Two summers ago I travelled across America by train on a book tour. Halfway from New York to Los Angeles my agent emailed me a script of a film set in India, starring Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and directed by the awesome John Madden, who gave us Shakespeare In Love. ‘The part is Madge, a lively grandmother on the look-out for a new husband. Read it.’ I did. No sleep that night.

The film was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which follows a motley group of British pensioners who decide to live out their retirement at a newly restored hotel in less expensive and seemingly exotic India.

Though the Marigold Hotel is less luxurious than they imagined, they are transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past. By the time I hit California I had emailed back that I loved the script. Then texted the same to the scriptwriter Ol Parker, whose film Imagine Me & You I’d been in five years before. He engineered a vetting interview for me at Fox Studios with five very high-powered, high-heeled producers.

Two days of waiting followed while I travelled back across the country to a snazzy hotel in Chicago. As I put my key into the lock of my room my phone buzzed. ‘They want you.’

Next step, on returning to London, an interview with John Madden. Bill Nighy was in before me. Then the green light flashed for me to pack for India… A place I had fallen in love with 20 years before when on a British Council theatre tour of The Merchant Of Venice.

Now, with excitement too high to quite believe, I was off to film with, as is always the case in our lives, some actors, dear friends who I had worked with before, some I hadn’t but always wanted to, and some I had never met. Here are some extracts from the diary I kept during filming 16 months ago...

10 October 2010
In India they say 10/10/10 is a lucky date, so it’s serendipitous that on the tenth of the tenth, 2010, I meet up with friends at the re-opening of London’s fabulously restored Savoy Hotel.  And just as we raise our champagne glasses, over in Udaipur, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starts shooting the first scene. Tonight  I fly out to join the  cast in Udaipur.

11 October
I depart from Delhi on the overnight train to Udaipur at 19.00. I’m sharing a sleeping compartment with Raj, an electrical engineer, who at 19.03 is already in his pyjamas. The First Class lavatory is a hole in the train floor – you can see the rails speeding below. I’m too excited to sleep. At dawn, the train grinds to a steamy halt, and as the door opens onto the bustling platform, crammed with bhaji sellers and bicycles, I’m greeted by the smiling faces of our writer Ol Parker and producer Graham Broadbent. What a welcome.

13 October
They’re running a bit behind, so I haven’t started working yet. We’re staying at the Oberoi Udaivilas Hotel. It’s overwhelmingly luxurious, with your own swimming pool… well sort of. It’s a single-lane canal round the hotel, where people swim past your window. I’ve a four-poster bed with 29 embroidered pillows, cool lime juice and hot masala tea. The difficult bit is the minute you leave its guarded gates you will quite likely see a little girl scrabbling for a cabbage leaf to survive.

Marigold garlands have been festooned around the place for the arrival tonight of Bill Nighy, who comes armed with two bottles of Bollinger champagne. I had texted him to ask if he could possibly buy some en route, as I know Dame Jude loves champs and we can’t find any here.

15 October
I decided to sample a different dish each morning from the Indian page of the breakfast menu, so today it’s poori bhaji – three puffed-up, deep-fried wheat balls and potato curry with papaya preserve. Very tasty. In the garden I admire the stripy chipmunks, the kestrels soaring above and I spot a sign that reads ‘Do not pluck the roses’.

Penelope Wilton, Judi Dench and I go on a red boat around the lake to try to cool off in the scorching 40ºC heat, while our friends back in London are all complaining about the frosts. The cast have Bill’s champagne in Judi’s room this evening followed by a scrumptious array of curried delights at the lakeside restaurant under the moon. Tomorrow, at last, I work. Hooray!

16 October
I slept sporadically, and at 5am I’m escorted from the lobby to my car by my assistant Yash, a gentle young man of nearly 30. We have all been assigned personal assistants to prevent us from getting lost or into trouble. The car is perfumed inside with incense, while sitar music plays on the radio. Although it is still as dark as night, the street cafés we pass are all packed. Along the roadside there are pretty lights in the shape of tents, with statues inside to celebrate the forthcoming Hindu festival of Diwali.

My first scene is with the adorably effervescent Dev Patel, who plays the young manager  of the hotel. He is showing his guests to their allotted rooms in The Not Quite Yet Best or Exotic Marigold Hotel (you’ll have to see the film to discover what that means!).

17 October
It’s 5.15am and I’m en route for my first scene with Ronnie Pickup, who plays the dapper septuagenarian Norman. It’s an hour and a half’s drive to the Marigold Hotel set every day, and the traffic in India is nothing like London. No one wears a helmet to ride a scooter, and they change gears on their motorbikes with bare feet. Drivers never look from side to side to see what’s coming, they just go when they fancy, and they never stop honking their horns. It’s terrifying. I count families of five or six, including babes in arms, squashed onto one scooter, vivid coloured saris billowing behind. A milkman zooms past us on a Harley-Davidson balancing huge milk churns on either side.

3 November
Happy Diwali!! By 9am it is stifling. Penelope and I sneak out of the hotel without our assistants (which we’re not supposed to do) for our own private adventure. We flag down a tuk-tuk (a motorised three-wheeled minivan) and career into town, dodging sacred cows specially decorated for Diwali with pink painted horns and polka-dotted backs. On our walk home we notice dolls made out of cowpats on each doorstep, all part of the celebrations for this Festival of Lights. Back at the hotel an embossed invitation has arrived to drinks tomorrow at the Royal Palace. The Maharajah is sending a launch to ferry us across the lake for a firework display.
Yash is pleased I have asked to visit all the Hindu temples and learn some words. He teaches me Suprabhat, ‘Good morning’, and Shubh ratri, ‘Goodnight’. We go to the Shri Jagdish temple, built in 1652. It is invigorating, beautiful, strange, ancient, and full of mystery.

We disembark from our royal red barge and are driven up the hill to the steps of the Maharajah’s palace, where bagpipes herald our arrival. It made our hearts sing and our eyes water. Guards on white stallions are dressed in scarlet, with cockerel plumes on their hats. While glasses of Veuve Clicquot and flaming mutter paneer on sticks (an Indian cheese delicacy) are passed around, a tiny piper in tartan trews and spats plays a slightly off-key but spirited Gay Gordons. I adore the Maharajah, so dashing in his scarlet dress with pearl buttons, drinking scotch and flirting.

10 November
A mongoose is on the prowl round the breakfast tables this morning, which makes me scan the ground for possible cobras. Tomorrow we leave Udaipur to continue filming in other locations in or near Jaipur, 250 miles to the north-east. The rest of the cast fly out while I get back onto a jam-packed overnight train.

12 November
Arrive in the Pink City. John Madden had warned us: for Udaipur think Harrogate, for Jaipur, Birmingham but with 20 times more traffic. I think it’s more like Catford. The difference is, here cows wander in and out of the shopping malls and the goats wear stripy jumpers.

16 November
As we set out to work at 6am it’s already hot and humid, then suddenly there’s a crack of thunder, torrents of rain and the brightest forks of lightning I’ve ever seen. We’re about to shoot the bus ride when our characters arrive in India and make their way to the Marigold Hotel. It means we’ll be driving on the motorway all day and into the night. It’s now 7.15am and the cast are huddled in their Winnebagos, quaking with fear. Meanwhile, one of the Indian crew, our props master heroically holding an umbrella, is struck by lightning. Although his arm goes a bit numb and he’s shaken, he’s otherwise unharmed. Then flash, bang… he falls to the ground again. Who said lightning never strikes twice? According to local folklore this man is now considered a god.

17 November
Twenty elephants parade past the hotel on their way to the royal wedding tomorrow. The Maharajah of Jodhpur’s only son, Prince Shivraj Singh, India’s most eligible bachelor, is getting married to Gayatri Kumari, princess of the Himalayan kingdom of Askot and the whole thing is happening in our hotel! Prince Charles, Sting, Bruce Willis, Mick Jagger and John Travolta are all on the guest list. How come the Maharajah knows all these celebrities? The answer is, I believe, that the groom went to a posh English boarding school.

18 November
Wow – the wedding is sensational! The lawn is a breathtaking sea of saris. The lady guests delight at discovering James Bond’s M and Harry Potter’s Professor McGonagall – Dames Judi and Maggie – on the same hotel lawn watching the nuptial splendour below, then we’re invited by the Maharani of Jaipur to join the reception. Elephants with painted heads and toenails lead the parade, a golden carriage pulled by white horses delivers the groom and then the male guests follow. The tradition is for the women to stay apart for the procession. Peter Mandelson is also at the hotel for another party. Judi and I take bets on whether he’ll say hello. He doesn’t, but Jude dares me to, and I do. He is charming. Among in-house services of this hotel, I notice, it lists a ‘hotel astrologer’. I’ve seen him, but he’s spooky and always in a bad mood.

19 November
This morning we finished a night shoot at 1.50am, and I didn’t get to bed until 3.30am. Tom Wilkinson and his wife Diana invite me to go to the Monkey Palace today, three natural bathing pools set in a mountain where the water is famously blessed, guarded by sacred monkeys. When I ask Dame Mags if she wants to join us, she replies, ‘I’ve been there.’ And with those three words I know exactly what it is going to be like. It’s utter filth, three levels of disgusting putrid pools swarming with bad-tempered monkeys. The highest pool is green and looks as if someone’s been sick in it.

20 November
Total haze this morning. Mags says when she looked out of the window she thought she was in Argyll. It is damp and raining. We have to have a day off as we can’t be filmed travelling the streets in our tuk-tuks in this murk, otherwise they might think we’ve been filming off the North Circular. Maggie, Penelope and I go to The Gem Palace, the most famous shop in Jaipur, and have fun trying on priceless diamond headdresses in the back room.

27 November
While the rain comes down we still can’t film. Olivia, our second assistant director, takes me to see the men making flower garland necklaces and curtains for all the weddings at the Rambagh Palace Hotel and elsewhere in Jaipur. The scent of all the rose petals, sacks of them, huge vases of tea roses all being decorated by the men (no women in sight) is beyond belief and nostril.

1 December
It’s 4.35am and we pile into cars for the  two-hour drive to film a scene that includes  a funeral pyre. There’s mist rising from the grass verges and vibrant pink bougainvillea blooming for miles along the central spine of the motorway. We’re going to the Hindu equivalent of a cemetery or crematorium, and that means we’ll be filming on holy ground. Under the strict Hindu laws no meat is allowed. The crew aren’t very pleased with breakfast – they’d prepared themselves for no sausage and bacon, but now discover eggs aren’t permitted either on this hallowed ground, and we’re here until sunset. Uh-oh…

2 December
I’m told England is in the grip of blizzards. The M1 and A1 are closed, trains frozen on lines in Kent, people stuck all night, and some airports closed. Not ours I hope, as we fly home tomorrow.

3 December
As I write this curled up in my ‘sleeping suite’ on the plane I wonder how I can say thank you enough for this enchantment. As we start our descent to Heathrow I realise that soon it will be as though it never happened. The music in my headphones as we land is Doris Day singing Qué Será Será. It’s still dark here – but back in India it’s 11am. I know that, as I haven’t changed my watch. We disembark from our royal red barge and are driven up the hill to the steps of the Maharajah’s palace, where bagpipes herald our arrival. It made our hearts sing and our eyes water. Guards on white stallions are dressed in scarlet, with cockerel plumes on their hats. While glasses of Veuve Clicquot and flaming mutter paneer on sticks (an Indian cheese delicacy) are passed around, a tiny piper in tartan trews and spats plays a slightly off-key but spirited Gay Gordons. I adore the Maharajah, so dashing in his scarlet dress with pearl buttons, drinking scotch and flirting.

-    Celia Imrie.  This article first appeared in the Daily Mail (18/02/2012)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is released in cinemas Friday 24th February.

“I can’t believe how many casinos there are in Colombo man!” exclaims an Indian friend recently returned from Sri Lanka.  He seems unable to grasp the fact a nation of Buddhist vegans who regularly practice yoga and meditation could engage in such sinful activities as roulette. 

Most Indians are given to believing that the rather insignificant little tear-drop shaped Island off the southern tip of their vast country is merely the guest house that Lord Ravana – having stolen Sita from Lord Rama – settled down at for some TLC and not the world’s most ideal place for a holiday.  A classic case in point is the Indian film industry.  In between boy meeting girl, boy beating bad guys etc, Bollywood heroes and heroines have been magically and frequently transported to such striking locations as the Seychelles, Mauritius, The Maldives, South Africa or Malaysia, side-stepping the exquisite splendor of Sri Lanka at their very doorstep.  It’s a similar story with Britons who very strangely prefer to take a 15-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok even if it is submerged in 15 feet of water, or fly via Sri Lanka and on to The Maldives.

Sure, a bloody civil war raged in Sri Lanka for 30 years until 2009 but like most countries afflicted by such annoyances as ethnic conflicts, the bloodiness was confined to only very specific verdant locales whilst in the rest of the country men and women continued to top up their tans, fornicate, sip cocktails and play beach cricket in the most exquisite settings.  In fact, and unbeknownst to the travel trade, tens of thousands of holiday makers made their way to the Island to experience its’ many and varied wonders in relative isolation. 

Now however – in the two and half years since the end of hostilities between the government and the LTTE – the world is taking Sri Lanka into account.

Top Destination of the World

The media are agog; the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveller and Forbes have all named Sri Lanka in their top destination lists for 2010, 2011 and 2012.  Industry experts are raving about the fact that this tiny Island, no bigger than the Southeast of England – give or take a few square miles – packs such a dense array of attractions for every type of visitor imaginable.  Its relatively central location makes it a most appealing destination; the 11-hour flight time from the UK meaning it’s far more bearable than a sojourn to the Far East where on average, 96 out of a possible 336 hours will be eaten up by the flight and consequent recovery periods. 

Intriguingly, 2012 may be the most perfect time to travel to the Island.  Prior to the end of the war in 2009, tourist arrivals hovered around the 50,000 to 100,000 mark.  In 2010 arrivals topped 600,000 and last year it finally crossed the 1 million mark.  The government aims to clog the place up with nearly 3m visitors by 2015 so there’s never been a better time to get in and explore.

Serendib

Due to its’ aforementioned central location Sri Lanka has attracted travelers for centuries; from Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama to Don Bradman and Mark Twain who, upon stepping off the boat ruminated, “All harmonious, All in perfect taste”.  In fact, Sri Lanka has long been known as ‘Serendib’ due to its knack of throwing up beautiful little surprises.  That serendipitous nature is largely due to the sheer variety that is on offer a mere 3 hours in any direction, wherever you are on the Island.  

In spite of its’ small stature, the numbers are staggering: more than 1300 kilometers of coastline, a large portion of it in the North and East of the Island untouched for more than 3 decades due to the War, now open for sun worship.  No less than 8 United Nations World Heritage Sites, some dating back thousands of years.  Virgin tropical forests with the world’s highest density of leopards; indeed wildlife ranging from leopards and elephants to a mind-numbing array of birds and even whales; whale watching off the southern coast is one of the country’s fastest growing tourist attractions. 

Unbeatable variety

And of course there’s no dearth of food and accommodation.  Sri Lankan cuisine has long been underrated; in particular because unlike in its largely vegetarian, behemoth of a neighbor, meat and seafood dishes are commonplace.  All Sri Lankan dishes use a wide variety of spices – from Cinnamon to Red Chillies – that make for an eye-opening dining experience inspired by everything from Portuguese to Malaysian cuisine.  And the range of food on offer is extensive; from fine dining restaurants in the major cities and 5-star hotels to small, all-night eateries, you’re spoilt for choice.

It’s the same with the accommodation.  There are currently more than 25,000 rooms; from ultra-luxury suites and boutique hotel rooms with butlers and your own cook to quaint little guest houses with quaintly ancient plumbing there’s a place to bed town for the night whether you own a limitless Amex card or depend on your mom to do a Western Union transfer to you every week. 

Incidentally, in an economic climate where everyone is on the lookout for good value, Sri Lankan cannot be bettered as a holiday destination.  A recent survey by The Post Office compared how much a typical basket of holiday items – including drinks and suntan lotion – cost in a number of destinations with Sri Lanka coming in as the 3rd cheapest.  The cost of the basket was less than GBP28 in Sri Lanka and just under GBP38 in Spain.  The same 8 items, which also included a three-course evening meal for two, was as much as GBP108 in Costa Rica, GBP113 in Barbados and just over GBP113 in Singapore.

Once the basics like food and accommodation are sorted, there’s no lack of activities to engage in.  For sun worshippers whose idea of heaven is lying on a pristine white beach with the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean lapping at their feet then the south western coast with the beaches of Tangalle, Bentota, Hikkaduwa and Polhena are perfect.  If you’re prepared to venture a little further round the Island, previously inaccessible beach stretches in Arugam Bay and Kalmunai or even the untouched peninsula of Kalpitiya in the Northwest provide plenty of sun, sand and surf.

Once you’re tired of the gamma rays, you could make your way further inland to explore myriad experiences; visit the world’s first elephant orphanage in Kandy; do a spot of leopard hunting in Yala National Forest or discover the staggering beauty of the Sinharaja Rain Forest.  If nature gets a bit tired, you can visit one of the numerous World Heritage Sites on the Island; form the ancient ruins of Sigiriya Rock Fortress – one of the true wonders of the world – to the old Arabic trading post of Galle and its’ ancient Dutch Fort or the thousand-year-old cities such as Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura. 

The world’s finest tea

If you’re an outdoorsy type, then there is white water rafting, hiking and cycling aplenty in the cool Central Mountains.  Or if you’re after some old world rest and relaxation, head further up the hills, home to the finest tea in the world and experience a world of luxury and relaxation at one of numerous tea-based holidays; check in at an old colonial bungalow and be pampered before taking a trip down to a tea producing factory and getting a taste of everyone’s favorite tipple at its’ very source.

The variety and choice isn’t just evident on the ground in Sri Lanka.  Whilst all the major tour operators such as Kuoni and Thomas Cook offer holiday packages, there is an absolute glut of smaller – and significantly, Sri Lankan-owned – travel companies in London and outside who offer unbeatable options: from cheap as chips airline tickets to tailormade holiday packages with the added bonus of local knowledge. 

For more information visit www.srilanka.travel 

- Vijitha Alles

Munnar is located at the Idukki district of Kerala State in South India.Munnar's mesmerising greenery, mountain scenery, calmness and cool refreshing air attracts honeymooners and tourists throughout the year. It is a weekend hideout location for domestic tourists during summer season. Foreign travellers likes watching the natural beauty of Kerala while the journey from Thekkady to Munnar.

Munnar is at the confluence of three rivers. In Tamil, the word 'munnu' means "three" and 'aar' means "river". Hence "Munnar" is a shortened version of 'Munnu Aar'. The 3 mountain streams joining together here are Madurapuzha, Nallathanni and Kundala.

Munnar is a commercial centre with one of the world's best tea estates. There are about 30 tea plantations in and around Munnar. Among these, majority of the plantations are owned by Tata Group's Kannan Devan Tea Estate. A visit to Munnar can witness the nurturing of tea in plantation to the process of manufacturing and packing.

The tea estates, hills, lakes and forests inside Munnar area exposes it's beauty. The tea plants covered Munnar hills makes the feeling of seeing a wide green carpet.