South India Tour Part I

The trip began on November 17, a wonderful Wednesday. We three Coimbatorians- Julia from upstate New York, Oskar from Germany, and myself- took my first train ride to Bangalore to meet the other exchange students. They had gone to a zoo to see elephants and tigers and other Indian animals and so we didn't meet them until dinner. It was such a relief to meet other "inbounders". The next day we drove in a big bus to a place called Mysore, which is pretty close to Coimbatore. There we went to a bird sanctuary and, although it wasn't much, we saw crocodiles chilling on rocks and a bunch of white ibuses. Then we continued to our hotel before going to a lights and sound show later that evening. The show was about fifteen minutes of Hindi music with a fountain shooting up in different patterns out of a pool, illuminated by colored lights. It was pretty cool... I was impressed.

Next we went to Ooty which was about 40 degrees F, and freezing! We didn't do much there except see a waterfall on the drive and go shopping for a while in the night- only the first of the two-week shopping spree. 

On Friday we traveled back down the Nilgiris (meaning blue mountains) to our hometown of Coimbatore where we met Julia's Rotary club and had dinner with them after a long meeting. Julia and I went shopping. 

Saturday we spend almost completely in the bus, traveling to Madurai. This was one of my favorite places because our hotel was in the middle of the city and only a few blocks away from the famous Meenakshi Temple. It was a huge temple, with five entrances each made of an enormous..... tower of sculptures about eight stories high. It's difficult to describe, but it was so beautiful. Our group stood in the long line to enter the interior of the temple. I saw two camels for the first time... exciting! Inside was a beautiful pond and fountain in the very center under the open sky. The painted ceiling covered the dozens and dozens of God statues and symbols to pray to and gift. There was a painted elephant somewhere in the enormous space, and I got a goofy picture with it. It's trunk touched my head just as the pic was taken and I was a little freaked out. The group split up after this and migrated towards the more attractive tourist shops, or, in Julia and my case to the ice cream shop. 

Sunday was another long day in the bus. This time we traveled for another eight hours, more or less, to the southernmost tip of the subcontinent. It was a town named Kan Yakumari. The interesting name was explained to us by our tour guide: Kanya means virgin, and kumari means girl. It was named after a girl who was so in love with Lord Shiva she vowed never to marry or have any relation to a man unless it was Lord Shiva. Poor woman never got her dream. So they named a town after her, and wow it was so beautiful. We got there just as the torrential downpour started, so we weren't able to do our tour. The 18 of us tried to wait out the rivers that ran along the small streets, but after an hour we spotted a Baskin Robbins. What American would choose freezing in the rain over ice cream, even if we did get soaked up to our  knees from the whitewater flow. 

TBC...