HOME!

We have enjoyed being home so much the past week I forgot to update the blog! After a blissful six days in Germany we made it back to Seattle and are getting back in the swing of things. Even if nobody else reads this much more, we will still finish up those last few posts before we forget...

Thanks for following our adventures!

Time to pack up and go...

Well, somehow the day is already here! Time to hitch up our gear and get movin' on down the road. And when it's time to go, you just go. You figure out how to put your house on a cart, hitch up the beast, and start movin'.

So that's what we've done tonight, even though our adventure stories here on Curry-osity are still a few weeks behind. I'm determined to continue writing about our travels; from Kerala to Mysore, and of course, quite a bit of time in Bangalore, there are still sights and stories to share. We've had fun blogging about them and we'll keep it up to finish out our trip. But it might be a few more days yet.

In a few hours we'll fly to Germany, where we have decided to maximize our connecting flight through Frankfurt. For six days we'll poke around Heidelberg, Strasbourg and points in-between. That is, if we survive the shock at how expensive everything is! It's easy to get used to lunch for two for less than $2. But that won't get you far in the land of the Euro...

A HUGE thank you to Deepak, Rashmi, young miss Shruti, and her grandfather, all of whom have been such wonderful, generous hosts to us here in Bangalore. They have housed us, fed us, and generally have been essential to our taking this trip. Thank you for sharing your home, your time and your family, but especially your amazing, huge, complex and wonderful country! I have no idea what impact India has had on us, but for sure it has changed us in ways we'll be figuring out for a long time. In the meantime, don't stop pushing! (or pulling, as the case may be)...

Almost done!

We leave tomorrow! Stay tuned for a few more stories about our travels, and then hopefully some parting words on our trip and India. In the meantime, if you haven't checked back in a while, we have added a few more posts - just scroll down a bit...

Off to Mysore

Today we take a short trip to the city of Mysore, three hours from Bangalore. We'll be back Saturday, with even more stuff to write about on Curry-osity. Hopefully we can catch up on the backlog...

**UPDATE** We're catching up! A few more posts below...

Bangalore Blast?

Thanks Mom, for reporting to us about a small explosion outside the Bangalore Cricket Stadium, apparently reported on the news a few moments ago.  If you happen to hear of this back in the US, rest assured that we are nowhere near the stadium or the big IPL (Indian Premier League) game. We saw some boys playing cricket down the street when we went out for our daily coconut, but that's as close as we'll get to any excitement today...

UPDATE: Oops, I guess we were close the night before. We'd gone to an architecture lecture in the heart of the city, and went to a restaurant afterwards. I think we walked right through the intersection where one of the (small, but who's counting?) bombs apparently went off today. Although I have to tell you, I am way way more nervous about surviving Indian road traffic than I am about the chances of being caught up in some incident.

Blog break ends soon...

Once again, we are concluding another big India "road trip" with limited internet access but plenty of stories and sights to share on Curry-osity in the days to come. Tomorrow we fly back to Bangalore from the city of Kochi, in the green, beautiful but extremely hot and humid state of Kerala.

It will be a long day, as both trips to and from the respective airports will take longer than our 70-minute flight! But that's India for you. And we'll have even more India for you soon. I'm looking forward to writing about the past few weeks for all (both?) of our devoted followers, as well as ourselves. This blog is also somewhat of a travel journal, albeit a public one. Anyway, stay tuned for plenty of bugs, buses, boats and bananas...

**UPDATE** New posts will keep showing up below ordered by date. And please leave comments if you're inspired!

Three Days in Tea Town

The next three days in Munnar are for the most part fantastic. Great weather, food and scenery make for some of our most relaxing time in India so far. At times I'm reminded of being in a small European hill town, at least in the way the beautiful countryside views greet us at every turn as we walk through the steep terrain. As we walk a mile or two into town, it turns out Lori knows exactly where we are - she's been here before! Her group came this way in 2002, and at this very spot they shot scenes for a mock Bollywood video! Watch it here on Youtube - the quality is low but you might be able to spot my favorite movie star...


Munnar town is 100% India, complete with giant buses rampaging down narrow roads, tuk-tuks blasting exhaust and noise, and dozens and dozens of shops crowded along the road. Walking into town after breakfast and exploring doesn't take long and in itself isn't much to see. But the large tourist-oriented spice shops are awesome! From dozens of varieties of Munnar tea to five kinds of pepper to red-hot cinnamon bark and more, it's all here, picked and packed in the hills surrounding us. We stock up a lifetime's supply of spices and other goodies, then catch our first rickshaw ride on steep hilly roads back to Olivebrook for a guided walk to see the tea plantations.

One of the best things about our India trip is seeing how stuff is made and where it's from. Sure you can do this in the U.S., but I think we're more consumers than producers these days. But after India I now know what a cardamom plant looks like, where tea comes from (and what “tips” are) and how it's processed. The following day after a disappointing visit to a natural park (it takes a few hundred rupees and long drive to learn that 90% of it is inaccessible), we tour a local tea factory and see freshly-picked tea leaves come off the truck and get processed. The 30-minute company history video is even watchable!

Another great afternoon follows at Olivebrook, drinking tea but now with a much deeper understanding. We relax and listen to the fantastic bird calls (sorry Mom, I have no idea what they were). Unlike our trip to the park earlier that day, we even spot the giant red flying squirrels in the trees down the hill. Somehow I manage to get the timing perfect for a mid-air shot! Alas my camera lens is not National-Geographic-worthy, even if my timing is...

It's Nicer in the Nilgiris...

One day of heat and we're done! Time to escape to Munnar in the heart of tea country, nestled in India's Nilgiri Hills. In Madurai we hire a pre-paid taxi and the trip starts off nice enough. Our driver stops at the best roadside coconut guy, we snap pictures of life along the road (including the totally goofy political posters you see everywhere). We also sample black coconuts and pass through an area full of brick-making structures.



As I often do, I follow along with our map as best I can, but reading street signs in Tamil is not my forte. So I fail to notice when the driver makes a completely unnecessary turn south off our straight-shot, don't-turn-for-five-hours trip. One hour into our 2.5 hour detour, we figure this out and confront him. He makes up some nonsense about crossing state lines only on certain routes, but we dubunk this. And our trip is pre-paid! So we spend the rest of our drive yet again utterly baffled by India. The more you try to make sense of some things here, the more confused and frustrated you become. All you can do is try to adjust...

We try by enjoying the beautiful scenery as we drive up into “cardamon country”, aptly named as the spice's scent fills the breezes into our car. And at 5:30, (not 3 o'clock), we arrive at OliveBrook, home for the next three days. The temperature is 30 degrees lower, the tea is free and delicious, and we have a couple of firsts in India. First rain that evening, first time we've worn sweaters, and our first shower curtain in the bathroom. Almost paradise! The cooking lesson in Keralan cooking where we get to eat the results tops it off. I think we can get used to this...

An Ancient Heat

It's 103 degrees in the ancient city of Madurai, where one of the oldest continuously used temples on planet Earth is the main attraction. People have been coming here to pray since the time of the Romans! But even ancient temples have a schedule, so while we wait for it to open we stagger through the heat and explore the old city. The main roads are as polluted, loud, noisy and exhausting as anywhere in India. Stepping into the back streets is a lot more fun. People live back here. Women work on their steps, line up to fill water buckets, and children are everywhere, hanging out and playing cricket in the narrow alleyways. And it turns out there are still kids in India who still ask tourists for “school pens”. Ooops! We thought that didn't happen much anymore. But they love seeing their pictures on the screen of our cameras.
 
Near the spectacular gopuram towers of the temple, we develop a sudden interest in every single product in a large air-conditioned clothing store. It takes an entire twenty minutes to cool down - err, I mean check out the shop. Next door to that is one of the most amazing markets I've seen anywhere, housed in a huge ancient multi-pillared hall that used to house pilgrims for the temple. Now its carved columns look over hundreds of vendors and tailors. One of them tells us there is still tension with the temple, who'd rather have full use of the structure. But his “father and his father and his father” have all been tailors in this very place.
 

After an air-conditioned nap at the hotel, we head back to the temple, hand over our shoes to the shoe attendant and go in. The crowds are everywhere, and many families with bald-headed children who have come to offer the child's hair from their first haircut. An elephant greets us on the way in, offering blessings with a touch of his trunk. I just look at his eyes and wonder what he thinks about all this. But I bet he comes from a long line of temple elephants! 

Dinner is at a rooftop restaurant; the view is better then the food (isn't that always true?).

And finally a kitchsy stop at a place suggested by our guidebook, the space-themed Apollo 96 bar ("A Customers paradise, it would make you take the next flight to Venus!"). The AC makes it freezing inside, which is the only space-related detail they got right. Otherwise the décor is straight out of your local high-school's production of Star Trek, The Musical...

Stumbling Towards Madurai

Our last day in Auroville we catch a cab into Pondicherry. Not for the first time do we get a cab with a portrait of Auroville's 'Mother' looking back at us from the dashboard.

We stroll around town, check out the beach and the statue of Gandhi.
 
Walking around is fine, except for the gazillion places where the sidewalks are under construction. As with every single place we've been to, there are entire streets dug up, half-built, and no workers in sight. All across India, it seems the way to begin a project is to rip everything up and dump piles of gravel everywhere. After that it's anyone's guess when someone will show up to finish the job.

That evening we take our first sleeper bus to Madurai. We're in a double bunk above the seats, and somehow we actually sleep a little during the seven-hour ride, even without AC! Although I wake up repeatedly out of fear that we'll sleep through our stop. Even if we could speak the local languages, we find that nobody bothers to tell you anything, anywhere. Forget about announcements. You better just be aware and ask a lot of questions. At 5am we're once again wandering around a strange town in the dark trying to find our hotel. As we drag our suitcases through the streets, the tuk-tuk drivers lie to us about where it is, trying to convince us it's quite far and we better hire them. But we're used to that now and ignore them, eventually finding it and checking in to the incredibly charmless but air-conditioned room for some more sleep.

Into the heart of Auroville Part II

The next day brings a big moment – we finally get to go inside the Matrimandir! We've reserved our slot to join a group of first-timers. We obediently follow the guide as he gives a talk, then it's in we go. Cameras are taken away, shoes are replaced with white socks, white-robed smiling but authoritative volunteers keep us on the right path, and we silently file up into the inner chamber via an double-spiral ramp. The architecture is amazing, but also reminds us of sci-fi movie sets from the 1970's. Then for fifteen minutes we sit in the chamber, lit entirely by a computer-controlled mirrored shaft of sun that focuses down onto a huge crystal sphere. Twelve white columns and white marble walls complete the effect. The space is meant for meditation, the sphere as something to focus the mind. We've heard many people claim to have profound experiences inside, but I just try to sit cross-legged and admire the architectural achievement. To each their own; I think this is a place where you find what you're looking for... (click here for a rare photo of the inner chamber).

Our last stop is the Auroville Earth Institute, a place that more architects should know about. We have enjoyed buildings all over Auroville made from their site-made bricks.  They worked with Lori's University of Washington group in 2002 and have built not only amazing structures, but also a tremendous body of knowledge on how to build beautiful buildings with little more than the earth beneath your feet and a lot of hard work...

Into the heart of Auroville

Over the next two days we do our best to participate in the Auoville experience. Wednesday morning Lori has an Ikebana lesson. Valeria Matsumoto is her teacher, originally from Italy but moved to Auroville with her Japanese husband. They met while they were both sailing around the world and life eventually took them to Auroville. He became a furniture-maker and she teaches Ikebana. One thing you can say about Auroville, it does draw some fascinating people.

While Lori has her class, I sit under Valeria's fan for an hour trying to cool down from our bike ride, then explore the "community" outside. Most buildings in Auroville are in communities, with names like 'Progress', 'Sincerity', 'Revelation' and 'Horizon'. Earth-brick experimental architecture abounds, so I give the camera a good workout.

That evening we catch a free performance of traditional Indian dance from Orissa at the Bharat Nivas Pavillion (complete with framed portraits of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother sitting at the edge of the stage).The dancer gives a short explanation before each dance, which helps us follow the stories they tell. For once I am able to follow a story through dance! My favorite is about a young Krishna acting naughty and being scolded by his mother, until she discovers her son's true nature (an incarnation of the god Vishnu). Our performer switches between the two characters in a very convincing way. Her fellow dancer, also her sister, also gives an outstanding performance (and we sneak a few blurry pictures).


Back at the gust house after dinner, we head to the roof terrace to check out the full moon. The bright moonlight inspires me to try some long-exposure photos, but I catch something unexpected in this shot...

(click the picture for a larger view to see a "ghost")