I’ve said it before and will probably say it again but I don’t like early starts! Today we left the Royal Heritage Haveli hotel at six in the morning which at least meant it was cool and the roads, amazingly, were empty. A short drive took us to the airport where we reluctantly said goodbye to our driver. Hanuman has been with us since we arrived at Delhi airport nearly a week ago and has driven us through the anarchy and insanity of traffic in Delhi, Agra and Jaipur as well as the bits in between. We have always felt perfectly safe and stress free and we will both miss his unfailing courtesy and sense of humour; Hanuman has been a real contributor to our holiday being so good and we’re going to miss him.

And so we spent most of the day heading south. Flight from Jaipur to Mumbai – no problems; three hour stop over in Mumbai Airport – nothing to do and got lost at least three times, did find a good cup of coffee though; flight from Mumbai to Kochi (formerly known as Cochin) no problems; met by local agency rep. and new driver – no problems.

However you do soon notice the humidity of about seventy five percent and the temperature of about thirty four degrees, so it’s a bit like a steam bath.

But it’s also SO different, green and clean compared with the India we’ve seen up until now, and beautiful.

We made a detour to avoid the rush hour and took the ferry over to our hotel just as the colourful fishing boats were coming in

and arrived at our hotel, the Old Harbour, nearly speechless at what we were seeing.

The hotel

is beautiful and tranquil and about one minute’s walk from the sea. After unpacking we took a stroll along the waterfront as the sun was going down.

17 March 2001