you guys wanna try some of my 'wow magic'?

hello again from the land of heat and humidity... we've left ooty and endured the worst bus ride to date: 15.5 hours on a video coach which means blaring hindi/tamil/kannada movies as well as exploding tires and smoking brakes. fantastic!

we're missing ooty already (i've noticed this has become a theme whenver we leave a place) but i think this time there is a legit reason: the lovely cool climes of the nilgiri hills is veeeerrrry similar to a cool day back home compared the temp of 36 degrees here in mamallapuram. also, we had a sweet sweet satelite tv for the past week with english tv shows, educational nat geo/discovery channel programs, and brad pitt movies that we watched to our hearts' content... oh and while watching copious amounts of tv we were inundated with the same ten random indian commercials repeated over and over again. my post title refers to a potato chip commercial which promises magical results when you use them to scoop up your curry or masala... needless to say, very little of what we did consisted of 'roughing it' or 'backpacking' so now that we're back to real world, it's all a bit foreign. hahaha.... however, we do have the ocean and beaches nearby so that should hopefully even it all out. we're here for a couple days, then down to pondicherry

oh and i figure since i haven't put up picture's since hampi y'all are due for some visuals... soo here's my one picture from Mysore:

the purdy palace... it housed some of the saddest lookin' elephants and emaciated camels i've ever seen (needless to say we didn't go for the rides they were offering) but we did get ourselves a guide who was very knowledgeable about the castle's history, and a little bit senile. i think he told us the same rehearsed line about the castle's cannons not being for war, but only for celebrations about 3 or 4 times? hahaha, he was super cute though and showed us all the gold and ivory inlay around the place and little details like hanging elephants that we probably would have never noticed ourselves....

the view from the top: 4 hours of windy roads, 36 hairbend turns and not enough leg room = 2500 metres above sea level at kalhatty falls ( a few km outside of ooty) and a temperate rainforest climate... note the random mixture of scraggly pine, eucalyptus and laurel... with the odd palm tree to remind you you're in a tropical country.

this would be our autorickshaw ride into town, with the flowing brown river that nearly swept us off the road. only the combined weight of the three of us, plus massive backpacks prevented such from happening.

this is ms. krista in our hotel room enjoying my knee high socks that kept her legs all nice n' warm.

and here is the surrounding countryside, political slogans being written on roadside barriers,tea estates and rolling hills... everything's gone green.

ooh and then we went on a lovely chauffered ride from ooty to conoor to see the sites, like sims park (wherein we ran around like a buncha idiots and acted like children. as can be seen in the following pictures)

this would be the day we went horseback riding at fernhills palace, diana's first time on a horse, and eugene's second. krista and meghan being the seasoned professionals, go t the stubborn, willfull horses... and diana's well.... he was obedient... and just plain vicious. he liked eugene's horse but had a tendency to try to maul mine whenever they came withing 10 feet of each other...

this would be the tractor roadblock that bottomed out in the 4 feet of mud that was our trail.

and this is what happened that evening as everyone was verrrrry stiff from the 3 hour ride, our saddles were pretty hard and provided very little padding for our poor spines, and the trotting didn't go over so well with those who didn't know how to post... to quote the first timer "my inner thighs are actually bruised and swollen." so captain cracker (aka. eugene w. his towel as a cape) came to the rescue by walking on peoples backs...

ooh, we found henna tubes in the local grocery stores and kindof went overboard henna-ing every surface possible. here krista demonstrates the best method for designing on your own foot.

the day after we had our lovely pony ride, everyone was feeling a wee bit stiff so i wandered off to explore, and ended up hiking up to the highest point in the nilgiri's, dodabetta peak. after getting off the local bus, i walked up the 3 km road to the top, much to the amusement and concern of the locals who kept stopping and trying to reason with the crazy white girl that the uphill walk was too much for me (which was true, but i stubbornly refused any rides on their comfy looking scooters or roomy jeeps, dangit) as such my sense of accomplishment, or lack of oxygen (it was about 3100 metres) made the views that much purdier...

oh and just in case you were thinking of using your love to burn down a forest, don't.

in ooty, and the rest of the country most animals are left to fend for themselves when it comes to food. most animals go the easy route and scavenge for garbage on the ground, but not goats. oh no, they're quite creative and will eat just about anything they can reach: some of my personal faves include dashboard shrines in autorickshaws, and movie posters on walls...

cows, however, are a different story, and if someone doesn't feed them, they'll just wander on into your house and steal whatever's lyin' around.

speaking of cows: sheer bliss exhibited upon the discovery of faux-laughing cow cheese (no refrigeration necessary) Happy Cow. yummy and functional on long journey bus rides when the rest stop canteens scare even the locals...

and this is our joy and delight in stopping 1.5 hours into our marathon bus ride when our tire blew up and brakes caught on fire. the upside: no music for 45 mins.

this is diana's quick pic of our least favourite bathroom to date: an indian squat urinal for ladies. at the rest stop where our bus broke down. needless to say we went the prissy white girl route and waited for the one stall to free up.

FINALLY! THE MONSOON!

for a while there i was starting to think my blog name had become a bit irrelevant seeing as the only weather we'd been combatting was extreme heat or humidity (my various sunburns and incredible afros have been a testament to that fact)

BUT now that we've arrived in Ooty (summer hideaway for all the silly brits who just couldn't handle the heat in the plains, up in the purdy mountains of Tamil Nadu where there are REAL PINE TREES!) i think i understand the concerned looks on people's faces when i told them i'd be going to india during the monsoon. the rains here are crazy! not only are they heavy, but it's actually cold, as in we booked into the warmest hotel we could find and ended up snuggled up under the blankets watching the entire star wars trilogy (1-3) wearing layers of clothing. i'm pretty sure this means we've acclimatized to the heat... and by the time our week here is over i'm pretty sure allll that hard work will have been for nought.

anyhoo, we arrived here around 1 pm yesterday and decided that the "10 min walk" to our ywca hostel would be fine on foot. (this told to us by our mini-bus driver who hated us as he couldn't make us pay some ridiculous price to go through some forest on the drive here)
but as the rain started and got heavier and heavier we realized how wrong we were. we made it all of 500 metres down some hill before we could no longer see our feet, being washed out completely by heavy brown rivers of muddy, gritty water. and our autorickshaw that we finally hailed didn't fare much better. three rickety wheels on a road that stopped resembling a road long ago and more like the fraser river through which showed precariously thin strips of pavement.

finally we arrived at our destination: the ywca hostel and were promptly showed our room... the one at the very very very end of a completely deserted hallway, past the only bathroom in the building that was padlocked (???), down a flight of stairs and around the corner. so creepy, diana and krista immediately agreed it was haunted. i was inclined to agree later on when reading my guidebook which cautioned "not safe to wander around in the evenings if you are a woman travelling alone". GREAT! oh and to top it all off there were lovely samplers of bible quotes and religious sayings throughout the building. our favourite (and another testament to the haunted theory) was the "jesus is the unseen listener". 'nuff said.

so again, us brave ladies ran away to the comfort of the coolest hotel around (a bit over budget, but i guess that means we eat light this week) called the Khems
(http://www.hotelkhems.com/), which overlooks the entire city, especially our street which turns into a ragin' waterfall whenever it rains.

anyway we're off to explore today, tibetan market, botanical gardens, find other white folk as we've seen zero tourists of late... and hopefully meet up w. eug, angelee and the rest of the crew this evening. pictures to come when i find a computer that has a usb port to connect to. until then, you get to use your imagination and think of a little hamlet on the top of a mountain, surrounded by mist and clouds (that aren't pollution!) roads that gave up long ago and people wandering around wearing sweaters n' toques where the pace of life is decidedly less hectic than in the valleys below...

sarah, i'm sorry my blogging skills fail to impress you.

been a while since my last update (about a week i guess) but 24 hour power outtages in Hampi made it a leeetle difficult to blog... now that we're in mysore however it's gonna be much easier.

here are a few left over pics from goa... this would be the world's sorriest playground... at a monestary in old goa...

ruins of an old church which the portuguese decided to destroy when they pulled out of goa in the early 20th century... now being restored ?

oh, and meet dee's paisley hammer pants... fantastic, functional, fun. kept everyone entertained during monsoony nights with no television and nowhere to drink...

i'm not sure exactly what eug is doing... but i think i prefer them on miss heiny.

anyway...we left goa on the third (much to everyone's dismay)

and unwittingly spent the ENTIRE day on a stuffy train chugging up the ghats (hills/mountains... i dunno) out of goa and into karnataka...

it was the suckiest train ride thus far: krista's camera was stolen, and our "assigned seats" belonged to everyone but us, so we ended up squished in amongst a bunch of catholic folk (one of whom slept on me for most of the 16 hours)



the only two positive elements of the day: the cutest muslim kid ever who decided we were movie stars and planned to tell all his friends back home we were from hollywood, and our first eunnuch sighting.

anyhoo, adding insult to injury, the second we got into hospet things immediately got worse. we have all agreed that this is the worst city anyone's ever been to. the people we encountered were creepy, rude and bordered on stalkerish. we had people following us the entire way from getting off the train (they were harrassing us through the bars of the window) until we got to our hotel. one would think they would leave us at teh door, but oooh no. we actually had people calling our rooms throughout the night and next morning trying to convince us to take their taxi or autorickshaw, quoting ridiculous prices.... and then we actually had one guy come to our door and harrass us through the peephole...

this is the only existing picture of hospet. a lovely little corner in the middle of the buzzing metropolis which i shall fondly remember as the nastiest place on earth... oh, and it's about 20 feet away from the half-naked dying man being eaten by cows. (you may wish to read that again, but i assure you, all three of us were quite sure of what we saw, and diana even left the dude her leftover meal from dinner... the cows had left by that point)



needless to say we got the f*** outta dodge asap and headed to hampi, the awesomest little village on the face of the planet (and that's taking into accounts power cuts, non-existatnt a/c and the fact there is no such thing as a cold beverage to be found within the city limits)




it's got the coolest geography too, hills formed of massive bolders that were used by past kingdoms as fortifications, and hidden amongst them are ruins of temples and palaces and whatnot. it used to be the seat of an entire empire that spanned most of the southern tip of india, now it's just random spots here and there fading into the red earth.

we of course being the oh-so enlightened westerners roamed around the purdy buildings taking silly pictures of ourselves voguing with statues or in doorways.

siva and parvati.... i think?
if vogue were a goddess...

oh yeah, krista kept telling us that she expected dinosaurs to pop up out of the water and do whatever it is that dinosaurs do, as the geography kinda reminded her of the land before time and other such accurately prehistoric landscapes we grew up with as kids...

day 2 and 3 we rented mopeds and zoomed around the countryside trying to find a signal for krista and diana's cellphones... apparently the massive boulders create a bit of a dead spot) and ended up in some barren desert wandering around while the two lovebirds chatted with their men.... as well as checking out various temples along the way. unfortch krista and dee's bike refused to start up and would involve about 15 diff locals trying various methods to get the bike running and i managed to crash one going about...oh, i dunno -2 miles and hour... it was pretty spectacular. i've got a lovely roadrash now, go me!)

(this is the only photographic evidence ever caught of diana driving a moped. the amazing phenomenon lasted about 40 seconds. note the intense focus and concentration she gives to the task....)

this is one of krista's many fourlegged friends... about 10 seconds away from a nice big kiss.... again, i've yet to see these cows eating anything but garbage, sooo....

some of the local kids who at first tried to get moola but then decided that they just wanted to mug and get their picture taken... i'm a sucker i s'pose.



we're not entirely sure what this structure was... built of scraps of corrugated metal, in the middle of the main drag, we all agreed that hampi was attempting to build it's very own spaceship... and ingenious they are, it was guarded entirely by monkeys. fantastic!


diana attempting a thoughtful, yet confused face, while local religious men disapprove of our bare shoulders...

so now after two days in hampi, we've headed down south, towards the coast of karnataka and are staying in mysore for a day or two. will post more in ooty when we head up into the niligiri hills and relax.

ps. we totally miss goa...