Greetings from Kumily

Unfortunately our ability to access the internet hasn't kept pace with our travels lately. We're now at an internet cafe in Kumily, a small town in the Western Ghat mountains of Kerala, near the Periyar wildlife preserve. And I forgot the USB cable, so no more photos today.

We do have a backlog of pics to post, though given the slow pace of Flickr uploads it could take weeks to get through everything. We'll do what we can later this week though.

As a quick summary: after Palolem, we took the train south, staying one night in Mangalore, a city whose charms, if any, escaped us. From there it was an overnight journey all the way down to Varkala, as Rachel describes below, for swimming in the swirling surf and seafood on the cliffs. From Varkala we went back north to Alleppey, the hub of the backwaters houseboat scene, and we dutifully rented a houseboat for a night and took roughly six thousand photos, the best two or three of which we'll post here at some point. After Alleppey was Fort Cochin, a Portuguese/Dutch colonial town in the former indepedent kingdom/princely state of Kochi. On the 3rd we went by bus up to Munnar, once a hill station in the "High Range of Travancore" (the same Western Ghats where we are now), which is now surrounded by atmospheric tea plantations; yesterday we had a gorgeous, winding bus ride through the mountains to Kumily, from where we plan to do some trips into the wildlife sanctuary. Periyar has a small tiger population, as well as wild elephants and all kinds of birds and monkeys (monkeys, incidentally, are a bit scary in person).

That's all much more interesting with photos, I know, so we'll update when we can with pictures and details on the trip so far.