Houseboat Trip on the Backwaters of Kerala

This last weekend Yelena, Adrian, and Aaron, a friend of Adrian's from the UK, came down to Cochin to go on an overnight houseboat trip out of Allepey. They flew in Saturday morning, stopped to pick me up on the way, and we headed down to Allepey (south of Cochin about 2 hours). We got on the boat at around noon and didn't get off until around 10 a.m. the next morning. It was a beautiful boat ride, and the boat was beautiful too. It was as nice as a nice hotel, with A/C in the bedrooms and nice furniture. We had a crew of 3, a captain, serviceman, and a chef. The food was excellent (sadly my stomach hadn't yet fully recuperated from food poisoning, so I couldn't eat much, but it was good), and the scenery was amazing!

Goa Pictures

Goa is most definitely on my all time favorite places list now. It was the most relaxing beautiful warm place I've been yet. Yelena, Adrian and I headed there on Friday. We were supposed to arrive at around 6 a.m. after flying all night from Bangalore through Mumbai. But due to the Mumbai attacks, we changed our flights last minute and took a direct flight from Bangalore to Goa at around mid day. It really was a better choice anyways though, as we were able to get a good nights rest the night before and then only had an hour flight to Goa. There's only one airport in Goa, and it's more or less in the middle of the coastline. The beach we had reserved huts at was a 2 and a half hour drive south of the airport at a place called Agonda Beach, just a bit north of Palolem. The drive was scenic... plenty of cows and typical Indian roads (i.e. a major two lane highway in India looks to be about the equivalent of a one lane dirt path in the US). We had a nice A/C van though, so we were comfortable. We pulled up to the huts and were informed that one of the huts we had reserved was still being built, another was still occupied by the previous tenants, and the third was available right away. But not to worry, we were promised all three would be ready for us before bedtime, and they were. So we dropped all our stuff in the one available one, changed into more appropriate beach wear and headed out to go lie on the beach. It was a nice warm cloudy day, the most perfect kind of day to be on a beach in Goa. We were soon inundated with curious local kids who offered us dolphin swims and boat tours and the like. We declined all as politely as possible and then just ignored them. Then we did various stages of nothing, or next to nothing, for the next 48 hours. We checked out beach shack cafes for our meals and evening entertainment. Yelena and I walked the length of the beach at a nice leisurely pace on Saturday. We swam in the ocean (the temperature was like bath water), laid on the sand, slept in our huts, read books, and soaked up the sun. Sunday the sun came out in full force, so I escaped to a beach shack cafe to enjoy the view from the relative protection of shade. It was hot as hell, but idyllically beautiful. Hanging out in beach shacks was totally cliche, as we tried the local beverages and food, avoided the local smokes, and hung out with beach bums from all over, including Tibet and Germany.

Thanksgiving Dinner

One of the nice hotel restaurants nearby was having a Thanksgiving dinner especially for expats, so we trooped over there in the hopes of having some turkey. Turns out we were in luck! It was a terribly expensive 5 course, 5 star meal, but well worth it. I had scallops as an appetizer, asparagus soup, mushroom risotto, turkey, and apple pie for dessert. Then we piled four of us into a rickshaw (sitting on each others laps) to head home.

Sports Day

Thanksgiving isn't a holiday here, but since the states weren't going to be sending much work due to the holiday, the Bangalore office took Thursday off to have a Sports Day. This actually sounded like it could be kind of fun, until we showed up and it was pouring rain and only about 65 degrees. I was supposed to do the long jump and be on a basketball team, but fortunately they let me skip out of the long jump (I didn't really want to have to jump into a mud puddle on purpose), and the basketball team ended up not needing me. Yay!



We skipped out of there at lunch time and went home to curl up and try to get warm. Yelena and I both put our warmest clothes on, crawled into bed, and slept for a couple hours. That finally warmed us up enough.

Henna!

Last week I was up in Bangalore to do some trainings. One evening Yelena and I decided to see if we could find someone who could do henna. It took some searching, but eventually we happened across a place. The lady was really nice and spoke excellent english. Her daughter actually did the henna and was very creative. Here are the before and after photos.



I've been told that the darker the henna is on the palm, the more in love you are... mine was pretty dang dark, even darker than Yelena's got. Hm...

Elephant Bathing, Elephant Riding, Rubber Tree Plantation, and Waterfalls and Monkeys!

A couple of weekends ago... yes, I'm behind on my blogging... Yelena, Rick and I went on a day long adventure. We got up super early to meet our driver (Nazar) at 6 a.m. to head out. We drove up to Kodanad first to visit the elephant training center there. At 8 a.m. we bathed the younger elephants.



After the elephant bathing we got to ride one of the older elephants.



Then Nazar wanted to show us the rubber plantation that he grew up on. His family still lives and works there.



After visiting with his family briefly and exploring the rubber plantation, we drove up to Athirapally to see the waterfalls. It was beautiful and the monkeys were really friendly.



We got back to the apartments at around 6 p.m. It was a lot to pack into 12 hours!

More clothes pics!

I added a couple more clothes pics to my Indian Outfits album. I really need to figure out a better way to take these photos though...