The Residency Coimbatore

... intent, but nobody seemed to know what to do, and we just had to wait for him to move off the line in his own good time. This took about 40 minutes, during which time the elephant presented his face, then his backside, then his side, and finally his face again to our view, and most of the people had got out of the train for a better look, only to be chased back on by those in authority, who seemed more likely to ...

It's funny how things can change so quickly, no matter where you are in the world. For the past couple of weeks, I have been thinking of India as only what I have seen: the small airports, the shopping, and the university. I know that it is only a tiny, tiny part of India, but I had nothing else to base it on. I have been proven wrong.

In the last few days, I have seen more parts of India that ...

Calvin and I made the windy trip from Ooty to Coimbatore to visit friends of mine, Saravanan Uncle and Kavitha Aunty, from Calgary. They are spending a year in India, and have just built a gorgeous house in Coimbatore. We had a very fun day playing with their two girls ...

My wife and I scoured the net for a very special home stay in Coonoor. I had always been fascinated of Coonoor. Coonoor in the state of Tamil Nadu in India brought back memories of quiet and satisfied readings in my childhood. It was a quaint place and found mention in fictional stories. So when we decided to make our first trip there, we wanted to stay in a special place. That place turned out to be the Devashola Tea ...

In the evening got picked up by Franklin from the hotel as he wanted to show us his home and his mum wanted to cook for us :-D Along the way (along a cool bare rock hill and through nice forest areas) he told us it had been 44degrees in Vellore today (no wonder it was so painful!) and even his family were suffering. My impression of India up to now was of a noisy, poverty stricken, dirty place with people who seemed oblivious to it all. I was to find later ...

... moat and saw big gray mounds, which turned out to be sleeping elephants. As we passed the back of the buildings, something rustled in the bushes. Something rather large sounding. I speed up and make my way back to the front, and send George round back. He comes back ad says there are two big black monkeys in the trees. We go back to see them and sure enough, they are just staring at us. They are rather large, but I don't think they are as big as George claims (6 feet), I think they are ...

... we arrived in Madikeri, set on grabbing a small room in a guesthouse and exploring a bit on our way down into Kerala, I decided to give Honey Valley one last try and as it worked out, they had one room left available for the night and the bus to where the jeep would pick us up was to leave in 15 minutes...I looked at Julie and said "you wanna go?!?" (she smiled and nodded the 'why not?' look) so i returned to the phone and replied "we will be there ...

... collects water and washes the dishes... Nice! Right next to our lodge were two families of monkeys that entertained us our entire stay. All the seem to do is play fight and eat! That evening we sat out outside watching the river and in the space of a couple of hours it was visited by a group of spotted dear, wild boar, peacocks, a snake and a king fisher. Needless to say we had an excellent time at the park and are looking forward to some more in the north of India.

... there in the service industry. It's just extremely frustrating to see all of this corruption, and be face to face with overwhelming poverty, and the government wants to take money and build satellite townships that will in all probability fail to generate the expected interest and capital. If private enterprise wants to take that risk, fine, but a government should be more responsible in public works projects. And as a final note, these displaced farmers will most ...

... dark. If we encountered it, it was likely to charge. 2 tons of muscle landing on top of you is not a pleasant thought, and our uneasiness showed. Suchee started telling jokes to try and take our mind off the situation at hand, by the end of which I was starting to think that perhaps being charged down by a bison wasn't so bad after all. Fortunately, the bison never materialised, so we set off after a few more minutes. It turns out the place we were staying ...