7th November. Welcome back. Depending on my broadband-connection, you may be reading this several days after the event, but hopefully not too long after.

Day one. My driver got me to Heathrow on time, thanks Carol, and I sailed through customs. Flight took off at 10.00am and had a smooth uneventful 6 hour flight to Bahrain.

Changed flights to Cochin, and prepared for another 4 hour flight. Arrived at 3.30am.  All very quiet, and now had four hour wait to meet my driver and the rest of the party.

Our guide Felipe, eventually appeared as did the rest of the party. Seven ladies and two other men are my companions for the next ten days.  Strangely, none of us are couples - we have all left our other half's behind.  It looks ttto be an interesting group, as we cover a wide age range, and no, am not the eldest.

The journey to our first hotel was to be 2 hours. The roads out of Cochin airport started promising, but soon deteriorated into a bone shaking ride for most of the journey. It did however give me a chance too observe the surrounding area.  Most of what I had heard was true enough. Lots of noise and traffic. Lots of road side businesses, from a simple fruit stall to larger shops selling everything you need, if you  lived in India, as these were not tourist traders.  Further out of town the larger international companies start to appear, first on large advertising boards, the likes of. Vodaphone,  Toyota, Samsung and Nissan.  Then we see amongst the modest old buildings large modern glass offices and showrooms. I particularly liked the NIssan head office.

Our local guide, and Indian called Charlie, tried to give a commentary on local points of interest, but I am having a problem with names of places. I do remember however, out first stop over is on the shores of the second largest lake in India.  After two hours bus ride we then had a thirty minute boat ride, as this is the only way to reach the hotel.   The Cocobay Resort at Kumarakom is charming and tranquil. The rooms are large and very comfortable.  After an excellent lunch we rested for a while before having a swim in the hotel pool and getting to know about my fellow travellers.

Before dinner, which was excellent, we had our first 'briefing' on photography. Felipe ran over the basics (which I am always grateful
 for) pointing out useful settings for this type of light conditions. Tomorrow we have our first project, visiting a local village and school. (Here we are encouraged to film children).

During dinner we had a spectacular thunderstorm, with loss of electricity, but I am told that is a common occurrence here.

Glad I was able to upload today. Bodes well for the future.
 
Goodnight all.

PS. I was unable to upload last night, so had to wait until we returned from the next days morning tour. After breakfast, we had a 90 minutes tutorial on photo composition. We then took a short boat ride to one of the many canals adjoining the lake, to visit one of the local village. Here we could film locals and school children, and practise what we had learnt that morning. During the night most of us woke to heavy thunder and rain, but the morning has turned out to be warm and bright, but the humidity is high.