our first day Calicut to Kalpetta rising up from sea level to the cooler Gnats and hill stations

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain

The Indian Horn

The Horn. Oh the multipurpose ubiquitous, impossibly loud horn of the Indian road. People should write poems to its greatness and its infinite variety. Some sound quizzical. Others furious. Some are funny. Some are sombre. In India, the horn is not an instrument of violence or abuse; every truck I have seen has HORN PLEASE emblazoned across the back. To sound ones horn here [India] is merely to express ones existence and to share that joy with everyone else in a several hundred- mile radius. To the uninitiated or the incredibly tired traveller, the constant sound of the horn is just one of the countless challenges of the Indian environment

The full route