I was standing outside a line up cars, buses, and industrial-strength Ashok Leyland trucks painted in outrageous colours, when the clouds started to drift. Yanking themselves off the peaks around us and tearing themselves in the process, they drifted through the windows and made everything damp and eerie.

These are the borderlands. Where the hammer and sickle and the swastika do constant battle; one hand-painted on to rocks and cliffs and storefronts, and the other peering out mildly from temple windows and autorickshaw license plates. Kerala meets Tamil Nadu.

That morning I was lost in the tea estates of Munnar. Bright green, clipped, and ready to dry and drink; mountainsides full of them, full of women hunched over like boulders clipping and clipping. Sure, you can have some water. Help yourself to my biscuits.

In typical communist fashion, the Keralans I with whom I was riding in the tractor started berating their "manager" and screaming, in a communal manner I'm sure, at their coworkers who dared side with the - GASP - boss.

The bus to Munnar had been utterly uneventuful, by which I mean to say that the only event that did not happen was my sleep. I arrived that morning, bruised and in tatters, with an 11-hour bus ride behind me but the air was clean and crisp and made me so as well.

Currently, I'm in Trichy - a city of bewitching sunsets and lovely, fascinating bazaars. The people here are wonderful and tonight I dined with a priest. I will make it to Pondicherry and also Madras in the next week, but I am unaware of when and on what schedule.