My last posting was particularly sombre as many of you have pointed out. That is certainly not my general mood here, but I could not help but utter some of the mixed emotions I have experienced so far and as I said VS Naipaul's book is somewhat depressing in the way it exposes the reality.

I was in Kodaikanal the weekend before. It is one of the more pleasant hill stations, more isolated than Ooty and less commercialised. Still, being the weekend, there were a fair few local tourists about. The views from the tea garden of my hotel overlooking the valley 2000m below were beautiful and I spent most of sunday sat here in the sun reading and chatting to other tourists, with a cupper and toast. I've got some amazing pictures of sunrise over the hills- unfortunately still can;t post these to you.

From here I went to Madurai, one of the dirtiest cities I've seen so fat, yet ironically one of the oldest and most sared sites in South India with the huge Sree Meenakshee temple complex. I will not expand much further on the insalubrity I saw...

The time to leave Vellore is quickly approaching- in fact only just over 2 weeks left. I plan to go to Hampi from here, then to Hyderabad, where I should be able to catch Eid celebrations. From here to Delhi where I will meet with my brother Fakhru from London. We're off to Agra and Rajasthan for 12 days, which is really exciting!