I thought id post today as im off for 5 days or so until Sunday night.
We are going up by overnight bus tonight to a place called Ooty, near the 'Nilegiri Hills' We will stay in Ooty for wednesday and overnight until thursday when we will journey to Avalanche, the Jungle camp.
The camp is the jungle an hour away from most civilization and takes a death defying truck ride through the roller coaster like jungle roads, or a walk through the jungle taking the same amount of time. Last time i went to avalanche i took the wrong option... We are going to do some training until friday when a group from Hebron, an International Christian school in Ooty come to the camp. We hope to see some friends in Ooty on wednesday including some english people that work at Hebron.
This weekend just gone has been an enjoyable one. On saturday me and Raj and the 3 other girls went to Mysore, a well known historical place with many palaces and other attractions.
We visited a summer palace near Mysore including some displays showing the final stand against the British under the command or Sultan Tipu, Its ok were all friends now... It was a nice way start to our packed day.
The second place we visited was a bird sanctuary, which included a large stretch of river, and also come crocodiles!We went on a short boat tour around the river, we did see 2 or 3 crocodiles, but none were within any unsafe distance of us.
We then went on to Mysore itself and went into the palace, no photography is allowed inside the palace but i got some shots from outside. The palace was of monumental grandeur with hundreds or sandal wood doors and some with ivory included. Thousands of tiles imported from countries all over the world, including Scotland. Many glass roof's and decorative pillars.
The front of the palace was designed so that the king could ride in on his Elephant straight into the courtyard.The palace was surrounded by a few temples and places of worship.
After then we went for a meal at pizza corner, as you do.
Then we continued to some botanical gardens. these were a sight i did not expect to see, although the gardens were right next to south India's water supply in the form of a dam.
There were hundreds of small and larger water fountains and features which were more attractive than the plant life as India's floral background isn't too rich...
When the clock hit 7pm the fountains all lit up and provided a very nice colourful water fountain display throughout the garden. people came from everywhere as soon as the lights came on.
We stayed until around 7.30 then we left in our car we had booked for the day.
The journey throughout the late evening was very interesting. The highways in India are places where no law applies it seems. Firstly the polices idea of speed calming is putting chicanes in the road provided by police barriers complimented by several speed bumps in a row...
In India they do drive on the left like we do The Uk, but trucks dont seem to abide by this rule. Whereas in the Uk a slow moving truck will take the left lane on the carriageway (slow lane). they decide to stick in the right hand lane and force all other traffic to undertake including other similarly matched trucks.
Finally one thing that made me chuckle, as me and raj were going to a graduation on Sunday evening of the Southern Asia bible College in Bangalore. (raj sometimes teaches there, and he studied there a few years back) I experienced a method of road surfacing i have never seen before.
On Uk roads we choose to dig up the old road and put a new road on in the same place....
But India they choose to do it their own way. As traffic is heavy all day long they just surface the road; not RE-surface. We came to find congestion along one road and i discovered that Surfacing was going on real-time. Everything was running as if the work was not being done, traffic was moving as usual; if not a little slower.
This made me smile and think; Only in India
Anyway Ive been rattling on for some time now!
I hope you all have a good week and ill post again some time next week
We are running some seminars and activities at the bible college in outdoor sports next week so it should be fun, im doing a talk at some point too....
Much love from India
Charlie D
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