Park Inn Coimbatore

... About two and a half hours in, while passing through a narrow cutting, we ground to a halt, and all the people in the carriage became very excited, shouting "hathi, hathi", which, as anyone who has seen The Jungle Book will know, means "elephant". Sure enough, we looked out of the window and there was a huge elephant just standing on the line looking at the train. The train staff and the guards went up to him ...

coimbatore is a heaven in India. The climate is excellent throughout the year.
the water from Siruvani is excellent. The people here are more courteous and helpful.
the public transport is most convenient to travel.If in need there are autos(but get the fares fixed) and call taxis.(know how much they charge, some ...

... contact Mobility India, an organization based in India that provides assistive devices like artificial limbs, braces,and wheelchairs to the local population. There is funding for new chairs, and hopefully the wheelchairs distributed by Mobility India will meet the needs of the users at FFC. I also built a set of parallel bars out of PVC plastic to be used by the younger kids, many of whom have cerebral palsy, for dynamic weight ...

... the past 3 days and getting a bit miserable and cold...but today the gods are smiling and it is a beautiful spring type day...birds singing....me still doing morning 6.30 yoga, now with the sun beaming in my eye and blinding me into a wobbly sun salutation due west!! *grin* Anyway back to the gifty because we all like those for no reason....On Monday and Tuesday is the festival of Dwali...now I would like to explain what this means but I don't know more than it's like our Christmas ...

... a lovely cook. He was caretaker, cook, gardener all rolled in one. One morning we went for a trek through the estate and that was beautiful. Lonely stretches with only the birds and sometimes a monkey or two for company. Cautiously peering around bends to spot a bison or two. But they kept away from us.

Coonoor is a quiet holiday, offering opportunities to discover oneself. To discover the silence within.

... little piece of heaven. The waiter comes around and serves us fresh lime soda and tells us that there is a sightseeing boat at 4:30 if we are interested. We sip our drinks and take a walk around the lodge and grounds. There is a moat around the lodge, apparently to keep the elephants out, since they tend to sleep about 100m behind the hotel, as the Dutch tourists found out one morning when they went for an illegal walk behind the hotel. Apparently, early one morning they hopped across ...

Riskikesh was to yoga and ayruvedic tea as Honey Valley is to hiking and fresh ground coffee... "Where ARE we?!?!" Julie and I both asked ourselves and each other as we reached the top of a ridege overlooking coffee plantations and rice fields below. We had read about a hidden paradise called "Honey Valley" but had decided we wouldnt be able to spend the time and money to get there, but as fate had it, we were meant to see this bit of jungle heaven because ...

... 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 ...

... going to the Supreme Court, so hopefully the land that was illegally acquired will be returned to their rightful owners. This isn't to say aspects of the BMIC aren't good-- having travelled on SH-17 and getting stuck in what I like to refer to as a 'cowjam', a better road is clearly needed. The majority of the people on that road have time that is literally valuable to them, as they are members of the informal economy and are dependent upon themselves and not a larger ...

... ll brake too much and burn your brakes out. So we continued slowly, attempting to avoid using the brakes, when Prabhu suddenly pulled on the handbrake and screeched to a halt. "Sorry guys, we have to stop here and let the brakes cool." This wasn't too much of a problem I guess. It was close on 1am though, and Goshni was expecting a call when we reached our lodgings to say that we were ok. We were sitting waiting for a while, entertaining ourselves however ...