Madurai marks the end of our time in Tamil Nadu, and a visit to one of the most important sites - the Meenakshi Amman Temple. The temple is dedicated to the Hindu goddess, Meenakshi, and we again had the opportunity to hear some fascinating stories about Hindu mythology from a local guide on our city tour. Another star site, the Thirumalai Nayak Palace was mostly indoors and a nice reprieve from the heat and sun, so we spent a good couple hours wandering through ...

We are attracting a lot of attention in Tamil Nadu - probably because we seem to be some of the only foreign tourists at the temples sites we have been visiting. Many Indian tourists have asked to take photos alongside us, and some children have asked to have their photos taken in front of the temples just because they are curious to see how they look on Troy's camera - very sweet! We hired a private driver to take us from Pondicherry to Tiruchirappalli, via Chi...

"Pondy" (as the locals refer to Pondicherry), is lovely! First introduced to us through the book and movie, "Life of Pi", we are here because we enjoyed the scenes of the city from the movie, and it is also a natural break in the journey through southern Tamil Nadu. Pondicherry has over a million people living in it, but size wise compared to Chennai, it may as well be the town of Caledon. Leisurely cyclists, big leafy trees, a big promenade to stroll on frontin...

It is as if all our travel skills have been building up to be put to the test in our new country of India. Okay, India, we see you, and we are not backing down! We flew to Chennai via Kuala Lumpur to land last Saturday evening, and awoke to our first Indian breakfast buffet which was a new, exciting concept! We took our first auto rickshaw into downtown Chennai to see Fort St. George, which was a site of the British East India Company in the 1600s. And we saw a ...

Way back on our Halong Bay trip in Vietnam, we met and hung out with a couple from London on a similar journey to us, and decided if our schedules worked, we would meet up again in our travels. Timing allowed us 5 nights together in Koh Rong, and so we were again blessed with some brief company! Although we had recently spent several days in the very calm waters of the Gulf of Thailand visiting nearby Koh Mak and Koh Kut, Koh Rong decided to show us the other ex...