Hail the Lord. No mobile net­work, but a decent Inter­net con­nec­tion here in the lit­tle town of Kumily, Thekkady. Much bet­ter than the painfully slow con­nec­tion at Alleppey. And we got charged at Rs 75 an hour!

Enjoyed the drive from Alleppey to Thekkady yes­ter­day. It was an extremely scenic and pleas­ant route as the car began its ascent and the weather got cooler. The coconut trees gave way to other trees, which I couldn’t iden­tify. Thought of ask­ing the dri­ver but his vocab­u­lary was lim­ited. We made him play Kal Ho Na Ho in the car, and he seemed a lit­tle miffed, since he didn’t under­stand any Hindi (and very lit­tle Eng­lish too).

The place we checked into (Hotel Ambadi) is pretty nice with neat cot­tages (actu­ally they’re ground floor rooms) that over­look a small gar­den. The place is quite well main­tained, and rec­om­mended for medium bud­get acco­mo­da­tion. Can’t say about the food yet, since we couldn’t have any din­ner. I was still recov­er­ing from the day’s lunch and Steph couldn’t eat any­thing because of a bad stom­ach infec­tion. The tomato soup she ordered tasted like hot ketchup and I was not very happy with the noo­dles. We’ve resorted to diges­tive bis­cuits, raisins and cashew nuts for the moment.

There are spice shops all over the place so I must pick up some exotic spices tomor­row. Any­thing to improve my cooking :)

Woke up late today, had a hearty break­fast of toast and eggs. Sketched a lit­tle dur­ing the after­noon and then the peace and quiet lulled me into sleep. We had to can­cel our sight­see­ing plans for the day. I’ve got a slight sprain on my right foot and Steph’s still recov­er­ing from her infection.

Hope­fully, we recover by tomor­row so we can do some sight­see­ing around town and Peri­yar lake.