Chennai - Well the southeast coast of India has been a quick visit, but Chennai is a neat metropolitan city. When I drove into the city from the airport all I noticed were the huge billboards everywhere. I attempted sari shopping, as this is supposed to be a good city for it, but it must have been the busiest shopping day of the year. It is a big holiday here, so I think everyone in the city was shopping along with me. I also visited that national museum here which had an impressive collection of bronze sculptures, stone carvings and even some Indus Valley material. So now I am off to Calcutta for a week to visit with my host families. I'm not looking forward to the 30 hour train ride. I have changed my flight to be home on November 9, so my time here is almost done. See everyone soon!

Galle - We finally tore ourselves away from the beach resort and are staying at the Galle Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is a Dutch fort along the ocean with lots of character, so we have wandered around for the afternoon looking at antiques. For the sunset we are planning to walk around on the fort walls. Tomorrow we are off to the capital city to do our final shopping. Then I am back to India for another month of adventuring. Hope the snow is treating everyone well!

Mirissa - My last post didn't publish, so I will have to back track quite a bit. Since leaving India Kevin, Lori and I have been on the move. When we arrived in Columbo we headed straight to one of the ancient Buddhist cities, Anuradhapura. The train ride there wasn't long compared to some of the marathon rides in India - only about 6 hours. Once there we had a hunt for a hotel in the dark that ended at a great hotel called The Grand. It had a beautiful sunrise view over a lake overlooking another ancient city, Mahintale. We spent the morning going around in a rickshaw looking at many pagodas (big white Buddhist shrines), Buddha sculptures and ruins. We ended up at the Maha Bodhi temple, which has the oldest authenticated tree in the world and is a branch of the original Bodhi tree that the Buddha attained enlightenment under from India. From there we headed to another ancient city, Polonnaruwa. Here we got to stay in a family home where we had some of the best curry dishes for lunch and dinner. Polonnaruwa is a bit smaller than Anuradhapura, so we went around on bicycles. The Gal Vihara was the most impressive statue group, with a reclining Buddha next to a standing Buddha carved out of the rock face. From there we went in luxury (an A/C car) to Sigiriya, where there are original frescoes still visible on the rock and a palace perched on a rock. The view was absolutely stunning. We got to watch a storm coming in before we hustled down the thousand steps to avoid it. We then drove to Dambulla where we climbed more stairs to get to the Buddhist caves. The bus ride to Kandy was longer than expected, but once we made it there we checked into a really neat hotel that is over a hundred years old. Our adventures around Kandy took us to the Temple of the Tooth that is supposed to house one of the Buddhas teeth (it is in many boxes that no one can see, so we had to take their word for it!) We also saw some traditional Kandian dancing along with the hundreds of package tourists. We then took a day train to the hill station of Ella. We got seats in the "observation saloon," faces backwards and has huge windows. The view of the tea plantations and hills reminded me of Darjeeling. The cool temperature was a nice change from the rest of our travels. We went on a little hike the next day to Little Adam's peak for an amazing view through Ella Gap. We also got to have a tour of a tea plantation. It was really neat to see how it is processed and how they come up with the different rating. From Ella we took three buses to arrive on the south coast at the beach of Mirissa. We decided to splurge and stay at a resort. So for the past two days we have been lounging on the beach, gorging ourselves on the breakfast and dinner buffets and generally relaxing. Yesterday we got a tour of a gem factory where they cut the gems and make jewelry. The lack of technology surprised me, but it was informative. We were going to move on to another beach, but are enjoying ourselves so much that we have decided to stay for as long as possible.

Trivandrum, Kerala - After the highly relaxing 3 days on the beach Kev, Lori and I headed on an 18 hour train ride further south. Chris has gone separate ways, so it is just the 3 of us now. Our train ride went fairly well. It arrived at the station late, so we didn't board until after midnight. We had to kick people out of our bunks first, but eventually got to sleep. The chai guy only woke us up at 7am (much better than the previous 5am wakeups). We got into a compartment that had one of the fans broken, so by the afternoon we were sweating beasts. We tried the trick of sticking a card into the fan to get it going (which Kev and Lori learned from some guy earlier in the trip) and it worked so we were slightly cooler, but by that point our stench was keeping people at a distance. Trying to take naps in the afternoon on a train in southern India is like asking to wake up cranky. You end up in a bath of sweat and to the realization that you still have another 5 hours on the train. We met up with a guy from Toronto and had ourselves a long game of Euker (I don't know if that is spelt right?) Lori and I won 4 games to 1. The greatest part was not winning, but finishing and being almost at the station, having killed the most painful part of the journey. I finally found my happy place with the train food. After starving myself for a few journeys and subsisting on biscuits and lays chips I decided that I would eat the food that the hawkers sell on the platforms and nothing bad resulted, so the trick is not to eat the food that the train staff offer. We had mystery rice for lunch that wasn't too bad, so we'll see how the rest of my journeys go. Once in Kollam we checked into our hotel and did some walking around. The restaurant we decided on was a bit dicey, but the Indo-Chinese dinner we got was adequate and no one woke up in the middle of the night needing to get rid of it (sorry for the details about the tummy, but it is a daily concern here!) Lori and Kev arranged a backwater trip for the morning. It turned out to be a quiet ride on a boat for 3 hours in the morning that ended in seeing locals make rope out of coconut fibres. It was neat to see, but it took a while for my brain to process how it was done. I won't try to describe it as it wouldn't make sense, but it was interesting none the less. We also got to see tapioca trees, pepper trees and clove trees. The cloves are out of season, but you could smell the leaves. Kev and Lori tried the pepper (suprise, suprise, it was hot!) I then took the afternoon to relax while they went to look at the spice warehouses. We hopped on a bus to Trivandrum and here we are. We weren't sure if we were going to get here in one piece. The driver thought he was in a race or something, taking way too many risks for our liking, but that isn't different than many of the other buses we have taken. So now we are just waiting here for our flight to Columbo on the 13th.

Palolem, Goa - The beach is treating me great! The sun, not so much. My first day on the beach I got a teeny bit burned, so today I took it easy and slept in and stayed in the shade after the ocean had its way with me today (the waves were huge). The beach is busier here than in north Goa, but there is still lots of beach for us to lounge on and lots of great food options. We will be here for a few days, so I won't post you with more details of relaxation (so I'll rub it in now...I'm on the beach...I'm on the beach!) My next adventures will be on the Keralan backwaters further in the south. More then!

Jo

Hospet, Karnataka - The highlight of the day was meeting Jackie Chan and then reading about Jeff's ride home. Ouch. What else can I say?
The city of Hampi was phenomenal, it would have been impressive during it's time, covering an area of around 20 square kilometres. We got to sit at the main temple and watch the filming of one scene and get our pictures taken with Jackie Chan and his co-star while we hid from the Indian masses that were descending upon him. For once it was nice to sit back and watch someone else be the spectacle. We (Kev, Lori and I) are happy to report that we have a train booked back to Goa tomorrow, so bus agony can be avoided for one day. We enjoyed the serenity of Goa so much that we decided to return there and hit a beach in the south and meet up with Chris. So soon enough I will be sipping a cool bevie on the beach and forgetting that I am in India. Kev, Lori and I will then head further south to catch our flight to Sri Lanka (hurray!).

Jo

Hurray! I made it home -- in fits and sharts! I'll post more details about my (sort of) messy trip home later, when I have more energy. Let me just say, don't eat the food on the Air India run first portion of the Malaysian Air flight. It stayed with me until it hit the air sickeness bag just outside of Taipei. At least I felt better almost immediately, and the rest of the flight went fine. I inundated my senses with Western TV and movies, and I'm almost completely culturally integrated again. (Or so I think!)

Jo, it's good to hear that you are okay and weren't late for your train to Hampi. I kept checking the time and imagining where you were on your journey. Take care and be safe -- c'mon, like you didn't expect me to say that!

Jeff

Hubli, Karnataka - Well I have been on my own for almost 24 hours now and I must say it's quite boring, which is probably due to the fact that I have been stuck on a train! After our day in Mumbai of shopping and walking around we grabbed our last meal, which was ironically Chinese. Jeff was then off to the airport for his marathon flight while I went to see a really bad Indian film called "Let's Enjoy," a bad copy of "Go." But it passed the time and kept me off the streets. The train left around 11pm, so I just went to sleep, but a crying baby got on sometime in the night and made me lose sleep (guess how happy I was!) The countryside in the south is a little different than I am used to. Still lots of green due to the time of the year, but there are more hills and corn fields interspersed with rice. I didn't get hassled at all on the train (I think it may be easier as a single female rather than as two females - which I think Jeff and I looked like to many people - no offense Jeff). The train actually arrived early in its destination, so I am just killing time before I catch my connecting train to Hospet, which is the gateway to Hampi, which has some amazing ruins (I have been told - I will let you know!) That's all for now.

Jo-Ann

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