Hello from the land of milk and honey

Okay, well, at least we have a lot of milk here. I missed dairy so much this summer!

It's true, Graham and I are back in the United States happily enjoying all the creature comforts of home and a 'developed' nation. ahhhhhhh. After 40 hours of brutal flights we arrived safely on Aug 31.

We are both furiously job searching, as income is a handy thing, but we are happy and healthy and home.

I intend to go back and post some pictures of the last month we were there since you all missed out - the traveling was pretty incredible, having Freda with us was a blast and the heat was close to unbearable :)

Coming soon,
Anna

"Not completely dead, just mostly dead!"

This will perhaps be my last entry from India itself. Here is the list of events/facts/occurences I have neglected to fill you in on.

1. Freda arrived safe and sound and having a trio to travel is great
2. We have visited ancient hindu temples from 500AD carved into rock caves in Badami, Karnataka.
3. We have traversed via foot and bicycle the ancient hindu temple town of Hampi, amidst the boulders of "The Flintstones".
4. We have suffered through a ridiculous series of events on an over night train ride to Hyderabad.
5. We have seen a 17m high Buddha statue on an island in a lake
6. We have visited the zoo and almost been peed on by a rhinocerous (sp?)
7. We have arrived in Delhi in time for Anna to relapse with three day fever and poop spree to be saved once again by her trusty Cipro. (Graham also got a tinge)
8. We depart tomorrow for Agra and the Taj Mahal, then two days in Jaipur before sending Freda on a plane home.
THEN. . . .


Graham and I come home the next day. It is true, your infamous world traveler is exhausted and terribly home sick (and out of money). We have decided a Nepal and Tibet trip is for a later date and that it is time to move forward with our American lives.

I plan on updating this latter portion with pictures and a rounder explanation when I get home. The internet connections have been difficult to find so it's gotten pretty spotty.

That's all for now!

Anna

Hello from Mysore, Karnataka

Graham and I are now in the state just north of Kerala, named Karnataka. The terrain has changed slightly to be less tropical, although the weather continues to be delightfully cool.
Leaving Rajakkad was a trick. The day before we were to leave Mohanan's mother died. He was ever the host and invited us to his home for the funeral cremation, but I insisted that he just be with his family. We learned that when someone dies they anoint the body with oils and spices and then create a funeral pyre, in which it is tradition for the son to light the mother's pyre. Mohanan is the youngest of seven children, but the only son so this was his job. He later explained to us that for the whole next year his family will not be celebrating any festivals, but will instead wear black on those days. For the 16 days following her death, they will not smoke, drink or eat any fish or meat. On the eighth day they build a thatched enclosure in their yard and the whole extended family, plus the local holy person, gathers for a ritual and service of some sort and then they eat together. It was neat to learn about, but we are sad for Mohanan's loss.

Back to Karnataka, we are in a town three hours southwest of Bangalore, called Mysore. It's a fabulous, small, spread out city that has a young feel to it and is full of universities. More exciting, though, is the large temple on the top of a hill over-looking the town, which we climbed up to yesterday. We were even allowed all the way into the temple, which was interesting. I confess, though, that I could not tell you why I saw any of what I saw-I'll have to look into it. We also visited the 3 square block fruit and vegetable market and were delightfully overwhelmed by all of the colors. It was a fabulous market experience and made us both want to cook. I have many great pictures which I will consider posting when I'm back in the States, but I have no way of doing that now since I relinquished my computer to HPWDS before leaving (they were excited to say the least). Today we are intending to see the main Maharaja Palace in the center of town. If you can picture the Sultan's Palace in Disney's Alladin then you have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. Totally fairytale-esque and entirely exciting!

That's all for now. Tonight we travel back to Bangalore to pick up my sister Freda at Midnight. Then we plan to continue journeying north. Our next stop will be Hampi, which has been described to us as "the Flinstones meet India". It's a town/archeological site of ancient temple ruins set amidst a boulder-strewn landscape. We are looking forward to exploring it.

Send me some email, I would love to hear from you all. Summer is wrapping up, the bridge fell, etc. Update us!
love,
Anna

My Birthday!

I spent my 26th birthday training the HPWDS in data capture procedures, IRB protocol and ILS facilitation. I loved it. Leigh and planned for three days of work after Alleppey. In true India fashion, this did not happen. On Monday before we left the house we got a call from Mohanan and his mother is in a coma in the hospital about to die and Jincy (other main staff person) had her grandmother's cousin die. So, it was a no go. Mohanan managed to come the next two days, but he is stressed out, needless to say. His mother is 76 years old and the brain damage from a stroke has been to intense for her to survive, so his family is waiting. Our thoughts have been with him. Additionally, our neighbor Komala is in the hospital due to Diabetes complications and so Graham has not met her, we've had to cook for ourselves and Leigh and to leave without saying goodbye. We left and all hell broke loose. Despite this poor news, things have gone smoothly and I am finished with work directly related to HPWDS. Yesterday Leigh and dropped off all of our documents and showed them everything and handed over the reins. Ahhhhhh, it felt great to hand over the responsibility.
Leigh left this morning on a bus headed north since she flied home Aug 15th. Graham and I will also start heading north to arrive in Bangalore to pick up Freda on the 15th. First, I must finish my schoolwork related to this internship. Then we plan on seeing Munnar and going to Mysore before Bangalore.
I will have some more photos the next time I blog, but then the rest of the trip I will only be able to talk for you because I have gifted my laptop to HPWDS and will be leaving it here with them. They could hardly believe it when we told them yesterday, it felt good to make them so happy. But, alas, I will not be able to load pictures. It just means you will have to come over and suffer India stories when we get back. TTFN!

The staff brought me a cake for my birthday and sang and clapped. It was festive.

Backwaters Bliss

This is a houseboat, the traditional way to see the backwaters. You can rent them for days at a time and have someone cook for you etc. There are over 200 houseboats to choose from. They are beautiful, but expensive, and they are large enough that you cannot navigate some of the smaller more peaceful channels with them. We opted to take canoes instead.

We walked to the public jetty to get a boat across and go into town for snacks. This is Leigh, Katrina and I on the edge of the waters. To get there you walk along the rock retaining wall the whole way, past many people's homes. It's a lovely walk and you get to see true bits of India-little huts that have Cartoon Network on TV in them. :)
These are the canoes we took out on the waters. We managed to navigate into a small canal that was so wonderful and beautiful. It was peaceful and was like walking down a small neighborhood street because it was lined with homes and people out doing laundry or feeding their goats and cows. I don't have pictures because taking my digital camera in a tippy boat didn't seem prudent. Lo and Behold I couldn't have been more correct. The bottoms of the canoes are completely curved, there is no flat part. One minute Graham and Leigh were paddling along just fine and the next Katrina and I here SPLASH! and their boat had ejected them into the water - just a quick tip and dump and then righted itself. The natives on the shore laughed and laughed, but then three rescue boats and about six men came out and managed to empty their canoe of water and picked them up and placed them back in their boat again. It was hilarious!
The sunset over the backwaters. I think it speaks for itself.

Bamboo Stix Resort

After meeting Graham in Kochin, we traveled an hour and a half by train south to Allaphuza (Alleppey), which is the main starting point for the famed backwaters tours of Kerala. There is an extensive system of back waters which host many villages and homesteads and which are delightfully serene and scenic. This is the 'resort' we stayed at. It was still under construction, but we found it through a connection of a friend and we were hosted there for FREE. It was fabulous.
We're such an old married couple!

Actually, we're so pleased to be together again, 8 weeks was too long for us.
Graham and Manu. Manu is the Indian man who is building the resort. He spent three years in Singapore and eight in Australia before some investors there convinced him to go back home and begin developping (commercial). He was a gracious host and one of the most laid back people I've met. Graham enjoyed an early morning chat with him.
One evening we wanted to watch a movie, so we arranged a "showing" of Pan's Labyrinth, India-style. We're under an open enclosure, with back waters surrounding us and palm trees. A Computer is sitting on top of the cooler and everyone at the resort sat on two benches - like in a movie theater?

Graham Arrived!

Graham traveled brilliantly across the world to come be with me. The evening he arrived he wanted to go out on the town so we headed across the bay to Kochin Fort where the spice trade of India started in the 1500s with the arrival of one Vasco da Gama. It is a very touristy area, so we found a place offering traditional Kerala dancing in a condensed version which was meant to teach about the dance. I really enjoyed it. Poor Graham-man slept through a lot of it, but I got some neat pictures of the traditional costumes and movements. The green guy in the middle is for the dance called Kathakali, which means 'story play'. He is the epic character, usually godly in nature, such as Krishna, and plays a central role in these dances. Originally these dances would last all night long, but luckily this one was 1/2 hour.


Jet Lag hit this boy and when he laid down on this rough hewn wooden bench he exclaimed, "Ahhh, this feels so good, nice and comfy!" Yea right. :)