Our home stay in the backwaters. Many hundreds of years ago the Kerelan Backwaters was a river delta. Early settlers recognised the fertility of the land and started building mud walls around bits of dry ground to protect them from incoming tides and high water times. Over the centuries the landscape that we can see now evolved. There are many large islands with large canals in between. The houseboats cruise up and down these canals. The island that we stayed on...

Another Tiger Hunt You might think that after 2 attempts to see tigers in the wild that we might have given up. But oh no we are more determined than that! However, a change of tactics was called for - this time we would hunt them from a boat. The Periyar nature reserve is blessed with an enormous lake courtesy of a dam built many years ago by the British to supply water to the Western Ghats. Many species of wild animals, including tigers use the lake as their...

Rickshaw Ride through Madurai This is the sort of thing that G Adventures does really well. Take a tour of a city with another company and they will put you on an air conditioned bus and take you on a trip around the landmark buildings. G Adventures on the other hand puts you in a cycle rickshaw and takes you on a tour of the markets and slums. Cycle rickshaws are no longer in vogue since everyone can now afford a Tuk Tuk which are much much faster. But in a cyc...

The road to Madurai The next morning it was back to work and we were off on a cycle tour of the ancient temples of Mammallapuram. In this town the earliest temples were carved out of solid rock. You could trace the development of rock cutting technique and artistic style over the centuries. Because they took so long to carve, war and politics tended to get in the way and few of them were actually completed. One remaining temple on the sea shore had been one of a...