mother elephants with her calf. Amazing – I’ve never seen an elephant in the wild before. There were more elephants as we drove … and monkeys and deer, wild boars, peacocks and a buffalo. It was utterly amazing. 

Vaishakh was relieved that we had seen some elephants – he didn’t want Bharath ribbing him for not being able to show us one!

We’re here in Wellington for two or three days (we’ve not decided yet) and we’ll be exploring around. We know that the views from our hotel will be spectacular … it’s dark at the moment, so we’ll post pictures of the views tomorrow.

It’s been another long drive today, about 300km, from Bangaluru to Mysore then onto Wellington near Ooty where we’re staying tonight. I’ll be honest, I snoozed for most of the first half (which is no bad thing given the kamakazi drivers!). I’m glad I wasn’t asleep for the second half. 

After we’d left Mysore the landscape was full of palm trees – as far as the eye could see, then plantain trees. We began to climb into the Nilgiri Hills – and climb we did! I’m glad Vaishakh was driving as the road was narrow and so many sharp turns. I saw a sign that said 6 out of 39 hairpin bends! The view of the mountain range was spectacular.

About half way up our climb we entered the Bandipur Tiger Reserve and then the Mudumali Tiger Reserve. No tigers for us today – we wouldn’t expect to see them so close to the road. We were still treated to a wonderful range of wildlife. There were deer – lots of them, monkeys – lots of those too, wild peacocks strutting their stuff, wild boar, a bison  and most wonderful of all several elephants including the most beautiful baby elephant. All viewed from the car window! This was certainly a drive to remember.

The Lalbagh flower show is the reason I made a last minute change to our itinerary so we could visit Bengaluru sooner than originally planned. It’s held to coincide with India’s Rebublic Day holiday (26 January). It was worth the change of schedule.

It’s held in Lalbagh Botanical Garden that was originally conceived in the eighteenth century under the reign of one of the rulers of the kingdom of Mysore – Hyder Ali. Lalbagh was inspired by the Mughal style and was designed to resemble the paradisiacal gardens mentioned in the Quran. These elegant ideas were transformed into reality using carefully crafted landscapes that included flowing waters and a variety of rare plants imported from Delhi, Multan, and Lahore. 

The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the occupation of the area by the British. During this transition, the garden developed into a significant arboretum under British governance in 1799. Horticulturists from Britain were amazed at the gardening opportunities offered in Lalbagh, and they started bringing in plants from the far corners of the world. It was an era of trading plants when seeds and trees were brought to grow in the garden from around the world.

During the nineteenth century the glass house was constructed in the centre of the park, said to be inspired by London’s Crystal Palace. The Glasshouse, built in 1889 is made of iron and glass. The metal pillars supporting the Glasshouse have the manufacturer’s mark of Glasgow, and the glass came from Belgian. It provided a refuge to shelter delicate plants from the local weather elements that changed frequently. Now it plays host to the Lalbagh Flower Show.

The flower show is said to have been inspired by the Royal Horticultural Societies great spring show – now known as the Chelsea Flower Show. It’s a little bit like the Chelsea Flower Show from the 1950s or 60s. Whereas Chelsea has evolved into far more naturalistic planning – Lalbagh is most definitely a riot of colours, with flowers arranged like Victorian park carpet bedding displays. This year’s theme pays tribute to the legendary Indian poet Valmiki, with different floral arrangements honouring his work.

It was lovely seeing people taking selfies in front of the flower displays – just like I do at Chelsea. We were also in for a surprise. Vaishakh had been behaving a little odd as we’d entered the park and implied we might be in for a surprise. We were about three quarters around the glass house when we turned around and behind us was Shubhi! We thought she’d already flown back to London so we’re very surprised and delighted to see her. It turned out she’d extended her stay in Bengaluru by a couple of weeks. We wandered through the park together chatting and eating mango with chilli before we said our farewells and set off on our next stage of this mammoth road trip.

We drank our first fresh coconuts when we were visiting the Five Rathas at Mahabalipuram, it was very refreshing in the heat. Today on our drive from Mysuru to Wellington, Vaishakh pulled over at a coconut stall by the side of the road to try another one. He assured us they would taste different here, he was right. They were sweeter and there seemed to me much more coconut water than the first one we’d drunk. It’s strange seeing the coconuts here as they are large and round, shaped and looking more like a melon. They’re not at all like the dry hairy brown ones we used to see at fair ground shys. Of course that is just a dried version of the same fruit, missing the fleshy outer layer. The way that the coconut stall man cuts the coconut is an art (and slightly terrifying – I did count to check he still had all his fingers and thumbs!). After you’ve drunk the coconut water, you hand it back to him, he cracks it in two with a huge knife, then shapes a spoon from one half and scrapes out the flesh into the coconut half for you to eat. The flesh is very wet, chewy and mild – not the strong coconut flavour you get from dried coconut. It’s refreshing but perhaps an acquired taste, the texture isn’t really to my liking – but the coconut water is delicious.

Don’t try this at home!

Monday 20 January

Chennai – Bengaluru

Today we continue our journey from the east coast to the south west, from Bengaluru through Mysuru to stay for two nights in a nature reserve (hopefully to see monkeys, elephants and even tigers!) in Wellington, between Ooty and Coonoor. About 180 miles/4 hours driving. But first, Matthew wanted to see the garden festival in Bengaluru.

After breakfast Vaishakh was waiting for us and we drove to Lalbagh Botanical Garden to look at the flower show in the glasshouse (which really reminded me of a miniature Covent Garden market building). The park was lovely – very obviously designed by the British colonialists. The garden show was nice – not too busy and as well as the formal displays there were stall selling food, gardening paraphernalia and food.

Breakfast at the Raddisson Blue was served from 0730 and we were up, packed and ready to eat so we could get away early. Our room was lovely and included a pod coffee machine – we had some soya milk in little pots, so we could have coffee as soon as we were awake.

Vaishakh had been on his phone quite a bit and he said that he had a surprise for us – I thought that he’d set up a video call with Bharath and Shubhi back in the UK. Anyway, while I was preoccupied reading about some of the mythical stories that inspired the flower display, Vaishakh tapped me on the shoulder and said “I want you to meet someone.” I turned around and there was Shubhi! I was amazed!! I knew that Shubhi’s family lived in Bengaluru and I knew that she was coming to to India, but we were talking she’d said she was returning to the UK on 15 January, so we thought that we’d miss each other. Last night when we were driving to the market and Bugle Rock Park, Vaishakh had said that we were in the area that it was where Shubhi lived – I asked him if he’d seen her when she was here in India a few weeks ago. He said “No, I didn’t know that she was here.“ I was a little mystified by this, but didn’t pursue it. I just him that she had been here, but that I thought that she’d gone back to the UK last week. Now we know that this was all a big fib and that Shubhi had decided to stay on in India and they’d been plotting for this moment all along – the pair of scamps!

It was such a wonderful surprise to see Shubhi – she looked so beautiful in her blue Sari and we talked about Bengaluru and the flower show and what she’d been doing in India. We had some delicious street food: fresh mango with salt and a little curry powder, some popped rice with onion and tomatoes; we also tried gooseberry tea (yuk). We talked about Barath and his work. We visited some of the stalls. We saw some more monkeys in the park and we watched some of the park rangers capturing a big snake that was in the grass and putting it in a white bag. Shubhi assured me that the rangers would take the snake to the woods, away from people and release it – not kill it. This was such a wonderful, lovely surprise – I didn’t want this part of the day to end. However, we had a long drive ahead – so we said our goodbyes and set off to Mysuru.

Vaishakh lives in Mysuru with his wife Sindoo and one-year old son. We’d been very kindly invited to his house for lunch and we were also going to leave the fabric that Matthew bought for Janet’s kurti with Vaishakh’s cousin who’s a tailor and will sew it for us.

Shortly after leaving Bengaluru we were on much quieter roads and surrounded by palm trees, forests and fields full of sugar cane. We passed lots of trucks piled high with sugar cane and we stopped to buy coconut from a stall.

Summary day 03
Monday 20 January

We left Chennai today and headed west to Bengaluru – about 200 mile drive. Vaishakh’s mother lives in Bengaluru. One of our friends, Shubhi, who has helped us enormously with the plan for this trip is also from Bengaluru (but she’s back in the UK now).

We set off at 07:00 after a poor night’s sleep – we’ve not yet adjusted to the time change/jet lag I think. First stop Kanchipuram – the town is one of the most visited inland tourist destinations in southern India – famed for its ‘thousand’- very numerous at least, ancient Hindu temples – some with spectacularly high towers. Vaishakh took us on a tour of a Hindu temple – our first ever – the Sri Kanchi Kamakshi Amman temple – enormous and beautiful. We had to leave our shoes outside walk through a trough of flowing water to cleanse our feet and then could see the vast step well and walk around the stone columned halls. I wasn’t comfortable taking pictures around the devotees. The place was crowded with worshipers and garlanded monuments – a wonderful sight. As we left some women asked us for help – Vaishakh said they were transvestites … I thought about how incredibly tough their lives are all over the world – it’s absolutely awful how harmless differences are magnified and problematised by so many people.

Kanchipuram is a traditional centre of silk and handloom weaving and so we went to an enormous and famous fabric store called Prakash. Prakash is arranged over 4 massive floors with walls lined with thousands of bolts of fabric, saris, shirts and scarfs. The lights are bright – and there’s hundreds of them, and there are huge mirrors everywhere. The store employs over 800 people and shoppers come from miles around to choose the finest cloths and outfits. Matthew’s aunt Janet would like an Indian long tunic, it’s called a kurta, I think, so Matthew bought some fabric and we’ll look for a tailor to make it up into a kurta. Again it was shoes off time and we were escorted upstairs to sit on chairs in front of an army of sales assistants (who sat cross-legged on the floor or stood to one side) and who brought more and more packets of beautiful scarfs and fabrics for us to look at. It took a long time to choose – there was so much beauty there. Elsewhere in the store, it was very busy as wedding season ramps up and there were women with family and friends choosing incredibly beautiful saris.

Then we visited another temple – Ekambareswarar Temple – dedicated to the god Shiva. Ekambareswarar Temple is the largest temple in the city with three enormous towers – or gopurams – stepped, tall, pyramid towers with statues on a series of levels. The tallest tower has 11 stories and is almost 60m high. The towers are among the tallest temple towers in India and are currently being renovated. Building the temple began in the ninth century. We were able to walk around and talk to Vaishakh about the various gods on display and religious practices. We were privileged to get very close to the Sacred Mango Tree in the centre of the temple complex (it’s said to be the oldest mango tree in India). We saw part of a wedding ceremony and we took a moment to congratulated the groom and the bride – inevitably, we were dragged into some of their wedding photos! Outside some young men also wanted to be photographed with us for some reason!

As we left Kanchipuram we saw a group of men outside a house beating large drums – the drumming was loud and Vaishakh said that it was someone’s funeral. As we drove past I could see a body wrapped in a white shroud in a glass case on a stand in front of the house. It was somewhat strange – a wedding and a funeral in the space of a few minutes.

Then on to Bengaluru for dinner with Vaishakh’s Amma. She made a fantastic spread for us, rice with tamarind and spices, chutney, freshly prepared vegetables, preserved lemon, and a French bean curry followed by jageree – with a mix of puffed rice, mango pieces and split peas – lovely.

We’d wondered about taking a gift and I regretted not bringing anything She very kindly gave us a present of a stainless steel cup.

After dinner we detoured to the lively street market in Bengaluru and on to Bugle Rock Park where Matthew and Vaishakh discussed the trees.

We saw some big bats (big like the size of a cat!) hanging upside down from the trees – some were waking up and preening themselves and some were even flying about … it was beginning of dusk, so I wonder if they were waking up.

In the south west corner of the park on a hill was Bull Temple, our third Hindu temple of the day, and in many respects the best – it was so quiet and peaceful and we were able to get up close to the shrine – a huge black granite bull. It’s wonderful how many gods take animal form and that therefore there is a respect and value for many animals.

On our way back to the car, we passed a lovely old music shop full of stringed instruments – I think called a veena – and neat little house, one of the few original houses left in Bengaluru.

We went to wrong Raddisson Blue – there are two in Bengaluru. Our room on the seventh floor has amazing views over lake Ulsoor and the Gurudwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha – the largest Sikh shrine in Bengaluru all lit up.

Next morning we could see the lake as well as the Gurudwara from out hotel room.

We saw this sign in the mall supermarket yesterday. Clearly the last sentence is obscured, so we need your help to finish this line – ‘You take care of your toilet, we’ll take care …??? There will be a small holiday souvenir prize (don’t get too excited) for our favourite suggestion.

We decided (well I did) that it would be best to gently ease ourself into India by spending our first few nights in a posher hotel than we’d usually stay in at home. The Hyatt Regency Channai is a haven from the moment you step off the traffic clogged  Anna Salai main Road, the calm washes over you. The driveway is planted with tropical palms and other exotics. 

At the entrance you’re greeted by security checks, all bags go through x-Ray machines and visitors go through metal detectors. We asked Vaishakh why the security was so tight and he said all big hotels introduced it following the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008. It had echos of the Northern Ireland troubles when the security guard at the gate used a mirror device on rollers to check under Vaishakh’s car when he dropped us off yesterday to make sure there were no bombs underneath!

As soon as you are through security there are staff everywhere. There’s the main door greeter, then the lift greeter in the lower lobby, and the main lobby greeter. This is all before you get to reception. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to someone carrying my bags and opening every door, but the cool air conditioning is a welcome relief from the Chennai heat.

The reception lobby is vast with rooms arranged over 9 floors in a triangle with a huge atrium in the middle. The lobby lounge has a beautiful water feature – a canal that aligns with the outdoor pool and is flanked by an avenue of fig trees. There are five restaurants, an Italian, a cafe/bistro, a noodle one, a world fusion one and a cocktail bar/diner. Then there is the lobby lounge itself where you can have tea and light snacks.

The gym on the first floor is very well equipped. I’ve used it a few times to do my RED (run every day) January challenge. Although treadmills are a bit boring, they are preferable to running in the heat and polluted streets of Chennai (I’m hoping the air will be clearer when we get away from the big cities). 

Our taste of the high life comes to an end today as we check out and hit the road for our first big drive to Bangalore. Farewell Hyatt Regency, it’s been fun – but it’s a good job I don’t get accustomed to it as when the holiday is over it’ll be back to the charity world budgets of Travelodge!

I’ve already mentioned that I’m glad it’s not me who is driving in India. The roads are crazy, noisy (honking one’s horn seems mandatory) and dirty (you can taste the pollution on the busy roads). Not only are there cars, vans, tuk-tuks (auto rickshaws), bikes and people everywhere in the streets – but there are also animals. Street dogs are very common, they wander around almost oblivious to the chaos on the streets (clearly they are more used to it than me!). We’ve seen a few goats – not tethered, just ambling along, having a munch on whatever they can find. The thing that really grabs your attention is when the cows just wander across the traffic clogged dual carriageway! You’d think that it would be carnage with people running into cows. Fortunately the cows are very safe as they are considered to be a manifestation of the Mother Goddess Gau Mata. Hindus believe the cow to be a sacred animal, providing life-sustaining milk. As a vegan I like the idea that the cow is held in such high esteem, I’d just prefer it if they had ‘cow lanes’ or even better, get rid of the traffic and have cow priority streets!

Sunday 19 January

Chennai – Mahabaliipuram

We met out driver today! He’s called Vaishakh and he lives in Mysore. Vaishakh is married and has a young son. He’ll be our driver for the next 10 days. 

This morning after breakfast Vaishakh drove us to to the UNESCO world heritage site at Mahabalipuram – the remains of an unfinished group of royal Hindu monuments and temple complex. The buildings were carved out of granite  – some in situ – in the seventh and eighth century!

The ancient name of the place is Thirukadalmallai. The drive south took us about 2 hours. The carving on the stones were extraordinary – many depicting scenes from the the Mahabharata. We began at the Shore Temple, by the sea on the Bay of Bengal, a beautiful tall temple with some charming stone lions keeping guard.

Then we walked along the beach for a while – amazing to be near the sea again and lots of people enjoying being by the sea too.

We drove to the  Five Chariots – each one carved from a single piece of stone.

There was a glorious life-size elephant carved out of a single piece of stone.

Time for a snack then / we had a coconut each from a stall. Then on to the lighthouse (along with a modern British built lighthouse constructed in 1904) with India’s oldest lighthouse close by that was built around 640 by the Pallava king Mahendravarman. Here we met our first monkeys!

We left Vaishakh with the car and wandered through the ancient site – stone baths cut out of the rock, temples, and the largest open-air carved stone relief in the world – called Descent of the Ganges, depicting the giving of the sacred river – when it rains water flows down a channel in the rock face The relief has life-size figures of an elephant family, monkeys, a deer, lions, rams, snakes, the god Shiva, Vishnu in a temple the sun and moon – it’s vast, around 15 by 30 metres (49 ft × 98 ft).

Next we saw Krishna’s Butter Ball, a giant rock balanced precariously on a stone incline. 

It was quite a bit of walking and clambering over stone steps – wonderful to see, though. We headed back to the car and drove back to our hotel in Chennai. 

After a snooze (Mike) and swim in the hotel pool (Matthew) we headed out for dinner and to pick up some supplies from a store in a mall up the road.

We came to the Express Avenue shopping centre – it has an H&M,  ASICS, Adidas and Pima stores, a Bodyshop and even an M&S! We were truly home from home! There was also a giant food court – we managed to establish that the dosas had ghee in them, so they were off – we ended up with some plain noodles with veggies, which was quite tasty.

Matthew couldn’t help himself and had already gone wild in the aisles – he went in to a Simon Carter store, bought a shirt, the sales assistant said he could have a second shirt for free … so he chose another shirt; then the sales assistant said that he could have a third shirt at half price… which of course he did. I told him that they’d seen him coming! I caught the sun today and hadn’t packed a hat (I needed the air in my bag), so I went to H&M to buy a cap … I’m at the checkout and Matthew sidles up with a jacket “Can you just add that?” He asked. Sigh. I did point out that his bag as full – apparently he knows that he hasn’t used all his luggage allowance!

Refreshed from my swim (and a little snooze for Mike), we pondered what to do for dinner. It’s not impossible to be vegan in India, but it isn’t quite as well understood here as we’d hoped so it does take a bit of planning and usually a conversation to check that whatever it is that sounds like it might be vegan hasn’t been cooked using ghee (a clarified butter). We ate in the hotel restaurant last night and the chef prepared us a lovely selection of vegan dishes: a dhal, alloo (potato) curry), a vegetable curry and some flat breads. We could have eaten in again, but we thought we ought to try somewhere different. Plus Mike wanted to find a supermarket where we could get some supplies for our long road trip tomorrow. 

I did a bit of research online and found that the Express Avenue shopping mall was just one stop away from our hotel in the metro. It said there were grocery stores and restaurants, so we headed off. Upon arrival, the first store we came to was a small food shop that seemed to specialise in organic and international foods. Although it wasn’t vegan we found some familiar vegan treats. Lotus caramel and Oreo (yes ‘accidentally vegan’) biscuits, both went in the basket along with some vegan chocolate, peanuts, salted crisps and a big bag of fried salted broad beans. This should keep us going on our long road trip to Bengalore tomorrow.

Further into the mall there were lots of familiar brands Sephora (the beauty shop), Body Shop, Benetton, and H&M – which was handy. You know how the song goes ‘mad dogs and English men go out in the midday sun’, well guess who did that? A certain somebody packed a bit too much ‘air’ and despite coming to India for four weeks, didn’t pack a hat. As a result he’s a little blushed today after our visit to the beach (he didn’t even put any sun cream on). A trip to H&M sorted him out with a nice cap, and a couple of long sleeve t-shirts to protect his fair skin.

While Mike popped into H&M I nipped into a Simon Carter shirt shop. I do like his shirts but back in the UK they retail for about £175 and I can never quite bring myself to spend that on a shirt. I wondered how much they were here, plus there was a sale on! For the whole of 2024 I didn’t buy any new clothes – it was a new year resolution to be a bit more eco-friendly, but as it’s 2025 I think that I can now buy new clothes again, but I’m trying not to buy to many (this was about to go out the [shop] window).

My eye was instantly drawn to a colourful woven shirt and I thought this would be very appropriate purchase for this location. These colourful checked cotton shirts are traditionally known as Madras shirts, and the original name for Chennai was Madras (until it changed in 1996). I thought this would be a perfect souvenir from Chennai. I tried it on to make sure it fitted (it did, like a glove), then went to the cash desk to pay. That’s where it started to go wrong! The boy behind the desk said ‘choose another’, I replied I was fine with this one, he said ‘it’s two for the price of one’. It was already reduced to 2999 rupees (about £29.50 – a LOT cheaper than the UK). I returned to the shelf and tried to pick out a second shirt. It was hard – there were too many lovely ones to choose from. I shortlisted two – a white one with a delicate green and blue dotted geometric pattern and a modern floral one that reminded me of the Swedish prints of Marremeko. I tried them both on and was struggling to choose when he started to barter (as they do in India). ‘Second one half price, best and final offer Sir’. How could I refuse! So I walked out with three shirts for a total cost of around £40! I went to Michael in H&M, looking a bit sheepish I explained my ‘too good to refuse’ dilemma. He looked at me and said ‘you should have packed more air’, that was me told! 

We wandered up to the food court where we found a noodle place that did a nice vegetable noodle stir fry, washed down with some refreshing peach tea. We were both craving something sweet but all the desert places were only offering milk based creations (we’ve not seen any sorbet yet). There was a juice bar though, so we went to check out the menu. Mike wanted some sweet mango juice, but no can do. It’s not the season for fresh mangos apparently, so they’re only available between March and May. He settled for pineapple instead. I was drawn to a section of the menus that proclaimed juice concoctions that offer a wide range of health benefits. Ladies if you want to be ‘well women’ then it’s pineapple, passion fruit, beetroot and carrot juice for you. If you want ‘beauty slimmer’ then may I suggest ‘melon, apple, kiwi and orange’. For me and my dodgy sight it had to be ‘eye power juice’ using carrot, orange, passion fruit and mango (not fresh obviously!). I expect to wake up tomorrow with my eyes returned to their former glory!

It was getting close to ten when the mall shut (it felt most strange shopping late in a Sunday – not something we can do at home). We wandered to towards the end of the mall and lo and behold – there she blew! That little outpost of blighty – good old M&S. No food hall, sadly, but it did have men’s, women’s, kids and beauty. A little bit of home right here. I had read there were 101 M&S stores across India so I had expected we’d bump into one sooner or later – just not this soon. We’ve got about 29 days to go on this holiday so only 100 M&S stores to go!

When we visited the Shore Temple at  Mahabalipuram, Vaishakh our driver came inside with us and was telling us a bit about the history. That didn’t last long. Apparently the guides are very protective of their trade so if you’re not an official guide they get very upset. They told him that they would report him to the police if he didn’t leave, so he left us on our own to wander around and met us outside once we’d finished. After the temple it was a short drive to the Five Rathaus, an amazing collection of temples and sculptures carved straight out of the rocks. 

It wasn’t quite as busy as the shore temple and beach had been so it felt more relaxed wandering around. Also wandering around the site were a group of four young British lads. Mike offered to take a photo of them in front of one of the sculptures. They were very happy to offer him their phones and cameras for him to snap away. Little did they know that with this, they had opened a Pandora’s box! 

Always keen to educate the young, Mike asked them if they knew about the site – apparently they did not. That confession was their instant mistake, without a moments hesitation Mike, guide book in hand, proceeded to inform them about the world heritage site they were viewing. I’m sure that they were appreciative of his cultural knowledge. I’m just glad he wasn’t arrested for impersonating an official tour guide.

Bharath and Shubhi our friends in the UK (who’ve helped us so much planning our trip) had warned us (apologised in fact) before we came to India about the litter here. This kind of prepared us in advance to see litter in the streets, but even we have been a bit taken aback by just how prolific litter is. Litter bins seem to be few and far between, but even if they were more common, it doesn’t look as though many people would use them. People just seem to discard their rubbish anywhere that they like. 

As we walked around the world heritage sites at Mahabalipuram today, the stone temples and sculptures were amazing, but people just discard their rubbish amongst them. After visiting the shore temple we walked down to the beach, passing lots of stalls selling all kinds of tourist tat (Aunty Janet would love these stalls!). All along the sandy walkway down to the beach was discarded food packets and rubbish. Even on the beach the litter  was prolific. You kind of get used to it after a while and although it’s all around, you sort of don’t notice it as much. There’s always so much to distract you with amazing sights and sounds all around. 

This was certainly the case at the beach where the shoreline was thronged with pilgrims who were visiting en-mass. The beach was a riot of colour with women bedecked in amazing saris and men in colourful outfits. Vaishakh our driver explained to us why so many were wearing wonderful red and gold outfits. Apparently red is the favourite colour of the goddess they were paying their respects too. The water was quite choppy with waves crashing onto the sand, but all along the edge of the water the pilgrims were enjoying the waves washing onto over them. many of the men were stripped down to their shorts and waist high in the waves. Even if I’d had my trunks I don’t think I’d have been tempted into the water – but I am going to take a dip in the pool at the hotel. We’ve had rain showers today but the temperatures are still in the high 20s, so a dip to cool off is just what is needed.

Saturday 18 January

Chennai

Our flight arrived in Chennai on time – we landed at 05:30, which was around 12:30 at night in the UK. Getting through security took quite a while though, long queues and as well as checking passports and visas, foreign visitors needed their photo taken from a neat little camera on the desk and we also had to press our fingers and thumbs on a glass fingerprint scanner (someone at the next desk seemed very unhappy about that!). By the time we’d gone through security our bags were on the carousel at baggage reclaim – so getting out from there was quick. Chennai airport is huge and there were statues of gods and deities all over – some brightly painted. We think that harvest festival has been celebrated recently and there were some lovely displays around. Once out in the road outside the terminal building we were hit with the warm air – we’re expecting 28°C later. It was a short walk to the metro station – dodging dozens of men asking us if we wanted a taxi. 

At the Metro station we hit a problem when we tried to buy our tickets – the card machine rejected my payment … fortunately we have a backup international card … that was refused too! Argh!! Panic and fury – I’d contacted all our banks before we left to tell them that we’re going to be in India, so they should make any payments here. Fortunately we also had some pounds and there was a bureau de change nearby so we bought IRR10,500 for £100 and purchased our metro tickets. When the train arrived and the doors opened Matthew was about to step I when I noticed that we were by a women only carriage – I managed to grab him and steer him along the platform! 

We arrived at our hotel at about 06:30. We’re staying in the Hyatt Regency in Chennai – it’s huge and much posher than anywhere that we’d normally choose stay at. We’re staying for two nights  – but we paid for an additional night so that we had somewhere to sleep when we arrived this morning. I saw from Matthew’s spreadsheet that the rooms + breakfast cost almost £400 … eek, that B&Q Garden of the Year prize money isn’t going to last long at this rate! We’ve noticed that there were bag scanners to get onto the platform at the Metro station, which seemed slightly odd … there was one for our bags to allow us into the hotel too. Maybe it’s the future everywhere. 

Once our bags were out of the hotel scanner they were grabbed by a porter who told us that they’d be brought to our room for us. I’m not at all comfortable with people carrying our bags for us, but perhaps that’s something else that we’re going to have to get used to – I quickly googled how much to tip hotel porters in India (30 rupees per bag, apparently!) I was utterly mystified about how he would know which room to bring our bags to when we’d not yet checked in! We did check in though and our bags arrived shortly after  – he was sweet and very welcoming and told us that we could ask him anything at all about Chennai. 

It was about 07.30 now and we wondered about going to sleep, but buffet breakfast is included in the hotel cost and they’d just opened. We weren’t confident that they’d still be open by the time we woke up, so we decided to have breakfast and then go to bed for the rest of the morning.

Any vegan will tell you that navigating menus is a nightmare, at least with a buffet breakfast we could make sure that just about everything we eat was okay. But there was way to service and they were wonderfully helpful  – they brought dosas – lovely crispy pancakes filled with spice potato and told us that this was a traditional Indian breakfast. Delicious!

When we had got up and showered Matthew said that he wanted to go to Semmozhi Poonga botanical garden and Kalaignar Centenary Park which is opposite the botanical gardens – both about a 20 minute walk away. We headed off on foot and quickly regretted that – pavements around here are in a terrible state – very uneven and non-existent in many place, so it’s necessary to walk on the road, but traffic is crazy – lots of people on scooters and lots of little yellow tuk tuks! When we arrived at the botanical garden Matthew was surprised and delighted that they were holding a flower show there at the moment! The whole place was full of families wandering around enjoying the flower show and having picnics and watching the performers in a little arena, (including a magic show). We did notice that lots of women were dressed exquisitely in gorgeous saris and looked fantastic, whereas lots of men didn’t look like they’d made much of an effort at all! 

The flower show had fountains, lots of plants in pots and included some big structures: a peacock, a crocodile, two swans, three tall women in big dresses made of flowers, a car, a boat, a steam train – all constructed from flowers in little pots.

We did a couple of laps then went to look at Kalaignar Centenary Park on the other side of a main road.

Getting into Kalaignar Centenary Park park opposite was tricky – entry tickets were only available online by scanning a QR code and completing a form. The form wouldn’t accept Matthew’s UK phone number, so we had to ask someone to help us – they bought the tickets on their phone and we reimbursed them. The park was very nice, quieter than the botanical gardens, and was home to several lovely stray dogs.

The big draw in Kalaignar Centenary Park is the musical fountain, but that wasn’t playing until 6:30 – we  decided that we couldn’t wait that long, so made our way to look at a famous Christian  cathedral nearby.

St George’s cathedral in Chennai was built in 1815 mainly to serve British colonists in what was then Madras. The design makes St George’s look very like St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square in London.

The cathedral was extraordinary – filled with some huge marble statues and memorial plaques for (almost all) British men who had died in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The whole place is a bit dilapidated now and seems very incongruous in the fast-paced surroundings of modern Chennai.

We needed to get ready for a concert that started at 7, so we walked back to the hotel to rest up. There was a little light rain as we walked back to our hotel, so we arranged for a taxi to take us to the Kamarajar Arangam hall – a big auditorium not far away. The taxi took ages and arrive and we were worried that we’d be late, but we needn’t have been concerned, it didn’t start until almost 8. We were expecting some Indian classical music being played by an ensemble of musicians with some dancing – the event was billed ‘Agre Pashyami- divine dance drama’ – but what was presented was a series of extraordinary traditional Indian dances in gorgeous costumes and makeup with narration about Hindu gods and some associated stories. We couldn’t follow the narrative very well, but the dancing was spectacular and the music (off-stage) was brilliant. 

After the concert a late dinner back at the hotel. Matthew hadn’t done a RED (run every day) January run, so he went to the hotel gym to do that.

The Metro from the airport to our hotel was easy, no changes and it took just under half an hour. Slight panic at the ticket office when our credit cards were refused, but we think it was because it was below the minimum spend (the tickets are very cheap). We exchanged some £ for rupees and all was fine. I almost walked into the women’s only carriage but Mike spotted the sign just in time.

When we got to our hotel they were serving breakfast so we had some dossa, dhal and done steamed buns (all delicious), before heading to our room for some much needed sleep. A few hours later we were much refreshed and ready to go for a wander.

On the map it looked like a short walk to a small botanical garden. Google maps said 15 minutes so that seemed doable. What I hadn’t really taken into account was a) the heat – it’s in the high 20s and very humid, and b) the traffic – or more to the point the pollution. Our hotel is on a main road and it’s horrendous. I couldn’t drive here – it’s mad. The volume of traffic creates a haze of smog that you can taste and feel. I’ll be glad to get out of the city tomorrow and to some (hopefully) clearer air down the coast.

Nevertheless we persevered with our walk, treading our way along what might be generous to call pavement. Sometimes they are there, sometimes they are not. Even when there is, pavement you can suddenly come to a big hole that if you weren’t paying attention to, you could easily trip down. Google maps finally took us away from the traffic clogged main road down a side street which had its own challenges – no pavement at all, plus piles of rubble and litter. At the end was our destination – the botanic garden. When we arrived, to our surprise (and my delight) we discovered the garden is currently hosting the Chennai Flower Show!

We paid our entry fee 200 rupees each (about £2), and followed the crowds. It was certainly popular there were so many families out enjoying the displays. Now, we’re not talking Chelsea Flower Show here, more English seaside carpet bedding. There were colourful block displays and then dotted throughout the garden, floral bedding displays in all different shapes. My particular favourite was the teapot pouring flowers into a cup, but there was a train, car, peacock, elephants and more. The best bit was people watching – the women were wearing the most amazing saris that were as bright, if not brighter than the flowers. The men looked very dowdy by contrast. In fact we looked quite bland ourselves – must try harder! By the end of the holiday we should aim to take our cue from  the colourful as floral peacock (or the women).

We departed Heathrow in the late afternoon, so soon after we took off it was time for dinner. We opted for premium economy tickets to have bigger chairs and more leg room – it was definitely worth it. I don’t think I’d have enjoyed 9 hours in economy. Alongside a more spacious seat, our dinner was served on real plates, with real glasses and real cutlery. My brother enquired this morning if we had ‘pocketed it’ – absolutely not! 

As vegans, it always feels like a gamble as to whether your pre-ordered meal will turn up. Fortunately they did, although there was a moment when Michael’s came and I was left waiting for a while (the other vegan meal was stacked at the back of the trolley). For plane food, dinner was ok. A pea pasta with accompanying bean salad, followed by a lovely coconut rice pudding with fresh mango. To avoid spilling my dinner down myself (an Aunty Janet speciality) I tucked my linen napkin firmly into my shirt. The shirt was saved, but annoyingly I managed to drop some dinner on my trousers – but nothing a handy wet wipe couldn’t clean up.

It’s a strange feeling when you fly between time zones, it was barely any time from when we took off to it being dark outside. Although it was really still late afternoon it suddenly felt like the middle of the night. I did my best (with help of earplugs and an eye mask) to get some sleep so that when we arrived in Chennai early in the morning, I wouldn’t be completely wasted. It worked to a degree, I got at least 4 hours. When I woke it was time for our vegan breakfast to be served and then in no time we were ready to land. 

Slightly sleepy, we’d arrived. Getting through visa/passport control took a little while as they took photos and finger print scans, but we were soon out of the airport with our bags, taking a short stroll to the metro station. As we stood on the platform the dawn was starting to break and the first glimpses of Chennai were revealed. 

The exciting build up to our big holiday is over, we’re finally on the move. The journey to Heathrow was smooth and uneventful – a train from Bristol to Paddington, then a quick transfer to the Heathrow Express. Michael did manage to give me some anxiety by deciding to disappear across the station for a pee just minutes before our train to Heathrow was due to depart Paddington (this was after spending and hour and a half on a train with loos a plenty). He reappeared just in the nick of time thankfully (with two vegan pasties, too).

At Heathrow we navigated the self-serve check-in with assistance from the BA staff, since we were defeated by the self-serve terminals. I explained to the man from BA that we don’t fly much, which is true – in my effort to reduce flights (to help fight global heating), I haven’t taken a flight for over three years. Not flying hasn’t stop me travelling, though, I’ve been letting the train take the strain. I’ve travelled to Amsterdam and Hamburg by train. We took trains and ferries to Dublin, and in June we’re going to Glasgow on the Caledonian sleeper. I think trains are much more civilised!

The experience of taking a plane is quite a novelty after such a long time. After our bags were checked in, Mike decided to wander off again – this time in the direction of a post office – I followed, deciding not to risk letting him out of my sight again. After discovering that it seemed all the ATMs at Heathrow were going to charge him £2.50 for the privilege of taking out his own money, he decided to see if he could get his money out of the post office instead! As a First Direct customer I regularly use the local post office to deposit cash because the alternative is a trek into town to the nearest post HSBC. It turns out that it’s easy to withdraw money via the post office, too! And for free!!

Next stop, security. There was a bit of a do when one of us accidentally scanned the wrong boarding card. It was probably me, as I was the one sent back to a BA desk for a quick passport/visa check. Once that was done it was back to the security x-rays. You know the routine – belts and jackets off, pockets emptied, liquids in bags, electrics in a separate tray – it’s quite reassuring to know they do it so thoroughly (hopefully better than the old days when my dad managed to get his penknife through airport security!).

I walked through the metal detector and inevitably set the alarms off (probably the nipple piercings), so I was ushered into the full body x-ray machine where you have to hold your hands above your head before they use the wonder of technology to undress you virtually (someone was in for a treat 🤣). Next a gentle ‘feel up’ from the security man, then I was on my way. Meanwhile, Mike sailed through security without any incidents.

We didn’t have long to wait before the plane departed, so we grabbed some sandwiches from Pret and took the shuttle train to our departure gate, where there was just time to sort out an Indian e-sim for my phone so I can ‘roam’ while we’re there. Michael was very excited to see the planes taking off, but not quite as excited as he was when he saw a robot cleaning machine doing its thing! Sigh – that man likes gadgets. Thankfully robot vacuum cleaners weren’t available to buy in duty free! 

On to the plane we go – and next stop Chennai!

I have been packing my bag for India for some time – months in fact. You may think that is a little over-organised, but let me explain. 

I do like my clothes (a little too much one’s husband would say!). To manage my, ahem, large collection, each spring and autumn I put the winter or summer clothes into clothes boxes and put them away until the next year. Not only is this excellent wardrobe management, it means each spring or autumn I get to be reacquainted with a new wardrobe – it’s like seeing old, much loved friends again after a break. 

Rather than having to dig out the packed away summer clothes in the middle of winter for our trip to India – I planned ahead. When I packed them up in the autumn I decided to select which summer pieces I’d be taking to India and put them to one side (in my travel bag). I’ve gradually been packing the other things I’ll be taking and last week packed my hand luggage. I do not like to leave things to the last minute!

Meanwhile, the other traveller on this trip has been less proactive with their packing. When I left home one Wednesday morning to go to London for two days of work meetings, his bags contained one pair of shorts and a travel towel. This very relaxed form of travel planning does increase my anxiety levels. I have visions of the other traveller still packing when we should have departed!

Rather than focus on the content of his own bag, the other traveller has been somewhat pre-occupied with the content of my bag. Regularly commenting that I should have ‘more air’ in my bag and less stuff. My reply is simple – you carry what you want and I’ll carry what I want – simple.

With our departure date now just one sleep away, I hope that by the time I get home tonight (I’m writing this on the train) there will be a lot less air in the other travellers bag. 

It’s the eve of our big trip to India and as anyone who knows us well will be aware, Matthew began packing his bags about a month ago and I’ve only just started!

Whenever we travel by bicycle, or on foot, I always try and persuade Matthew to pack as much ‘air’ as possible  – in other words, travel light! The problem with travelling light of course is that we invariably wish  that we had something with us when we’re away, which we hadn’t packed. It’s also the case that my version of packing air and Matthew’s are substantially different!

When we started planning this trip, we needed to get a rucksack for Matthew, which necessitated a visit to my favourite camping store: Taunton Leisure in Bedminster. Matthew was a bit put out in the shop when I told him that I thought he’d need a bigger rucksack than I have … he accused me of wanting him to carry some of my stuff  (which of course I do) to which I replied: “What do you think the point of you is?!”).

I have been making my packing list for a while, though, but now it’s time to make some tough decisions. Do we really need to take an iPad each?! My binoculars are quite heavy, even though they are small, but I’m fairly certain that I’d regret not bringing them with us. Matthew is packing five of each: socks, pants, t-shirts and shirts … but I’m going with only three, because I think the hotels were staying in will have a laundry service – so one on, one drying and one in the wash makes sense to me (plus I’m taking some swimming trunks that would do in an emergency!). (I may regret this decision in the heat of India!).

Fortunately, it’s the night before we go and I’ve started packing with the help of the ever-faithful Jojo. This may take me some time!

I may have mentioned in this blog before that my dad loved his travels. Love is probably an insufficient word to describe what we would probably diagnose today as obsessive compulsive disorder! The pleasure he took from a holiday was not so much the actual holiday, but rather the weeks of meticulous planning he would do in preparation for the trip. Planning would usually begin with scouring AA and Michelin travel guides – these were real printed guides as it was years before the internet. Potential destinations were discussed with my mum, maps (again real ones – no Google maps then!) were poured over and slowly an itinerary began to emerge. More references to the guides to find possible campsites, then – in the days before email – phone calls and sometimes actual letters sent back and forth in the post were exchanged to confirm availability and costs. Dad’s holiday preparations were almost a military exercise! Eventually a plan on a chart emerged (on paper – no spreadsheets then), it contained dates, times, the route with all the places we’d stop at and places we’d stay. It amazes me to think he would pack us all in the car, caravan in tow, destined for a foreign destination – France, Germany, Austria, we went all over Europe. My primary school mates would go on summer holidays to Yarmouth or Lowestoft – lovely as they are, but for us Heidelberg, Salzburg, Nantes or La Rochelle sounded much more exotic!

Fast forward thirty-something years and here I am, my father’s son, but with a bit more technology at my disposal. Our holiday is mapped out on a spreadsheet, with different tabs for the daily itinerary, the accommodation, the days we’ll be travelling with a driver, the train travel, the places to visit, and last but not least, the availability of vegan food. We two greedy vegans do not want to be left hungry, so I have researched vegan-friendly eateries in every place we’re visiting/staying – we shall not go hungry (as an emergency back up I even know where there are Marks & Spencer stores in India – and there are over a 100 of them!).

As with all best laid plans, however, I’ve hit a snag that has called for a last minute change. I was laying in bed a couple of nights ago and thought I’d check the details for the Bengalore Republic Day Flower Show (that’s the India version of the Chelsea Flower Show!). A visit to this show has been high up my list of places I want to go on this trip. To my dismay, when I checked it turned out that the flower show dates this year are a bit earlier than I’d expected and the show would end the day before we were due to arrive in Bengalore – catastrophe! Fear not, quick thinking and a small re-jig of the schedule at the start of our trip means we will now be able to visit Bangalore twice – first next week (I shall go to the flower show!), before we return at the end of January for a longer trip. Spreadsheet is duly updated and a dawning realisation that I am also an obsessive compulsive holiday planner – Dad would be proud I think!

Here we go again! We’re off on another mega journey – our longest yet, but this time without our bicycles, unfortunately. In just five days we shall be landing in Chennai, India, ready to embark on a month-long trip cris-crossing this extraordinary country. To say we’re excited is an understatement, we can’t wait to for the sights, colours, scents and sounds of the sub-continent to overwhelm us (as everyone who’s visited tells us they will). The origins of this epic trip have a somewhat more mundane origin, though.

A few years ago, me and Mike decided to each write down a list of the places we’d like to visit or things we’d like to do – a sort of bucket list, (although we didn’t call it that). Then over a meal out, we shared each other’s lists. To each of our surprise, we’d both put ‘visit India’ on the list. That was several years ago now, and although we’ve marked off quite a few things on the lists, a big trip to India seemed far off (at least until we’d paid the mortgage and could afford to save for big trips). Then a visit to B&Q changed all that!

On a visit to our local B&Q in early 2023 Mike noticed a posters adverting their ‘Gardener of the Year’ competition. Mike said ‘Have you thought about entering that?’ I had seen it before, and told him that I already had! I didn’t really think that my garden (lovely as it is) and which would barely be called a garden by some I affectionately call it a ‘yarden’, as it is little more than a yard in size, but it is filled with a lot of plants, would have a chance. However, the competition categories included one for ‘imaginative use of space’, and I thought that was good description of my garden! So I had filled in ann application form, given a description of my garden and sent in some photos. That was that, and I didn’t think much more about it. 

Fast-forward to June 2023 and I was at work in a management team meeting in Birmingham. My phone rang with a number I didn’t recognise – not unusual as I often get unannounced calls from boaters. I try to answer as many as possible, as they are usually calls when someone is in difficulty or needs help. I nipped out of the meeting room to answer. A very polite lady on the other end asked if I was Matthew, I confirmed I was. She then proceeded to tell me that she was calling from B&Q to tell me that I’d won the ‘most imaginative use of space’ category in the B&Q Garden of the Year category, and what’s more, I had won the overall competition. Gobsmacked was an understatement!

Winning the competition was amazing, but even better was the prize: £10,000! For a moment I thought ‘I can get a lot of plants with that’- but even I had to accept that I might not fit them all into my yarden, so what to do with the winnings? It didn’t take long to decide that the prize money could get us to India and give me a chance to visit gardens in a completely different environment to anywhere I’ve ever visited before. So after a year of researching and planning our trip – the departure date is almost here. We’ll be blogging our way across the sub-continent, so we hope you’ll enjoy our posts.

Here’s what our trip to India looks like:

We land on the south-east coast in Chennai then head south west and then north.