The sun.

It's really quite strong here, unsurprisingly. And gets very hot when you're in it, even up here in the hills at nearly 2000m. I still get a better tan in Wales though.

And I've seen some beautiful sunsets. The last few nights, now being alone in the mountain palace, I've sat out on the front porch (the most idyllically placed porched I've had the pleasure of perching on) quietly watching the sun go down over the valley and the honking town below.

(Seems to be quite a party going on in Gudalur town tonight with India Republic Day being yesterday.) Thankfully, I do have Jimmy, my ukelele, to keep me company. Once it's too dark for anyone to hear, he's been strumming out the odd tune for me. He makes me very happy. Sunrise over the valley is pretty special too, slowly bringing colour to the forests below and up the hillsides. It's exciting to think what wild animals might be on their walk to work. I find it a bit less exciting to think about when I'm running alone though.

Another sunrise I was lucky enough to have was on a house-boat, moored up in the Backwaters of Kerala; a vast and beautiful area of paddy fields, canals, coconut palms and narrow strips of houses all in what seems like a massive shallow lake. We spent about 10 hours on one a few weeks ago (me and my 4 travelling buddies). The boats are like huge bumble bees floating on the water. And there really are swarms of them.

We tried to get one with a certification to say it follows certain environmental standards, but I'm not sure that went beyond being able to opt out of air conditioning. It was an experience though, and very beautiful out on the Backwaters. I got up early to see the sunrise and have some quiet (the fan in our room sounded a bit like an airship, of the loud kind), and before all of the house-boat generators started up. I was going to attempt some yoga too, but the palm trees didn't hide me as much as I'd hoped. I get enough stares being white, let alone being white and stretchy. (A bit of sunrise.)

We missed sunrise at Kanyakumari: the cape of India. Apparently the sunrise is the only good thing about the place. Unfortunately, we found this out after we'd been there, along with the fact that it's a s**t hole and not worth a visit. I didn't mind it as much as my co-adventurers. It was so ridiculous it was amusing. It's described as a "peaceful friendly village" (or similar) by our favourite and frequently incorrect travel guide (the LP), but it was one of the most hectic places we'd been to. It's meant to be a quiet place for contemplation, or that's what it was for the widely-respected Indian philosopher, Vivekananda. To celebrate his life there is a temple and memorial site on one of the island off the coast that he used to meditate on. It has probably thousands of tourists walking around it every day, and they are not quiet tourists. They also don't know how to queue. But perhaps it's only the British who do.

We watched the sunset in a specially created park with about half of south India, and a cockerel. Unfortunately we didn't make it up the sunset viewing platform, beautifully designed to look like a multistorey car park, in time. But it meant we were available for photographs. Though after a day of having our souls slowly drained by Indian tourists wanting images of dirty white youths (if we're still classified as such?), we refused and wandered back to our "Tourist Hotel".

Hopefully I'll have some soul left when I return to cloudy Blighty, but I don't think I'll have much of a tan.