Here is a selection of the pictures from our trip to South India, December 2006 to January 2007.

The main reason for the visit was to visit Heather's relatives. This is the memorial to Auntie Barbara, March 6 1919-March 10 2005, and K Sreenivasan, May 12 1917-July 5 1991 who married in Manchester in 1946?????.

The memorial is here, at the K Sreenivasan Art Gallery and Textile Museum, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

Dancing musician in the museum.

The ancient carved lintel from K Sreenivasan's uncle's house.

Textile machinery from Stalybridge, England

Platt Brothers and Co Ltd Oldham 1898.

Scenes from Selvaraja Mill, owned by Mr Soundrajan, nephew of K Sreenivasan.

The cotton is going through a series of machines gradually making it finer and finer.

Shiva shrine at the mill.

Monitoring the finished product.

Ancient Eastern European generators keep the power going when the mains fails. Which it does.

Aunty B's cars are still kept at the mill.

Coimbatore, the Manchester of South India. Apart from a lot of mills and normal Indian town stuff, the so-called race-track is a distinguishing feature. Used for daily constitutionals by the locals and sporting miniatures of various well known global icons.

Saris and trainers.

At the historic Coimbatore Club, where we stayed as guests of Soundarajan.

Street scenes around Coimbatore.

Sorry I missed the shot of a bike 4-up.

To the north of Coimbatore lie the Nilgiri Mountains, the largest mountains in India outside the Himalaya. The southern slopes are lush and precipitous, landslides often closing the road and the mountain railway.