Vattakanal Cliffs

This morning Vera and I got up bright and early at the crack of dawn to hike to the Vattakanal Cliffs, the pride and joy of Kodaikanal. These cliffs boast the most beautiful view in the town, but if you get there later then 7 am, they will have already clouded over and the view is lost.

Lucky for us, the view this morning was absolutely breathtaking! As I sat at the edge of the cliffs, taking in the beauty of the mountains, a large troupe of monkeys suddenly came wandering up and starting hanging out near me. Some were napping or eating, others were play-fighting or grooming each other. It was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had!

The "winter line", it has something to do with inversion...obviously I must not have been paying attention during that Meteorology class.

View of the plains, far in the distance.

Mountains and valleys.

The monkeys arrive. They are all straining to get a look at Max the dog, an intimidating  rottweiler.

Chilling with the monkeys. Vera now refers to me as Jane Goodall.

Having a snack.

Just doing what monkey's do.

Pondi, Auroville, Chidambaram, Thanjavur

Cyd and I just got back from a wonderful 6-day trip through Southern India:
January 8th - Kodaikanal to Pondicherry
January 9th - Pondicherry to Auroville
January 10th - Auroville
January 11th - Auroville to Chidambaram
January 12th - Chidambaram to Thanjavur
January 13th - Thanjavur to Kodaikanal


Pondicherry:


We took the night sleeper bus from Kodaikanal to Pondicherry, watching loud Bollywood films the entire way. In Pondicherry - which is an Indian city boasting a hint of France - we stumbled upon the Pongal Festival, a yearly event that celebrates harvest through the decoration of the sacred cows, community bonfires and beautifully intricate kolams. We came across a street where a stunning kolam drawing competition was taking place. There were absolutely breathtaking drawings all along the street, consisting of bright and glittering powders of every colour.  Some of the designs were geometrically intricate while others were pictures of animals, or people, but all were beautiful!

The beginnings of the drawings. They first draw dots to outline where they will fill in the lines and colours, and then fill it in.

Auroville:


Cyd and I spent a few days in Auroville, staying in the Sharnga Guest House (in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by giant banyan trees) and taking in the weird phenomenon that is Auroville. Auroville is a hippie community that was founded by "The Mother" in 1968 as a place for people to live without a nation, without a religion, without possessions, with only Divine Spirituality. The town is centered around the Matrimandir, a giant hollow gold golf ball, supposedly the universal center of spirituality, where people go to meditate. Basically, Auroville is a place where hippies and/or burnt out Westerners come to take a time out from their real lives.


When it was first founded, Auroville was an ecological desert, void of plants of any kind. Since then, there has been an incredible restoration effort, and now the rare "tropical dry evergreen forest", the indigenous forest type for this area, has been restored. Auroville also does tons of research and development of renewable/sustainable energies, and have built a solar bowl, solar power plants, solar water heaters, and solar pumps. They also have a multi-step water purification process, where the last step is to expose the water to Bach and Mozart music.


Cyd and I rented bicycles and went for a tour of a 10-acre organic farm, called Buddha Garden, which was started by a woman named Priya in 2000. When she began, the land was barren, and through a fertilizer system of spreading layers and layers of cow urine mixed with leaves over the entire property, she has turned it into a productive organic farm. With the help of volunteers, she now grows maize, basil, bananas, cashews, beans, squash and pumpkins, etc. Since her farm is organic, she is unable to use pesticides or herbicides. In order to combat the weeds, she plants the crops farther apart so that the pests can't spread from plant to plant as easily, and has raised beds to reduce weed-growth. They are also fully solar powered and use drip irrigation in order to reduce their water usage.


We then went and wandered around a vegan eco-village called Sadhana Forest. This village was built around a 70-acre forest restoration project, and recruits volunteers to work in the village. Volunteers help out with the reforestation project, tree nursery, kitchen, alternative construction sites, garden or any number of other odd jobs. The community is quite sustainable, boasting an organic farm, solar panels, sustainable thatched houses, water resource management and composting toilets. This community was one of the coolest things I have ever seen, and I have decided that I HAVE to go back and live there for a few months!

Sharnga Guest house, in Auroville. It was awesome!

The Matrimandir, universal centre of spirituality.

Bicycle we rented.

Sadhana Forest eco-village, their thatched living quarters.

Chidambaram and Mangroves "Floating Forest":


We took a bus from Auroville to Chidambaram. The city buses in India can be a lot of fun! In the parking lot, the bus was practically empty. As it began to slowly move its way out of the parking lot, people started hopping onto the moving bus. So by the time the bus actually reached the exit, it was packed with people, complete with teenage boys hitching a free ride by hanging onto the outside of the bus, being yelled at by the bus driver to get off. Buses don't stop for people to get on and off here. They just slow down a bit, and the people jump out and onto the moving bus. Cyd and I haven't quite reached this level of comfort yet with the buses here, and will only get onto a stopped bus in the terminal. The buses also play loud Bollywood music, so Cyd and I grooved along to the music all the way to Chidambaram.


The next day we met up with Karthik, a biologist with PHCC (one of the environmental organizations I've been working with). Karthik has been doing a mangrove reforestation project along the coastal areas near the town of Pichavaram. PHCC had asked me to go out for a day with Karthik, to learn all about the ecological significance of mangroves and his reforestation efforts, and then write a little report about it for their website.  So Karthik took us out on a little rowboat to explore and learn about the mangroves. These mangroves saved two villages from devastation during the 2003 Tsunami. The mangroves were very interesting to see, with their roots raised above the water, their abundance of birds, and their long seed pods that germinate while still on the tree and then float in the water, hoping to get rooted into the soft mud. We saw tons of birds, including:

-bittern
-brahminy kite
-little cormorant
-green parrot
-darter

-black ibis
-little egret

-great egret
-painted stork
-black-crowned night heron

-red-rumped swallow

-Asian palm swift

-common kingfisher

Not a great picture, but the bird is a black-capped night heron, my favourite of the birds we saw at the mangroves.

Fishing for shrimp. According to Karthik, shrimp farms are the main threat to mangrove forests.

When Cyd and I tried going to the Nataraja Temple (which just looks like a smaller version of the Meenakshi Temple), we had a very unnerving experience. We were sitting outside of the temple when a group of teenage girls came and asked us if they could have a picture taken with us. We said sure, and had our picture taken with them. Then while we were chatting with them, a teenage guy came over and asked us the same thing. We said no, because it is not culturally acceptable to let that happen. As we continued to chat with the girls, a large group began to form around us. In less then a minute, a group of about 50 people were crowding around us trying to take our pictures, trying to get in pictures with us, and we even had a few people try and give us their young children to hold so that they could get a picture of their child with us. It was quite overwhelming and intimidating, having 50 people trying to get as close as possible to us for the best picture, while shoving their children at us. So we ran out of the temple as fast as possible, missing the "fire ceremony" in the temple, which is the entire reason why people go to the city of Chidambaram. Now don't get me wrong, we weren't flattered at all by all this attention. It was not because these people thought we were good-looking, it was because they thought we were extremely weird and freakish looking. We were two young white women wandering around a small town that sees white people on a very rare basis.

We ended up going for tea with the lovely group of young women we had met in the temple. They were all first year engineering students in a nearby college, very sweet and intelligent young women. It was a very cool experience to chat with these girls, learning about their cultures and experiences of being young women in their culture, so different from our own.

The sweet girls that we chatted with at the temple, and then took out for tea. They bought us key chains with our names on them so that we would remember them, and insisted that we tell our friends about them.

 Thanjavur:

In Chidambaram we were staying in an incredibly cheap but sketchy hotel. So after one night in the hotel, we noticed red bumps all over our arms, sides of our faces, and backs, which we quickly determined were bed bug bites. So we got out of there as soon as possible! Our nerve-rattling experience in the temple, combined with the itchy bed bug bites, made us realize that we had overstayed our welcome in the town of Chidambaram, and decided to bus it to our next destination: Thanjavur. The city of Thanjavur proved to be home to my favourite temple yet, the Brihadishwara Temple. This temple was wonderful as it was a happy medium between Meenakshi temple (too touristy) and Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram (so few tourists that we got mobbed and had to escape). Unfortunately though my batteries died before I was able to take any pictures of it, so I'll hopefully be able to get some from Cyd. This thousand year old temple marks the height of the Chola kingdom, and is known for the gigantic 16-feet long and 13-feet high Nandi statue (sacred bull).

We then began our long trek back to Kodaikanal. We took city buses all the way from Thanjavur to Kodaikanal, a journey which took us 10 hours and required us to switch buses 5 times at various bus terminals along the way. All in all it was a successful and fun trip, and I'm excited for our next one, to Hampi, Goa and Kovalam, which begins on January 21st!

Kodai Pics:

View from the Vattakanal Cliffs.

A political poster that we found really funny. Notice how Jesus is telling the children "Happy Birthday to me...".

Chennai (Madras)

George and I took a mini-trip to Chennai from December 30th - January 3rd to pick up his niece Cydney. We took the overnight sleeper train (where we each get our own bunk on the train to sleep) from Dindigul to Chennai, which is the fifth most populated city in India, with a population of approximately 8.2 million. We stayed in a backpacker hotel called Broadlands, which was a funky place to stay with its multiple outdoor courtyards, roof-top bathroom stalls and mini tree-temple in the middle of the hotel's main courtyard. The trees in the courtyards were home to green parakeets and the outdoor sinks were inhabited by luminescent-looking geckos that would poke their heads out from under the sink when we were brushing our teeth at night. On New Year's Eve we managed to catch a fantastic fireworks display from the roof of the hotel.

Although the city of Chennai was culturally very interesting to experience, it was also quite disgusting. There are multiple rivers of sewage that run through town, with brownish methane bubbles emerging from the depths of the channels. It is impossible to walk past these sewage channels without plugging your nose, as the smell is nauseating. One of the channels dumps directly into the Bay of Bengal, where a few hundred metres down from the dumping zone is a popular beach and swimming spot for the locals.

But there are also beautiful, seemingly magical, parts of the city. While wandering through the downtown area, we stumbled upon a side alley that was full of flower vendors. As we walked down the narrow alley, there were massive piles of bright flowers pouring out of the shops on both sides. There were beautiful red, orange, pink, purple, and yellow flowers of every shade imaginable that the vendors wove together to sell for women to tie into their hair. They also wove elaborate patterns of flowers to sell to brides and grooms to wear at their weddings. There was such a sense of commerce in that ally, with people everywhere bartering to get the best-priced strings of flowers to tie into their girlfriend's, mother's or daughter's hair.

I would not generally consider myself to be overly girlie, but India has made me into a total mall-junkie. The vendors in Spencer's Plaza in Chennai had the most bright and colourful purses, scarves and earrings that I just couldn't resist. I usually try to escape from a mall as soon as I enter it, but the persistence of the vendors, combined with the beauty and colour of their fabrics, kept me in the mall, bargaining for hours over the price of a certain purse or piece of clothing (most of which are souvenirs to give to people back home, of course). It was actually kind of fun to partake in some friendly bartering with the energetic, eager-to-please vendors at the mall. When I finally emerged from the mall, not only did I have some beautiful items, but also felt like I'd just gotten a successful cultural lesson in Indian-style bartering.

Volunteering:
 I have still been working with the Vattakanal Conservation Trust here in Kodaikanal, writing up a report about the results of my interviews. I was also asked to do a presentation about proper garbage disposal to one of the classes at St. Peter's School in Kodaikanal, which I did yesterday. For the presentation I partnered up with a guy that works with kids at  local kresh here, who I figured would have a better idea of how to reach these kids. We created a presentation about the differences between recycle, compost and waste, and why it is important to separate them properly. We then went through each category, describing why it is dangerous to throw it into the stream or burn it, focusing on human health impacts. Finally, we described what should be done with the recycle, compost and waste, as the recyclable plastics and glass can be sold, and the compost can be put in a garden. The principal now wants us to present to the entire school when they all get back from winter holidays.

Pictures:

View from the road down the mountain.

The view from the roof of Broadlands, the hotel we were staying at. The mosque had call to prayer  5 times a day.

An extremely creepy looking Santa that was at a hotel we had dinner at.

A girl doing tight-rope walking at the beach. When I first saw it, I thought they were setting up for a beach volleyball game. Obviously that was not the case.

Gharials that we saw at the Snake Park at Guindy National Park, near Chennai. There were tons of snakes, crocodiles, geckos and lizards at the park.

The flower-selling ally.

Buying flowers.

The fort that we climbed up in Dindigul. It was originally built by the Madurai Nayak Kings in the 1600's, then became controlled by the British army in the 1800's.  

Dindigul Fort ruins.

Herding goats.

Dindigul's marketplace.