Ooty Villa Park Ootacamund

... 1999-2002) and the current head, Mark Noonan, along with the former principals&#8217; wives. We&#8217;d been speaking about the school for some time, about the challenges (&#8220;There should be more language instruction&#8221;) and joys of Hebron (&#8220;Our emphasis is on life rather than rigidity and structure&#8221;).<br><br>Rod&#8217;s wife Ruthie used an acronym, &#8220;TCK&#8221;, that I&#8217;d never heard and asked her to explain. &#8220;Third Culture Kid,&#8221; she ...

... br><br>Principal Noonan had scheduled an hour or so with each of the groups, and joined many, including the kids, who were seniors and members of the student council. We began by talking about some of the charity work the students undertake. Hebron supports at least three local charities, including Smyrna Home for the disabled and Freedom Firm, an anti-prostitution organization. <br><br>But then Mark left the room and I asked for the goss: What was it really like to live here, what ...

... movie playing on the video screens but there was a better movie showing outside. <br><br>There were vast quilts of bright green tea and crews of women harvesting the supple leaves, picking and plucking the bushes of tea into manicured splendor. In places up and down the road construction crews were building cement and stone retaining walls, which next monsoons will help mitigate runoff and stop landslides. The workers were in civilian clothes, some in rags, carrying ...

... degrees was not immediately noticable as the sun still bore down strongly from the sky. We'd picked out a reasonably sounding place from the guide book, only to find out that the Hotel Lake View bore an uncanny resemblance to a derelict Pontins with not a shimmer of water in eye sight. Following the advice of our auto driver we drove to the Mount View Guest House. Our first impressions of large room, high ceiling and good location were ...

... we would be stopping halfway up to board what is known as the "toy train." Toy trains are found in a few places in India as ways to get up to many mountain towns. They have steam-powered engines that run on meter-gauge lines and take passengers up the hills through scenic routes.<br><br>When we got to the toy train, the rain stopped, and we boarded in our first class car. The whole train was only a few cars long and we were lucky ...

... 8230;. thanks to the roads of Karnataka. Managed to reach the bus stand just in time, event he bus driver and conductors were relived at our arrival&#8230;. they too had the same surprised look at seeing us as we had on seeing them&#8230;they were the ones who brought us&#8230;same bus too!!!<br><br>A longish bus journey found most of us sleeping like dead wood, tired, no longer bothering to ...

... for basic food rations from the government, rice, flour, milk etc because they were too poor to afford them. Our shopping list above is one day's fruit &amp; veg ration for us, the honey will last us 4/5 days, and we will probably have a 'snack' in a cafe later this evening. We bought our shopping at a supermarket where we estimate prices to be about 20/25% higher than the markets (if you want to haggle for everything) but ...

... prayed he wasn't the driver! The scenery is lovely here and now that we are in tea and coffee plantation territory we could be in Dorset! Harrisons Chundale Tea Plantation is just down the road from Kalpetta and we passed the regional coffee research centre about 10 kms back. The Wayanad is in part pure virgin forest and part cardamom, coffee, pepper tree and vanilla plantations, it is also a wildlife sanctuary. Unfortunately ...

... early morning to avoid the crowd. here is a view from Doddabetta. Chose to continue on the road towards Kotagiri to kill the time. Compared to the 1st part of the drive, this drive was peaceful. The road was empty, allowing me to enjoy the view on the way. Had tea on the way in a small shop. Surprisingly, the shop owner and the local people were proficient with Tamil as well as Kannada. Came back to Ooty by night. Went for a ...

... it was much nicer to see them than the ones chained up at nearly every temple. There is also an elephant park for orphans, sick ones and some are used for day to day tasks in the park. After the tour we were able to see their bath time in the river. And what do you get with big elephants having a bath.. BFF's or Big Fat Floaters as dad likes to call them except on a monumental scale! Comprendez? Incidentally, this is the same river where everybody takes a bath ...