Camp Noel Munnar

... arrived into old Munnar, a large collection of shops and houses of the locals, where everything could be found from tailors to fresh fruit markets to mobile phone stores and home made chocolate, and Jon and I wandered the streets aimlessly for a few hours, though there was not a few hours worth of entertainment to be found. There was traffic and beeping and a hundred rickshaws wanting to take you on a sightseeing tour of the area, to waterfalls and sandalwood forests and the top ...

... the heat of Cochin. It gave us the chance to do a couple of treks, the first a two hour walk through the local forest and plantations. The second was on Liz’s birthday and comprised of a six hour hike up to the top of one of Kerala’s highest peaks. It was steep from the moment we set off through tall elephant grass and unfortunately Ady had got bad sinuses and so our guide arranged for him to go back to the lodge – by motorbike. This was probably one of ...

... is 12 KM from Bodhi Zendo.<br> <br>About the Zen Master <br><br>Bodhi Zendo is run by the Zen master AMA Samy. He became a Jesuit priest at a young age. Since he did not find spiritual fulfilment from Christian spirituality, he started visiting Hindu ashrams and Buddhist meditation centres before going to Japan to learn Zen.<br> <br>He spends a few month of the year teaching abroad. I knew that he was not in India during the 1-4 October mini-Sesshin, but was ...

Hello the world out there!! Our time with the tribal people is no more. There will be no more tribal singing and dancing and certainly no more tribal comedy acted out in kerosene lamp light on the veranda of our wonderful ridge top house whilst we watch fireflies flashing away, though they kind of look like LED light and are a little disappointing when you see them and their shiny bottom up close. There will be no more crab hunting along the ...

... with it. Our one massage is hardly going to make any long term improvements to our health but it's a relaxing way to spend an afternoon in Munnar. The process at Maruya massage venuewas basically to go into one of the little therapy rooms where some traditional Indian flute music was drifting around the airwaves. Next a young girl asked you to take off all your clothes and then she tied a small strip of paper around your hips to cover your **** crack, i think they ...

... there will not be any scarring either. It is clear that these people were in a trance with an uncanny ability to exert mind over matter. We rented a small scooter for a few days providing us with the mobility to explore the breathtaking green rolling hills in the countryside around Munnar. One day we biked through the tea plantations, where the ladies were picking tea leaves and pruning the bushes, to Top Station which sits at 2,000 ...

... fe*sted on me. I *woke in the night to the sight of * gi*nt spider st*ring me in the f*ce, so I screeched * bit, not w*nting to w*ke the others but *pp*rently loudly enough to sc*re off the *r*chnid. There w*s nothing for it but to go b*ck to sleep, so sleep I did. But th*t's getting *he*d of myself. Before bed, we went to the "function" th*t w*s going on in the town. In broken English, I could only surmise th*t it w*s some sort of liter*ry festiv*l th*t h*ppens once every ...

... far and I think I have peeled all the skin off my lips. I douse the inferno in my mouth with copious amounts of water, trying not to make grunting noises from the pain. We decide to finish off the meal with a banana split (for my mouth, of course. No other reason...) We settle up and try to find an auto-rickshaw to take us up the mountain back to our hotel. We find one, but he doesn't know where our hotel is, so we pull out our map and show him. He keeps asking if we want to go to the ...

... out in the countryside doing some excersise. There were two other girls on the hike who'd just been on a yoga retreat so they were really interesting to talk to and one had actually just graduated from Clare Hall in Cambridge, it's such a small world! We just got back from the hike to the hostel and the heavens opened again. It was crazy, the heaviest rain I think i've ever seen. We couldn't even leave the room because ...

... Obwohl das nicht ganz stimmt, denn er wird sich erstmal bei KOPEDEG mit Mäusefangen beschäftigen müssen, denn die Mäuse werden dort langsam zu frech. Leider ist er seiner neuen Aufgabe noch nicht ganz gewachsen, denn so ein verwöhnter Hauskater ist solche Basics nicht gewöhnt. Also wird die Futterration reduziert und dann wird der Hunger hoffentlich die nötige Wirkung zeigen. Unsere sonstigen Haustiere bestehen meist aus Fröschen, die durch den Badezimmerausfluß Zutritt finden und dann ...