Time to cool off. 25C is the top temperature here this season and we had to dig out sweatshirts for the evening. Clouds slowly glide up and down the mountains, occasionally covering the whole area in thick, drizzling fog. Everywhere you look it’s shades of green. Imagine the perfect scenery to Ed Sheeran’s “I See Fire” and you have Munnar.
The lazying around continues. We moved away from the open sea and onto the backwaters of Kerala—900km of waterways spread along 200km of the Indian shore. Our home for the next two days is a kettuvalam—a houseboat with two bedrooms, a captain, and a cook—surrounded by water, small villages, palm trees and rice fields.
Stay longer than a day, she said. Ubud has a lot to offer, she said. That’s mostly true—the crowd here is different than down at the beaches of the south. Young and fit backpackers or wealthy pensioners, shipped in with air-conditioned coaches. And monkeys, so keep your food stashed safely.