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After the heat in Karnataka and still having some extra time we decided to head to the Nilgiri Mountains range in Tamil Nadu to soak up some chilly nights. Unfortuneatly, I started getting sick in Mysore and promptly became very sick in Ooty, having eaten all the same things as Brian and him being fine. I was on pretty strong antibiotics shortyly before we came here and my symptoms seemed to mirror intestinal infections that follow a little while after those antibiotics. Food poisoning generally doesn't start with two days of fevers and achiness. We visited a doctor who prescribed me more antibiotics, probiotics, some weird digestive pills called 'Happi - D' and was generally very friendly. It was very professional and unprofessional all at the same time. I got better in a few days and then Brian and I both proceeded to be sick in the classic India one day way and managed to recover just fine on our own.
The bus ride up to Ooty was probably nicer than the town itself, it wove up switchbacks through pine forests and tea plantations, passing through a national park along the way in which we saw deer and an elephant!!
In Ooty there is a thread garden containing flowers and plants all made by hand by an artist and some 50 other people. It took them 12 years and there were posters all over proclaiming the glory of the thread garden.
We bussed from Ooty to Coimbutore, stayed over night and discovered our train had been cancelled. Fortunately we could get on a bus to Kochi. We explored the island a little, there's more goats than people there and some nice colonial architecture. It was QUIET!, well, quiet for India at least. We saw a Kalarippayut demonstration and chatted with the members about their school (different from the one we are at) and were invited after we finish at ENS Kalari to come out to a class with them. We have a video of an urumi demonstrations, the master's weapon that is a several bladed flexible sword that master's wield to take out 30 people at once.
We travelled our to the Kalari, 8km away to find out the Guru was having giant family gathering and there was nowhere to stay. We were told to come back on the Tuesday and we would begin training that day.
We opted to head down to a town called Allepuzhu, the gateway to the backwaters of Kerala and known as the Venice of the East (overstatement!). The backwaters are kind of like the bayou of Louisiana, but not swampy. You can can take boats all over and people live throughout them. The principal activity in the town in renting houseboats in which you drift through the backwaters being cooked for doing nothing but watching the world go by, generally dumping your shit into the waters and polluting the area with the low-efficiency gas engines. It's also expensive (4000 - 7000 INR per night). So we decided to get the local experience and take the ferry through the back waters, a whopping 10 INR (25 cents) and goes through lovely scenery and stops all along the way picking people up and dropping them off.
The day we tried to leave Allepuzhu we were informed when trying to leave the hotel that there was a strike going on and all public transit was suspended. The town was eerily quiet with nothing open except a few restaurants and little stores, so we went swimming at the towns beach and caught a bus
out the next day.
We are finished our 6th day of training, 5:30 AM and 5:30PM each day, 1 to 2 hours each time. It hasn't rained in several days and is extremely hot, we sweat every drop of liquid out of us each class. The Gurukkal is quite nice, he was rather gruff during our first session but warmed up the next day. We even have a Canadian that started two days after to hang out with! Our next 3 weeks our entries will be all about Kalari, so I will give in to the exhaustion and elaborate later. Just wanted to let everyone know we are being treated well, are happy, healthy, in lots of pain and kicking and staff-swinging the days away.
Take care! Jenna and Brian
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Dean
non-member comment
30 people at once
I am always amazed at people good at martial arts but 30 people at once? Wow. I presume your few weeks of practice will not get you to that level. You may or may not be aware that there are bomb plots or violence of some sort predicted for India during the next week or so. I think mostly in the capital or in other large cities. It was in the news here a few days ago but I did not pay close attention. Hope you are not too exhausted to write more about your training soon. Dean