Xmas

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Our travel plans for the next week have forced some commitments on us. We are booked to fly from Madurai to Colombo, Sri Lanka, 28th December. We had hoped to spend Xmas in Colombo but Airfares were prohibitive over the Xmas break period, We only had one spot on our must see agenda, the Meenaski temple in Madurai so had to come up with a plan for the remaining 4 days. We spotted a hill station , Kodaikanal, in the Western Ghats that was only 4 hours by bus from Madurai so started planning a trip. Looking on Booking.com I spotted a Xmas deal being offered at the best hotel in town. It would work out costing us the savings we had just made on the airfares but after all its Xmas so decided to splash out. So here we are at the Carlton Hotel. Full buffet breakfast and dinner, complimentary tour package for 4 hours, 30 minutes boating on the lake, 200 channels of satellite TV plus entertainment action all day long. Bingo at 6 pm!! Did I mention the Bar?

We had arranged to call home mid-day Xmas day NZ time to chat to family. That meant a 5am wake up call. I hope no-one was too upset being created on video calling by two people in bed wearing Santa hats which were given to us at the Xmas Eve buffet and disco the night before.

This is certainly a part of India only the privileged few get to visit and stay and feels very out of place from what we have experienced so far. In some ways looking forward to getting back to the hustle and bustle of the plains. Certainly not looking forward to the bus down the hill.

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Photos

Catholic Church
Xmas mass being presented

Comments

[Sachin]

Great..
Wonderful Christmas it seems. Hope you had a great time cooling off at the hill station.

[Don and Shelley]

Cooling off
Yes it was. It was cool in the evenings and we hadn't packed for that. The hotel had big open fire pit which was welcome.