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Published: February 23rd 2009
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Mysore Market
KumKum powder Namaskar (Hello) all! Hope everyone is well back in Sunny England... We are still having the time of our lifes you will all be pleased to know! Here in the baking sunshine may i add! Right....lets bring you all bang up to date....
After leaving Thrissur we went to another place in Kerala called Guruvayur, where we visited Punnathur Kotta Elephant Camp. Elephants in India are used for all the festivals and special events at temples and are considered lucky due to the God 'Genesh', at this camp there was about 50 elephants of all different ages, each one having 3 personal 'Mahouts' to look after it - they get washed and scrubed a few times a week, and you can tell they love it! We got to walk around amougst them all and got to stroke one too, it was cool to see them all so happy.
From Guruvayur we headed to Calicut to break up our journey to Mysore, unfortunately we arrived after a long journey right in the middle of some mass political demonstration!!!! It was mental...thousands of people marching throught the street, shouting and chanting! (still dont know what about!) All we wanted to do
was get the hell out of there!, The city was at a stand still, and you couldnt get a train out for love nor money so some how we managed to find a room for the night after much searching and Tuk Tuk rides!
The next morning we got a bus to Mysore in Karnataka, which is a big city, but alot cleaner and nicer than the others we have visited, it has a market which sells lots of KumKum powder which is used for dying clothes or painting with, It's vibrant colours all stacked up are amazing to see!
We also meet a very GREEDY lying cheat! who called himself Max and basically would have sold his mum if she had of been there! He directed us to this little old women who was making incent sticks then tried to charge us to take a photo of her as he knew he was not going to get money out of us by any other means! He seriously put us off Indians that day, and we had a real 'lets pick on the indians day!' picking out any fault they did or didnt have!
We then wanted to
Jog Falls
A long way down....! But worth every step! move onto the coast but needed to break the long journey so got a train to Hassen which was an experience! This train was busy so we ended up standing near one of the exits, within minutes we found ourselves surrounded by Indian males, once again we became animals in the zoo! This was probably the worst its been, they were all staring, pointing, laughing - it was crazy! I tried to ask them what was so funny but was just told they didn't understand English, then the ringleader started to fire questions at me (in English) whilst the others looked on..... So more then joined in, making our section probably busier than the whole train! but we had no where to go, as we couldnt possibly sqeeze past everyone! At last one of the young men spoke a little English, enough to explain that we had got on a train that had picked up lots of people from villages who had not seen 'white' people before, they found us fascinating! Our skin colour, our hair, our body languange.. pretty much everything about us!!! Although this doesnt make it any nicer when your the victim it kinda makes sense, and
Ami's new friend!
She has not had a rabies jab, but just cant leave them alone! we can now understand from past experiences why they stare like they do! To them we are sort of Famous because we are something they only see on TV.
The journey took forever, the train was late leaving then lots of delays along the way made us arrive at our destination late, around 10.30pm, we started our usual walk around the hotels to get a room, constantly being followed by this one Tuk Tuk driver who only wanted to take us to hotel where he gets comission.... After trying all the hotels, and even being helped by a posh hotel to phone round the ones we didnt know of we had hit a wall!!! We had no choice but to head back to the Train station and wait till the morning for the next train.... so thats what we did, settled ourselves down on the platform, sleeping bags out with all the beggers, tramps and dogs!!!! We knew it would happen at some point, and was not as bad as it sounds as we managed to get a train to Mangalore half way through the night, and to tell the truth i would have prefered to sleep on the platform
Bamboo Beach hut
Our new home for the next week in Gokarna. any day!!!! This train was the busiest i have ever seen! We have to sleep in a section which was designed to sit (at a push) 10, yet there was 17 of us trying to sleep in it! Ami got right in there, on the floor with the rest of them! whilst i sat and waited for morning to come!
Mangalore arrived and there is not much to write about so after one night we quickly moved on to Udupi which was much the same, just a stop gap as we were heading to Jog falls.
Jog Falls was amazing, Firstly the place was almost deserted. We managed to stay at one of the hotels overlooking the falls themselves, so we got up early and walked down the steps to the falls, there was about 2000 steps, and following that lots of bolders and rocks to climb over to get near to the actual waterfall, but if you really wanted to get up close and personal you were faced with a challange, as the rocks from this point on get more slippery due to the constant flow of water which creates a 'SLIME'. We weighed it up and decided
Gokarna Kootlee beach
Them Cows just get everywhere! we had not come down all those stairs only to look, we wanted IN! so off we went! It took forever even though it actually was not that far, we felt like proper rock climbers by the end of it! Only shame was we had no one to take a picture! Standing under the falls was so special... as well as being mega cold and so powerful it hurt! The adrenaline rush was amazing!
Then we had to get back up.... i dont think i have to tell you how hard this was do i???? By this point we were shattered and it was the midday heat!!!
From Jog Falls we got a bus to Gokarna which is 5 hours from Goa (our next destination), Gokarna is on the coast and is full of Hippy travellers, so lots of the dreadlock brigade out at force! Its so laid back and really nice, we managed to get ourselves a bamboo beach hut for 100 rupees a night between us (Yes thats 1.40 a night!....between us!) And we love it!
Today we have had our first proper day sunbathing and chilling out, and its been great, after all that travelling its nice to just relax, plus we have more of a choice in food, rather than just CURRY!
We are going to spend about 5 days here before moving onto Goa, this is the longest we have stayed anywhere so far and are both very content! Roll on the sunshine!
oh and....We had our flight out of India on the 14th of March cancelled as the airline are no longer running that flight anymore, so after a few phone calls we have managed to book another flight out to Hong Knong on the 16th (so a couple more days in India), We booked online and saved about 80 pounds each - Bonus!
Peace out x
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mummy lynnell
non-member comment
wow!!!
wot can i say..how amazing your latest destination looks!! had seen the kumkum powder on jackies pics, how colourful...jog falls!! wow!! im sooo jealous of the gorgeous sights you guys are seeing, bet it was sooo tiring climbing back up but well worth it heh!! ami uve gota be careful touchingthe dogs i know theyre irresistable but they only have to nip you the once and your stuffed!..please be careful it happens soo easily ames, really hard to resist i know cos you just feel so sorry for em dont you...but lord charles they arent and can easily turn...please ruth try and deter her!! loving the bamboo beach hut..soo cool, bet its lovely for you to chill out now after such hectic few wks...enjoy!..great to hear from you sunday ames and so glad your both ok...keep smiling round the world..enjoy goa im sure itl be amazing!!!!..lots of love,hugs and squidges...mummy and lord fartique xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx