Got up at 3am on the Sunday to take a flight to Bangalore with Spicejet. Always slightly worrying when you get on a plane and the seatbelts, chairs and upholstery are a collection of different airlines and you’re advised to take your seat with you in the event of a water landing to use as a flotation device – but we got their safe and sound.

As often happens after an early start, we ended up collapsing in the hotel for the first day with big plans for the following day. Unfortunately, at about 11pm that night I found myself out of bed pacing round the room with occasional side splitting stomach cramps which could only mean one thing….

….and come the next morning I began a marathon session of over 20 visits to the bathroom that day with a bottom like a tap serving up a canteen load of piping hot Bovril. It was hideous. At least we had a TV in the room so it was nonsense films all day and general groaning from the toilet.

So, that was Bangalore – we had to travel to Mysore (arf…) this morning by train and having compacted my stomach with half a dozen Immodium tablets we arrived with very little incidents in the toilet department but feeling very weary, dehydrated and so just a brief update today.

All I will say is that I’m liking the look of South India a lot and I think we’re going to have good fun down here. To strengthen our hardcore backpacker credentials, we’ve booked into a 4 star Ayuverdic resort complex on the beach front in Varkala to chill out for a week. It’s a tough life…