India is always so good to us

We are in India, renouncing February. David is on sabbatical (sort of). Our plan is to be in Karnataka because 1) neither of us has been here before and 2) it has both hills and a coast - which is useful as we have not actually made any plans about what to do from around now for the next 5 weeks. We need to end up in Mumbai from where we will fly to Nepal so as to spend our last week in Boudha where we can reprise our last trip, stay in the nunnery which was our home during the latter half of the last sabbatical - and see the restored stupa.

That said, we did have a 'to do' list for the first week so we have already ticked off a few modest adventures!

First stop: stepwells.  Last year we arrived for a couple of weeks in Rajasthan - and left gutted that we hadn't seen more stepwells - they don't seem to feature in the guidebooks but are incredibly impressive. This trip seemed a chance to take in a few more. Look at this one! (As the books say, its impossible to take a bad photo.)  They go down and down - this has 13 levels and 3500 steps in an Escher-like array.  Secular architecture giving rural communities access to water. This is 800 years old....

We had a car and a driver for three days to cover the distances! 

This also gave us a chance to stay in some swish places, including this hilltop fort-cum-hotel, currently a favourite for romantic getaways from Delhi.  The guest book logged 'honeymoon', 'birthday' etc against all the names, so we invented an 'anniversary'.  (The other first was getting David to throw some shapes on the battlements - yoga at dawn.)

From there we went back to Delhi airport and flew down to Bangalore where we were met by a man with a sign and driven to National Centre for Biological Sciences, a utopia of calm, optimism, botanical gardens and scientific endeavour.  Mike B in Cambridge had given us (and them) a tip-off which resulted in an invitation for David to visit. What a place. They gave us a little apartment on campus, we had access to the canteen ... lovely food, never costing more than 80 rupees (about a pound) for two meals. The faculty were incredibly hospitable, taking us out to a meal at a microbrewery in downtown Bangalore. David worked very hard, giving a well attended and much laughed-at lecture, ran a campus twitter conversation and talked to lots of students. (I swam in the lovely swimming pool, walked around the gardens, did some editing...and talked to lots of students).  We originally planned to do a day-trip on our last day but couldn't tear ourselves away from the campus.

Next was a train journey a couple of hours south to Mysore which turns out to be a very civilised Indian city.  We stayed a couple of nights at the Green Hotel which is bizarrely set with knitterly booby traps - pattern books in the library and "knitting is good for your health" pamphlets. The charity 'Knit for Peace' runs knitting holidays based at the Hotel
http://www.knitforpeace.org.uk/mysore-india-october-2018/
...and Im sure it is very fit for purpose with endless cool places to sit.

The other highlight of Mysore was the Disney-esque lights turning on at the Palace.

From here on in, we are determinedly heading down-market... next stop a homestay, also in Mysore.