Staying comfortable

We stayed comfortable on our South India sojourn by staying in comfortable homestays or in rather nice 3 and 4 star hotels and resorts. The price was typically $25 to $30 per night for the former, and $60 to $80 for the latter, and if it hadn't been peak season, even better rates would have applied. Of course you can get by on far less if you stick to budget hotels. (And we were caught out by one budget hotel masquerading as a 3 star one, in the beach resort of Varkala. It wasn't quite the paradise it claimed to be.)

Churches, mosques, and temples of South India - Temples

Here's the Sri Chamundeswari Temple near Mysore,which is a temple to Shiva. Shiva always has his bull, Nandi, nearby, so that's him below, in 5m high statue form.







The nice little collection of musical ladies is at Aazhimala Temple in Kerala.

Then there's the Shri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum, and the Suchindram Temple, near Kanyakumari - currently undergoing some maintenance or restoration work.



The majority of the population are in fact Hindu, despite the fairly large numbers of Christians and Muslims in the south.

Churches, mosques, and temples of South India - Mosques

About 24% of Keralans are muslims. Here are the mosques in Vizhinjam (just south of Kovalam Beach) and Odayam (just north of Varkala).

Churches, mosques, and temples of South India - Churches

Here are some churches we came across in Mysore, Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Kanyakumari. There seem to be lots of Christians in South India, about 19% in Kerala according to Wikipedia, and they're clearly often devout too.

Colourful women of Kerala 2

The Kerala part of our trip took in the Wayanad region, Cochin (Kochi), Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram - 7 syllables in the local name!), Kovalam and Varkala beaches, and the 'backwaters' of Kollam, Poovar, and Kumarakom.

Colourful women of Kerala 1

It's one of the (many) things that jump out at you in India, just how colourful and generally photogenic are the women, while most men look quite drab and ordinary alongside them. So, all in the line of duty, I recorded some of these sights on our recent trip to South India.

The lioness? Well she's looking a bit tired, and she's currently in captivity. (This one's in Trivandrum Zoo.) Her name: Aishwarya!

The model in the jewellery ad, by the way, is Priya Anand.