It ain't 'alf 'ot Mum

We've had 2 days without WiFi so this is catch up time covering those 2 days.   We are now in Ooty (its 1pm and we leave for a guided tour of the town in 1 hour so fingers crossed I get these posted in time)

We really enjoyed Mysore – lovely people and some interesting sights.

On Saturday evening we had a final 'street meal' at the Veggie restaurant we visited on our first night. This time we opted for 3 different curries with a Naan each and a large bottle of Pepsi. The Grand total was 425 Rupees (approx £4.25) and, again, the flavours were absolutely wonderful and the entertainment is 'thrown in' watching the waiters rushing orders out to the diners in the car park – not quite 'Indian Drive-thru' but very similar. I'm sure that a similar meal at our Hotel (Radisson Blue) would have been at least 10 times that much and not as much fun.

David doing his 'Ronnie Corbett impression in one of the oversized chairs at the Hotel Reception.

Sunday morning we left Mysore after Breakfast and started our journey to the Tranquil Homestay Resort which is at Kuppamudi Coffee Estate in Wayanad Districk, Kerala . The journey out of Mysore was slow and dusty becauses of major road building works so it wasn't possible to take photos en route as winding the windows down meant getting a lungful of dust. This is a photo taken from the back seat through the windscreen just before we got to the roadworks … its scenes like this that I find so amusing about Indian traffic.

We travelled for about an hour on congested roads with lots of hooting whilst cyclists, car & ox cart drivers and buses all vied for pole position. Pedestrians just seemed to take it in their stride although I wouldn't have liked to try crossing this road

Then things improved and we travelled through a large forested area of National Parkland where we were fortunate to spot some wild elephant at the side of a lake . Its not permitted to leave your vehicles within the park but I took a couple of photos from the car. Whilst its quite common to see 'working' elephants in India, its lovely to see some in a more natural habitat (albeit a protected wildlife site).

Despite notices everywhere warning not to leave vehicles … this pair couldn't resist the urge to take a selfie:

Joshi, our driver, now realises we are serious when we say we prefer to stop for chai at a roadside shop rather than a McDonald type outlet (yes, sadly we have seen a McDonald restaurant here)! We had some freshly made Masala Chai (spicy tea) once we'd crossed the border into Kerala. The other customers were a bit bemused by us I think – not many tourists stop there obviously. I photographed the owner's son and niece – such lovely children. We gave them some of the ballpoint pens we'd brought to India with us and the boy insisted that I take a gift from him – half a pack of his obviously precious chewing gum! The little girl was very shy and we were later told by Joshi that she thought we wanted to take her away with us to England …

Here's the boy showing us on his map where we've stopped 

and with his cousin

This is the great thing about not travelling with a coach load of other tourists – we're able to make stops like this and really meet some of the lovely local people.