We didn't do much dreaming of Italian tourists last night. In fact we didn't do much dreaming at all. Why? Well someone put a speaking clock with a 1 squillion watt speaker right outside our window. Well that's what it sounded like. Every hour since, well, since we went to bed, we've been bombarded with a jolly little ditty which sounds something like "The Camptown Races", followed immediately by electronic chimes, then a shrill woman's voice in Tamil saying, presumably, something like "It's 3am and all's well". Except that it isn't - it isn't 3am because this goes off at exactly 10 minutes before each hour, and all isn't "well" because it's just woken us up for the umpteenth time. To make things worse, the muezzin calls everyone to prayer at 6am using, it seems, the same 1 squillion watt speaker.

It's just as well we have to get up early today anyway. We're catching a 7.30am bus to Kodaikanal, a hill station 120km north-west of Madurai. We've no time for breakfast, but we've been assured there'll be a breakfast stop on the way. The bus arrives outside our hotel on time and we settle down for the journey. But an hour later we're still in Madurai, having driven round various hotels to pick up passengers. The pick-up route seems entirely random, and the last one is only 100m from our hotel. We could have had another hour in bed (except for the speaking clock)!

There are about 15 passengers on the bus - mainly Indians on a day trip. The driving is fairly manic, with excessive use of the horn, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary for India. About an hour into the journey proper (i.e after we've actually left Madurai) we pull up in a dusty town and are told we've got a 15 minute breakfast stop. We're pointed in the direction of a nearby restaurant. This is a typical basic veg restaurant of a type found throughout India - and it's full. There's no chance of getting breakfast within 15 minutes, even if we could find a table immediately on arrival. It reminds Clive of a training method used in the army, where recruits are given an opportunity for some personal time between busy training sessions to eat/wash/sort kit etc, but the timescale is impossible and the facilities totally inadequate. The staff then watch to see how the recruits react to this. We couldn't help feeling we were in the same boat! So we used the toilets in the restaurant we'd been shown to, then went across the road to a smaller shop and bought chai, some hot flaky pastry savories and some bananas. We don't know if we passed the test, but we got breakfast and managed to find the bus which they'd thoughtfully hidden round the corner out of sight!

Arriving at Kodai a little after midday we book into the Villa Retreat and are shown to our small room with attached shower/toilet, not dissimilar to those at Colva and Varkala. We check out the shower for hot water and, yes, it does indeed come out of the shower. Nevertheless, there is a catch. We're up at 6,000ft and it's cold, but there's no heating in the room. "Heater?" we ask hopefully. "Heater is extra," comes the helpful reply. So we've paid for a room with no heating (we'd already pre-paid this hotel when we were in Mumbai). A heater is only Rs150 but Clive isn't willing to give them the satisfaction of renting one to us, so he orders an extra blanket instead. "I remember when I was in the army and we kept warm by running round the bed all night with a pack full of bricks, blah blah bulls*** blah..." Sarah resigns herself to a chilly night.

Looking at the tourist map of Kodai we see there's a fairly large man-made lake right in the middle, so after a light but quite spicy lunch of onion pakora, we set off to break the SAS record for the fastest lap, until Sarah takes control of the situation and we stroll round at a leisurely and relaxing pace.

Kodai has the distinction of being the only hill station in India to be set up during the Raj by the Americans, although it didn't take long before they were joined by the British. More recent years have seen wealthy Indians buying up properties here, and we can glimpse some of them through large gated driveways as we walk around the lake. The impression we get as we explore Kodai is how un-Indian it is. Everything is very orderly, there are no crowds, no litter, the pavements and roads are in good order and although vendors have set up at strategic locations they don't hassle you. The large houses around the lake look as though they've been uplifted from somewhere in Scotland, being built mainly out of stone. All in all it makes a very pleasant change from the heat, hustle and bustle down on the plains. In other words, it serves the exact purpose for which it was built in the first place.

In the evening we eat in the small dining room of the hotel, along with a party of six Americans, one of whom is shortly to marry an American-born Tamil girl, in Chennai. As is usual on these occasions we share our experiences of India, and these are the cause of much amusement. Warmed by a dish of butter chicken, vegetable fried rice and a couple of Kingfishers, but with a lack of sleep last night beginning to catch up with us, we head off to a cold room with its unsprung bed, rocklike pillow and the soothing sound of a generator gently roaring in a nearby outbuilding. Sweet dreams.