Best we stay another night
Varkala Cliff The whole point of coming to Varkala was to walk along the cliff edge restaurants and ‘posh tat’ stalls and obviously we didn’t make it having got waylaid chatting in the restaurant the night before. So when we woke up we booked another night at the other end of the town and had a very strenuous 4.7km ride to get there that thankfully we managed to break in to two with a stop for a iced chocolate coffee – yummy! We checked in to our new hotel and adjourned to the pool. We had a brief swim and another English couple turned up and we got...
Read MoreReligious wars
Surprisingly the area around Kanyakumari is Christian and full of churches, big brand new immaculately kept, expensive and very impressive churches. It’s impossible to get a full night’s sleep here as one or other of the religions, or in an unheard of unifed religious movement, all 3 of the religions will endeavour to wake you up from 4.45am. First the Hindus start with their music, then the Christians start with their service which is more chanting and then the Muslims pipe up with the call to prayer by which time the Hindus are at it again and we go on like this until the...
Read MoreAbout turn…
After an excellent 4 night stop in Madurai we left at 6.20am to get through the city before the madness begins and try to avoid the heat of the day which begins around 11am. It’s not so much the heat that drains you but the sun. Once that is on full power then you’re basically f@#!*d. Hence the dawn starts. We weren’t looking forward to the next few days cycling. It’s very flat and a bit dull and being inland extremely hot. We also had to zig zag from hotel to hotel as there was very little accommodation. But once clear of Madurai and off the main road we had a...
Read MoreAblutions …
Toilet roll! Much of the world doesn’t smudge and flush© like us westerners, but use soap and water in the loo with a jet powered hose strong enough to send your piles back to where they came from. So, you often don’t get loo roll. Which at first we couldn’t understand, but then when they do give you some, it’s a small roll and it has a dreadful smell! No wonder they squirt and scrub©! We’ve seen internet debates about this many times, but you have to think it’s us westerners who are doing it wrong here. As Coproal Jones might say about us...
Read MoreMonkeying around
Moving on from Thanjavur we decided to take the main road as the small roads added too much distance between available hotels. The advantage of this is that it’s short, the roads are generally excellent with fabulously smooth well kept tarmac and there’s lots happening along the road. As it was a Sunday (we think) there were loads of restaurants and stalls and even houses with enormous festival size speakers blaring out highly distorted Hindi music to bop along to on the way. As you’d pass them you’d have to cringe as they were ear splitting loud. ...
Read MoreHappy People
Sacred Pond Sacred Pond Temple entrance Cerimonial Chariot in Kumbakonam Another Cerimonial Chariot.. Our day off in Kumbakonam saw us visiting more temples and the grand pond. This either enormous pond or small lake is the centre piece of a 12 yearly festival where 12000 people bathe in it at once. It’s a very impressive lake and is surrounded by steps for easy access, but fenced off for most of the time so you can’t get into the holy waters easily. Although some thinner than us folks squeezed through the fencing for a dip. We have had a fair amount of Indian food so...
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