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...