Day 0, Day 1 & Day 2

Our trek began on a Sunday morning at 2am. For appa and me atleast. Vijayan chetan (henceforth known as Vc) boarded the train at Calicut on Saturday before lunch, and Reji and Lalitha (Ji and Tha) joined him at Salem that night. So that was Day 0. Appa and me were at Katpadi railway station at 1am on Sunday, and hung around for while before boarding the Kerala Express. The train was crowded, but Ji and Tha were waiting for us at the door, and soon we and our luggage were installed in S9. But we spent most of the day waiting for the TTE to allot us a berth on one waitlisted ticket! Breakfast, lunch, dinner and we were into day 2. We reached New Delhi in the evening, where Srikanth met us and put us into a local train, which was fortunately mostly empty! We had dinner with the interesting ambiance and smell of the crowded platform. Soon we made our escape from the humid heat and dust of Delhi, to the cool foothills of the Himalayas.