Periyar

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Well, it's been quite an eventful few days. First, I quit the Mohiniattam. It was just too painful. Now I'm doing a different type of dance that starts with a B that I can't spell. It involves a lot of foot stamping. Also, this weekend seven of the students (myself included) went on a weekend trip to Periyar, which is up in the Cardamom hills. It's about a four hour drive on a ridiculously narrow road up the side of a mountain with gigantic buses coming at you from the other direction. There's no guardrails and the fog was intense (actually we were going through cloud we were so high up) and every once in a while a cow would amble onto the road. However, everything was a beautiful lush green, and it was quite cool (In the 60s I'd say), and there were gorgeous rolling hills everywhere. On Saturday morning we took a tour around a tea plantation and a spice garden. It was interesting to see everything that we use at home in cooking still on the branch. In the afternoon we took a boat around the wildlife sanctuary (Periyar is a tiger reserve). About five minutes into the boatride, it began to rain quite heavily and the wind began to blow. We only saw a few water buffalo and some sambar (a deer-like thing), and all in all it wasn't a terribly good experience. Once we got off the boat there were some very aggressive monkeys who I swear wanted to take my camera. Saturday night we saw a mini Kathakali performance (another type of dance) (mini because the real ones at temples go on for about six hours). We then returned to our rooms, which weren't the greatest, but what can you expect for $2.50 a night. They would have been fine, had it not been so wet. Because of the humidity, every piece of fabric was quite damp, including the sheets and our clothes. On Sunday most people did some shopping, but I just kind of sat around (although I did go to the bookstore as I've run out of books). Also, I discovered that my flash disk is having some issues, so all of the pictures from Hyderabad may be lost (which is really unfoutunate). I'm using my other flash card and I hope when I get home someone will be able to extract the pictures. For now you'll just have to content yourselves with pictures of Periyar. I'm going to town tomorrow to get a SIM card (apparently with an Indian card it's 8 cents a minute to the U.S.) so I should be back in touch soon.

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Photos

Waterfall
We stopped at this lovely waterfall for some tea on the way to Peryiar.

A Giant Spider
This spider was right along the path we took to walk through some coffee and pepper plants. Including the legs it's about as big as my hand.

Periyar Reserve
This is the lake that we took our boat ride around.

Mama and Baby
These are the monkeys that greeted us when we got off the boat.

Comments

[Melinda]

Great pictures and ya' gotta watch out for those monkeys!