Sri Lanka

This country was named the pearl of the indian ocean. And when arriving we could immediately see why. White beaches like never seen before. Untouched jungles and waterfalls one could never imagine. I stayed in Sri Lanka for 4 days. This country is rich in everything one could want. Beach resorts, empty beaches, national parks as big as any, mountains, trekking possibilities and many historical monuments.
The first day we arrived at the airport at 3 am. We directly went to an old Dutch colony named Galle. This city is protected by the Unesco and one can immagine why. Its richness in architecture and historic significance is really big. This town is in the south of sri lanka and thus on the trade route from europe to asia or from asia to africa. Many ships sunk in this region trying to attack this city and that's the reason for all the artifacts found underwater.
After visiting this town we went to two different beaches: Utanawana and Weligama beach. In Utanawana I personnaly had one of the best fish ever. We had a big fresh crab which I had never eaten and a whole tuna fish which was also really delicious.
Weligama beach was also nice but we couldn't stay there much.
The evening we travelled to Deniyaya. A town close to a rain forest. I had never been to a rain forest and i think it is quite amazing. We saw trees with roots growing from the side of the trunk. We saw 2 magnificent waterfalls like in a fairytale. There were also many lizards and spiders...
The day after we set out to climb Adam's Peak. A mountain 2100 meters high. On top of this mountain there is the most beautiful view of sri lanka. We started climbing these steps at 5 am and arrived at 10 am. But on top there was only fog and we didn't see anything. We couldn't even see adam's foot because the key to the door in the temple was not available. We stayed up there for a few hours and were offered tea and a bed from the guards of the temple.
And finally the last day we went around seeing the most important monuments of Sri lanka by taxi. The only one town really worth visiting to me is Kandy. There was a wonderful Buddhist temple.

Kerala

2 weekends ago we went to Kerala. Kerala is the south eastern region in India. It is supposed to be one of the most wonderful and best preserved regions in India. The beaches are amazing and it is simply green everywhere. There was a palm-tree every 2 meters.
We went on a backwater trip, which is a boat trip through natural and some artificial canals in the wild of this state. It was quite pretty but after a while it got really boring. We stayed on the boat for the night and had some good fish but the water was a bit dirty and in the end it wasn't really worth the price.
We also visited Varkala and Kovalam beach which were nice but overdeveloped. There were some really big eagles in the sky. The people don't really hunt them there, so there are many of them.
We went to the Neyyar Dam national Park. There was a huge dam and I climbed up a mountain with beautiful view of the landscape all around.
The last day we went to a beach close to Kochi called Cherai beach. There were many indians which came there and it was a good opportunity to blend in with the crowd, although this is nearly never possible.
The trip back to the airport was one of the most stressful ever. It was 40 km by bus which took us something like 3 hours. So in the end we had to take a taxi to be able to get to the airport 40 minutes before takeoff...

Ooty and Mudumalai National Park

3-4 weeks ago we went to an old english hillstation named ooty. Supposed to be one of the most beautiful hill stations in our state. The only impressive thing was that it was incredibly cold up there. A senstation i haven't had in india since i arrived. During the nights at the hillstation we even had to wear sweaters...
During this long weekend we also went to a national park nearby this hillstation. Its name is Mudumalai national park. We saw many animals including Python, elephant, black bears, samba dear (not sure about the spelling), waterbuffalo and ofcoarse many Kingfisher.
To come back to Chennai we took a very pretty old english train back. It took 4 hours to cover 20 km but it was still worth the views.