A Sight for Mysore Eyes

We arrived in the late afternoon at Mysore, but lost no time in exploring the city. The hotels were all full and expensive, overpriced for what they are. But we luckily found a manager who gave us a (gasp!) 400Rs reduction! 

Sunset in front of Mysore Palace.

The sunsets in this region, Karnataka, are breathtaking...

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There were a lot of touts in front of the palace, promising incense, oils and weed. We ignored them as best we could, but one very insistent guy (who seemed drunk) was so offended when we asked him to shut up and go away that he started screaming at us: "INDIA IS MY COUNTRYYYYY! I WALK WHERE I WAAAANT!!!!" Well, he had a point... And for the first time ever, I think Henri was genuinely scared and pushed me to go the other way. The dude was a different level of pagal (crazy).

January 14 - Day 100

We are really behind on the blog right now. In reality, we are now in Aurangabad. We arrived, freezing, around 4am and slept at the train station until 7am. We got a place to stay very early in the morning, with a soft bed, big windows, a mountain view and satellite TV... worlds apart from our Mumbai hotel, a picture that would startle and amaze you soon, when we have the chance to upload that chapter of the trip.

To celebrate this very special occasion, our hundredth day in India, we watched movies and slept and read the newspaper until we felt like we were at home again. Of course, the city has its nice sights and pilgrimage sites, but after the tortuous 99 days on the road, it was a treat to spend a Saturday like everyone else :)

It would have been great to reach Ahmedabad today because it's the city's famous kite festival... but we couldn't pass up the chance to see Ellora, the rock-cut wonder of the ancient world, which we'll visit tomorrow.

Perhaps to make us feel less regretful about missing the kite festival, the sky rewarded us with a nice sunset studded with warring kites :)

A special thought to the nice people we met along the way, a defiant middle finger to the a-holes, and big thanks for the strange and difficult things we went through that helped us learn more about the world and about ourselves. The world is a wonderful, beautiful teacher.

Christmas Ooty

Après une nuit glaciale le soir du 24 Décembre, il a dû faire entre 3 et 7 degrés dehors et la chambre n'avait pas de chauffage (à quoi çà sert quand il fait froid 2 mois dans l'année?), nous sommes partis le Dimanche 25 Décembre pour un tour en minibus, comme de bons touristes qui n'ont pas envie de réfléchir.

Marj ne se sentait pas au top de sa forme mais nous sommes tout de même partis vers 9h30. Le temps de récupérer d'autres touristes, essentiellement indiens, et nous nous sommes arrêtés dans 4 endroits sur la route de la réserve naturelle à 70km de Ooty.

1er arrêt, une "forêt" de pin, d'après eux, mais il y a avait un bout de colline avec une centaine de pins et cela nous a paru étrange de s'arrêter pour des pins. Sauf qu'ici, ils se s'arrêtent pas devant une forêt de bambous ou d'arbre à coco car ce sont des arbres comme nos pins. :)

2ème arrêt, nous avons monté une colline pour admirer ce pont de vue qui a servi dans de nombreux films ("filim" avec l'accent indien) indiens, surtout des Tollywood, l'équivalent des Bollywod mais au Tamil Nadu.

3ème arrêt, les waterfalls. Un petit lac avec les chutes d'eau, je suis très fier de cette photo où seulement 3 personnes apparaissent au loin, car à chaque arrêt il y a beaucoup de monde, beaucoup de voitures et de bus, plein de touristes qui font le même trajet pour voir ces "attractions" de la région de Ooty.

Shake Your Ooty (On Xmas Eve!)

Going to the hill station of Ooty was an uphill battle, literally and figuratively.

First, because we were in Munnar in Kerala and Ooty is in Tamil Nadu. The two states are at oods with each other because of the dam and protesters allegedly attack buses. We saw it in the news. Another reason is that we needed to go to Mettupalayam first via Coimbatore, then pray that we can get a seat at the toy train at Mettupalayam going to Ooty. The train has been booked solid since October, and we took tickets anyway because we were told at the reservation counter in Munnar that people do get lucky sometimes and get on the train at the last minute. 

Well, the string of events that followed could make the weak break down and cry, but two and a half months in India had made us stronger... or maybe just stubborn about doing things the hardcore backpacker way :) 

The bus we needed for Coimbatore at 6:30 am didn't arrive and we took option 2, which is a bus to the next town (Udumalpet) that left at 8:30am. From there, we had to take a bus to Coimbatore, but it was a challenge to simply get out of the bus because a tide of people was pushing its way into the bus even before we could go out!

Henri and other foreigners passed all the tourist backpacks through the front window instead, because there was no way we could get our bags through the door anymore!

On the bus to Udumalpet, we met Prince, who had a meeting in Coimbatore and decided to help us maneouver the challenging world of buses in Tamil Nadu. The trip out of Munnar was beautiful, and the scenery changed dramatically from eucalyptus and sandalwood trees to cacti and trees that reminded us of the african savanna. Prince told us sometimes elephants and tigers pass through the highway because it's a protected forest. Someone should protect them from the crazy bus drivers. 

From Udumalpet, he joined us to find the bus to Coimbatore and from there, he took a bus with us to the new bus station where we could catch a bus to Mettupalayam. He didn't have to, but he felt obliged to help us, probably because we didn't look like tough-as-nails backpackers :)

We spent the night at Mettupalayam and the next day we were at the train station at 6:30am for the toy train, just like the ticket guy at Munnar told us. But, HOLD ON! 

When we got there, there were about 20 foreigners milling around anxiously. There was a guy with his daughter who looked desperate, and his daughter looked like she knew there was very little chance left for her to get on the cool train. I was nervous and Henri was starting to think we should go and get a bus instead.

Munnar

Munnar is THE place we would return to if we ever have the good luck to return to India. It is green and clean and beautiful. 

Munnar is 1,500 meters from sea level, so even though we are still in the south of India, it's quite cold. When we woke up, the windows were misted up and it was foggy outside, we had steam coming out of our mouths when we breathed. Such a big change from where we were just a day before!

The view outside our room at sunrise.

The market just outside our door.

In the center of town, there are three hills. One is for Mount Carmel Church (shout out to my mommy!)

Alleppey to Munnar (December 18-20)

Just a quick flip through the next 2 days in Alleppey...

We had heard about Amma, "The Hugging Mother", and wondered if we could see her at the ashram in Amritapuri, south of Alleppey. Ralph was supposed to go with a guy he met at the beach; but Faisal warned him to avoid that guy, so Ralph went with us instead.

It was a long trip, we had 2 bus changes.

When we arrived, two Americans pushing a cart of trash bins gave us directions. We told them we are only there for the day, and they said they thought they would only be there for a day and ended up staying for years... meanwhile, I was thinking, "shoot, I didn't bring extra clothes."

Ashram temple.

Happy New Year!

We wish everyone a great start this new year!

Hope everyone will be happy, healthy and safe.

Grab a bottle or two for us please, and have a party! 

Love and miss you all,

Henri and Marj

Alleppey (December 16)

We didn't want to bother looking for places to stay when we arrived in Alleppey that afternoon so this time we went straight to the place recommended by Ramee from Bamboo House in Cochin. 

Faisal's guest house was ok, and just in front of a beach that was surprisingly clean. Nobody talks about the beach scene in Alleppey so we were happy to have a quiet place, not too many tourists wandering about. They were all at the backwaters after all :)

There were a couple of people there already. One of them was Bonnie, who heard us asking about toddy. She showed us around the market area and then took us to the toddy shop and the alcohol store. We wanted to hide the bottles of beer, rhum and toddy that we had. We didn't have a lot, but still we wanted to be discreet. The store gave us this box... Not sure it was a better alternative.

Backwaters

A rickshaw picked us up at 10am from the bus station and brought us to a village on the outskirts of town. It was quiet and there were hardly any people, except the women who work in the shrimp packing factory nearby.

A boat was waiting for us on the banks of the lake and the boatman punted us through a small canal that led to another lake surrounded by coconut trees and fish pens.

It was our day to feel like "royalty." We didn't have to do anything, everything we needed was in the boat. 

We picked this backwater trip because it is the antithesis of the boat trips in Alleppey. Aside from being a quiet place with just 2 boathouses making the trip every day, the lights on the boat are solar-powered and we didn't have a noisy motor polluting the air and the water.

Just Coasting in Fort Cochin

On our last full day in Fort Cochin, we thought we would try the breakfast in TPot. It's been a while since I had a waffle and Henri wanted pancakes. It's funny how ordinary things like that can be so missed, especially since 98% of the places we've tried served their IDEA of French crepes, not yummy, fluffy pancakes.