Meeting the group of morons

 



Starting the day with a 6 hour car trip to Delhi airport and a tearful farewell to the enigmatic Mr Singh, our loyal driver.


Uneventful flight to Combotoire in Tamil Nadhu and overnight in plush hotel.

Following morning highlighted with Dosa for breakfast


and meeting our travel companions for the next 2 weeks; I think we may be the youngsters in the group!

We stop off at a cotton making place and receive a long lecture on the history and manufacture of cotton cloth-this has everybody in fits of laughter.







Then a tour of a school whose gimmick is student empowerment. Great thali lunch.
Stop off at a village where everybody is a weaver




Local branch of Woolworths 




More driving to our eco lodge; eco lodge always means dodgy plumbing and toilet paper made out of coconut shells or corn husks-I was not dissapointed!



Average dinner but reasonable company.  I was generous with my whisky-half-way through dinner Joe decides he can liven up the evening by singing a capella "moonriver"-no more whisky for Joe!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hey, I didn't sign up for this

Image
 Indian hotels and guesthouses all have one thing in common-rows and rows of unmarked lightswitches randomly allocated to random lights in the room and bathroom. In order to master these requires at least a week in the one location-our longest stays are 3 days! Today we ascend the aptly named Meesapulimala, the highest peak open to the  public in South India. This is an opt in activity and there are only 4 of us; the others spend their day filling out applications for nursing homes Getting to base camp involved a 90 minute drive by luxurious Mahendra 4WD- by the time we arrive my spine is twisted out of shape and my legs are in the splits position. Led by the indomitable Hadlee we hit the  vertical trail-thank God we are so incredibly fit. Anyway we wheeze and pant our way to the summit and plant the Australian flag on top, noting that most climbers require oxygen-not for us! After a horrendous descent, involving much ascent we return to base camp where the sherpas have ...
Read more

Cranes in India

Image
  Today we are off to see the rarely sighted Sarus crane-the tallest flying bird in the world. Mr Bachchu is our venerable guide; we have a hair raising ride in a Mahindra jeep which fortunately does not have functioning seat belts-this means in case of accident we will die instantly rather than being severely injured and enduring a slow, protracted and painful death in a hospital. Apparently Indian doctors do not require any medical training! So we stop beside the road and we see a plethora of Sarus cranes as well as all sorts of other cranes, herons, ibises and the odd bin chicken. Mr Bachchu is a font  of information but fails to tell us that the Sarus crane is all over north Queensland. In the afternoon we tour a local village and are venerated by the inhabitants, Captain Cook style. Then it is off to a holy temple sort of place where we receive blessings by the Sadhus. In the evening we meet a middle aged American tourist who shows us her collection of Sadhu dickpix!
Read more

Getting a tan in Tanjore

Image
First visit today is the 7th century temple in Kandakonam. Then on to Tanjore. We firstly visit a palace full of ancient artefactuals and a library where we discover that back in the day you could discover somebody's personality by how much they resemble animals. We spent the rest of the day classifying everybody around us-just try it, its a lot of fun. After this we see the aptly named Big Temple. It is hotter than Hades here and we are obliged to walk around shoeless on the red hot ground. Lunch is at a local hotel-thali. The wait staff are very attentive, maybe a little bit more than absolutely necessary.
Read more