Blogs from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, Asia - page 3

..... At least only to catch your train out! :-) So this is my first blog entry, welcome to my blog. To people who know me I'm sure this will be a welcome relief from my long rambly emails which you then feel obliged to read and reply to: this way you have a choice! There won't be any photos on this one as I'm still working out the technology (ie the wires that came with my camera) to do this, but will have some really soon! I'm 3 and a half months into my trip already, can't believe I've survived India for so long actually! Briefly (if I can....) I flew to Mumbai (though my luggage didn't, so that was my first fun task in India) on Oct 20, stayed a fraught day and night ... read more

We were slightly nervous about the train from Palolem to Mangalore - at just over 50p for a 5 hour train journey, something had to be wrong. We had visions of clinging to the train roof / door / windows as per horror stories of local Indian trains, but the reality was far more positive, with some friendly, interesting locals making the journey go past pretty quickly. One group of men who were chatting to Sarah were absolutely fascinated by the Lonely Planet guide and took it in turns to read it on the journey. Another lot witnessed my pathetic attempt to lift my backpack over my head and onto the luggage rack and put it up there for me as if it were a massive bag of popcorn (rather than a tonne of bricks). These ... read more

William, Hugh, Jan and Bone have been in Ooty -- a hill station -- for 2 days. We are all taking the famous steam train on the narrow gauge tracks down to the plains this afternoon. Here are some photos from our time in Ooty: ... read more

Prasanna and Santhana put up traditional decorations in their yard which announced to the neighborhood that an auspicious event was taking place in their home. (I'm not sure, but I don't think it's specific just to weddings, but to any "auspicious" event.) Side note: "Auspicious" is not really a word that I'm particularly familiar with, but it's used often in India. Looking it up in my thesaurus (after using the spell checker), I find that it means: favorable, positive, promising, fortunate, propitious, lucky and good. There was a canopy of woven banana leaves that covered over not only the entrance to the yard, but the whole yard. (you can’t tell this from the photo, only the part over the gate is visible). At the two sides of the gate there were two full sized banana trees ... read more

I will post more of the photos relating to this entry later. Saturday, December 31, 2005 Time is a funny thing these days…sometimes it seems like a day is a week because of all the experiences one day can hold… other times it seems as if it’s flying by. Our trip is almost over. Several days ago (I can’t say exactly how many because of that time thing I just mentioned) we left for a trip to Kerala. At the start of the trip those traveling included Praveen’s parents, Prasanna and Santhana, his sister, Sandhya, his uncle, Mohen, aunt, Vina, their toddler twins, Vina’s mother, two of Praveen’s close friends, Shaggy and hummm…. Schrader (spelled incorrectly I’m sure), Greg, Angela, Ruth, Praveen, and myself. We took a large van as well as a car. The van ... read more