Five weeks in India: ARRIVED IN MYSORE IN KARNATAKA

Had a lazy start this morning after a good night's sleep - despite the rather disappointing dinner - Moira's light veg soup was just a few veg in a bit of boiling water and the 2 curry dishes were too hot and spicy for me to eat - so John ate both and survived.

Breakfast this morning was lovely - very English except for the watermelon juice and papaya and fig jam. We went for a walk up the back roads out of Ooty and the air was crisp and clear and bright blue cloudless sky with lovely sweeping views of the valley - we could see why the Brits were so at home in this place - as we sat in the garden it felt like UK on a hot August day with the garden filled with every lovely plant and flower you could think of.

We caught an air conditioned luxury coach at 11:15 and it was what it said on the tin- and only half full.

The road down the Nilgiri hills from Ooty was a spectacular switchback drive as we came steeply down to the valley bottom - the heavily forested area was interspersed with the most exquisite clipped fields of lush green tea trees on the most vertical slopes you can imagine - Our eyes were glued to the windows with the stunning 'heart in mouth' drop on one side and the forest and tea on the other.

We drove through 2 tiger reserves - Mudumalai and Bandhipur and though we did not see any tigers - as nobody seems to - we did see some elephants bathing around the river in the valley bottom, some spotted deer and a few monkeys. The last hour of our journey was back on the flat like Kerala except quite a lot less humid - more dry like Spain and about 30 degrees blue sky. There is a lot of water down on the plain and we are back to coconuts and bananas as well as tropical flowers.

Mysore looks a promisingly majestic city with a huge Maharajah palace we shall visit tomorrow. John is really looking forward to visiting Sriringa Patnam the next day.

We had a slight problem getting from the bus station to the Rooftop retreat homestay because the tuktuk driver pretended not to know where it was and then tried to take us to another hotel of his choosing - luckily John's newly sorted SIM card worked in the old nokia phone and he managed to phone the homestay who came to meet us - so here we are in our own little rooftop flatlet with our own fridge and kettle and dining table - though yet again Moira ends up with a short straw and the camp bed. Dinner of veg biryani is on order so it's looking good so far.