Melbourne !

What a cool place - literally after Kerala. Biding our time in St Kilda ( 1 night) before deciding to head down to Geelong and keep a low profile to avoid Paul until his birthday. Two very comfortable nights at the Chifley Hotel with a day spent with Elizabeth & Sarah at the seafront park planning our surprise for Paul and getting haircuts etc. Friday the eve of Paul's birthday comes & we hear he is going for drinks after work (say 5'ish)- coincidentally to somewhere we had spent the evening the previous day. We arrive just before 5 bringing a torrent of rain & a huge surprise for Paul which was excellent. The following day was Gala Day with a parade in Geelong followed by a family meal & an early night in preparation for Run Geelong ( walk in our case) in aid of the hospital childrens ward the following day.

A Varkala workout !?*!?*!

Another 5 days relaxing in Varkala was just what we needed after our trip to Munnar/Kumily. Another 3 sessions of yoga for me courtesy of Dr Abin and in parallel Jenny was also seeing him for attention on her achilles. This entailed oral medicine, application of an ayurvedic poultice with the piece de resistance a thorough pounding by a duet of masseuse's coupled with much application of unguents for a couple of hours ! We won the quiz in the rock'n'roll cafe one night -which worked out as enough for our meal/bar tab plus change. Our penultimate night was spent tasting Indian wine with some people from the yoga class at a vagetarian buffet held at the excellent "Juice Shack" in Little Tibet. All in all a lovely nice way to wind down before setting off for Melbourne via Delhi & Singapore

Kumali.Thekkady/Periyar !

Getting a map in this country & particularly Kerala appears close to impossible. In every other tourist destination I have ever been to they are in everywhere to enable you to locate the n see the sites. In nearly three weeks since arriving in Kochi we have come across one sketchy thumbnail map in the Kerala Tourist Development Corporation.. Obviously one can look online for a map but this process is hampered by three things 1.the speeds with which pictures download here ( think dial-up)2. The worn out equipment used for connectivity 3. The variety of names given to places - up to three it appears. I have come to the conclusion that it is a conspiracy to line the pockets of taxi drivers & tour organisers .The KTDC sounds like the kind of organisation to solve these problems but they cant even manage to put the telephone numbers or links to their own lodges on its website ! These can only be found in Lonely Planet,Trip Advisor etc. Kumali,Thekkady & Periyar are contiguous (next to each other) and the only diffwerence between them is price of accomodationi.e.low (where we stayed for 14quid a night) to high Periyar where prices start at 3 times that. TThis place carried on where Varkala & Munnar left off with torrential rain the afternoon of our arrival which went on almost unbroken for 12 hours the following day we thought we would try to see some tigers !/! at the reserve but there were no tickets avauilable - lucky for us as it poured again at the sceduled time of the trip departure. The following day we decided not to risk the weather pattern so obviously it was dry throughout. We did howevber see an excellent demo of Kathakali the local art/dance form which was very inpressive/interesting. Tomorrow we return to Varkala via car/train to spend a few nmore days relaxing at the beach

Munnar. Tata & TEA

Munnar as a town was not much to write home about but to get to it - an hour in a very slow auto rickshaw due to the incline - you travelled through the tea plantation which was absolutely beautiful.The whole estate is I believe 40,000 hectares virtually all of which is on the side of a 1 in 3 slope at between 2000 & 3000 metres altitude. Once settled we headed off on a half day tour of the plantations and other points of interest including the tea factory - once wholly owned by Brits then jointly with Tata and now  70% owned by the workforce.It has obviously evolved a littlefrom its original British "company store" ethos e.g workers paid in company produced tokens to be spent at company shop. It has built schools ( I suspect for senior staff originally) & hospitals &provide housing for the workers - pickers however only earn 100rupees for an 8 hour day . They also created craft  projects for the "lesser abled"/learning disability children/adults much like day centres in the UK . Tata it seems to me own/make most things in India including tea,steel,cars,holidays  & telecoms etc - but most people we have chatted to think they are genuinely "good people" ?

Going North

Having spent a while in Varkala doing very little other than eating,drinking & yoga we headed off to the north to Munnar by taxi. This was the usual eventful ride as we discovered 2 things a couple of hours in to our trip. One was the driver couldn't read the road signs - he must be one of the 10% of Keralans who are illiterate- and two he didn't know the way ! These two facts were exacerbated by his inability to take notice of people who could read the signs i.e.us and his habit of stopping what seemed like every ten minutes to check that the last person he asked did not misdirect him despite the fact that meanwhile there had been no turnings off to take ! We eventually arrived at a town "just outside" Munnar (22kms) and booked into a hotel .Unfortunately two coachloads of Indian tourists arrived at the same time complete with kids so the evening was far from peaceful. Despite its outward appearance the hotel did not have a restaurant. We didn't want to venture out in the monsoon we had driven through for the last half an hour so they sent out for a take-away (not that bad value & taste considering although not a patch on what we had been used to).