Planning for the Grand Tour ... with Audience Participation

I am planning to take the month of December off for travel. I'll be spending a few days the first week of December in Hong Kong visiting friends, then returning to India for a couple weeks of travel. I plan to fly back to Toronto for the weekend of December 19, then on to Saskatoon, Edmonton and Westlock (my home town) for the remainder of December. Following very recent conversations, it appears that I may be returning to Chennai in early January and staying there until the middle of March.

I'm planning to visit Hong Kong, Mumbai, Kerala, Jaipur, Delhi and Agra, but apart from a visit to the Taj Mahal, I haven't made any more specific plans than that yet.

Now, here's your chance for audience participation. I would love to receive suggestions of interesting things to see or do in any of these places. If you're unable to use the comments feature of this blog, then please send me an email at WayneLepine@gmail.com. I'll publish the suggestions and it will be fun. Note: the content of this blog is intended to be suitable for family viewing; suggestions for activities that tend to attract the professional attention of law enforcement officials will be noted, but not published, at least not on this blog ;-)

Kodaikanal - Being Tourists

Our hotel in Kodaikanal was built onto the hillside, like a lot of the buildings there, as flat land is somewhat rare.



We ate our meals at another hotel just up the street. In the lower right, it says "Homely Food Available." In India, "homely" means "like at home."



We ate traditional south Indian meals, which included idli (steamed rice cakes) and dosas (thin savory crepes made out of rice and lentils) for breakfast.



For lunch and dinner we had rice, flat Indian breads and different vegetable, meat, fish or lentil dishes to go with them.

Along the road on our way home, we also enjoyed some fresh fruit.



During the day, in addition to taking in the sights, we also did some shopping. Kodaikanal is known for it's eucalyptus oil which it harvests from the trees in the area. It also is known for its chocolates - they don't grow chocolate there, but because the climate is so pleasant, it's one place in south India where chocolates don't require refrigeration. Wooden handicrafts are popular, and so are toys. Some in our group bought souvenirs that inspired them musically.



We also rented paddleboats to tour around Kodaikanal lake.



It's not all fun and games on the water - boating rules can be strict.



Well, it's mostly fun and games.



We also stopped at a roller skating rink. It's probably a good thing we hadn't started drinking BEFORE.



We also took lots of group photos.













A great trip!

Kodaikanal - Monkeys

Ok, I guess I have a thing for monkeys. There were plenty of them at Kodaikanal and I would have spent all day looking at them if the guys hadn't kept me moving along to take in the rest of the sights.

The monkeys I saw on this trip tended to congregate near large reliable sources of food, which in Kodaikanal meant wherever there were lots of tourists. They generally maintained a distance of at least a few feet from people, and people usually kept a similar respectful distance. In one of the photos below with me, there was a monkey who was quite content to sit on a railing with lots of people nearby, which allowed many of us to get a picture with him.

This is a really simple post - just lots of monkeys. Enjoy!

Kodaikanal - Natural Beauty

Kodaikanal is lush, cool and green, thanks to its high elevation (around 7000 feet above sea level) and abundant rain and mists. The air is fresh and clean. On the morning of September 6, we enjoyed a short walk along a scenic lookout in the town. Heavy mists prevented us from enjoying panoramic vistas, but helped create a kind of dreamy landscape.



The town is built around Kodaikanal lake.



Hotels, shops and private homes surround the lake. Tourists can rent paddle boats or row boats to enjoy the view.



We stopped at a variety of places for short hikes, including a pine woodlot, a scenic lookout and a place known as Pillar Rocks.







The following day was clear and sunny. We went for a long hike through an area with spectacular views of the landscape.

In these pictures, you will notice that all of us are wearing Nokia t-shirts. We are neither employees nor clients of Nokia - we just found a bunch of their t-shirts on sale and decided it would be fun to wear them as a team uniform.











This is my colleague Raj. He's sitting on an outcrop that was featured in a popular Tamil movie. There's a scene with the hero meditating on the rock, and the camera circling around him, taking in a magnificent 360 degree view of the land. I couldn't work up the nerve to venture out onto the rock, let alone recreate the shot from the movie.



Although I look like I am perched high up in the shot below, there is a lot of solid ground underneath me. Camera angles - just gotta love 'em!



If you enlarge the photo below, you can see a small village on the right hand side, atop the crest. It is quite isolated, and still does not have electricity.



We didn't venture as far as that village, but we did see a few homes in the area where we hiked. Sometimes a small horse is the best way to transport goods to the more isolated houses.



Some of the people who live in the area set up food stalls to serve the tourists. We stopped at this one, and had fresh squeezed lemonade, bread omelet (an omelet fried around a slice of white bread) and chili peppers dipped in batter and deep fried. We were a large group of 16, and our cook (left) was doubtful she could feed us everything we wanted all at once, until Naveen (centre) stepped in and offered to cook the chili peppers! I didn't try the peppers, but the guys ate up every one of them that he cooked.



Later that afternoon on our drive out of Kodaikanal we stopped by one of the region's many waterfalls.

Kodaikanal - On the Road

I spent the Labour Day long weekend on a trip to Kodaikanal with the guys from the office. Kodaikanal is known as a hill station, or what Canadians might call a mountain resort town. We saw and did a lot, so I'll be making a few postings on different themes.

"On the Road" is the theme for this post, and includes photos, video and impressions of the trip to and from Kodaikanal. We rented a bus to take us there. Kodaikanal is over 500 kilometres from Chennai, and the drive can take around ten hours non-stop, but our trip took more like twelve to fourteen hours, with breaks for meals and gas.

Driving out of Chennai, I took a few photos of typical street scenes. Road side food stalls are quite popular. The cooking usually happens outdoors, like at this stall. There's also one near our office that we like to go to because the cooking is quite good.



You'll also see animals on certain roads in urban areas - mainly cattle, goats and feral dogs.



Modern office complexes are also springing up along major highways in and near the city.



Modes of transport vary. Pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, bullock carts, auto rickshaws cars, buses and trucks all compete for space on the busy roads.



As the job market here has improved over the past five years, more residents of Chennai are buying motorbikes as their primary means of transportation. Cars are finding a wider market too. The Chennai area is a hub of auto manufacturing and assembly in Asia. Shortly after we passed the Ford plant, we noticed these mysteriously covered vehicles passing us. Were they on test run for a new, still secret model?



One of the principles of shared transportation here seems to be that there is always room for one more person. Sometimes this is for practical reasons, such as transporting workers to and from a job site.



Other times, it's just for fun. After a long uphill hike on Monday, my co-workers convinced a passing jeep driver to give them a ride for the last few hundred metres.



Traveling the roads of Kodaikanal can be breathtaking, in a good way or a scary way or both at the same time.



While traveling on one-lane switch back roads lacking guard rails, one may at times be moved to invoke divine protection. To assist passengers in this regard, a plaque depicting the major faiths of India was prominently displayed at the front of the bus. Given highway driving habits in the region, a moving bus may actually be one of most likely places one will find such diverse believers united in prayer under one roof.