South Tour Pictures Part Five (Ooty)

Ooty is a hill station way up in the mountains of southern India. Hill stations where were the British used to come during the summer months to escape the heat. They are also home to some of the country's biggest tea plantations.

We started our day in a muggy, hot, tropical climate driving through a jungle nature preserve. By the end of the day, we were passing pine trees and vegetation that sort of reminded me of the Pacific Northwest. The drive up was absolutely amazing! We climbed up the valley in jeeps the road was steep and twisting and there were signs at every hairpin turn reminding drivers how many people had died there in previous years. The views were stunning we looked down on the lush valley and up at bare, rocky, craggy peaks mostly hidden by the clouds. The road was carved into the steep slopes and there were trees hugging the rocks along the mountain side. We passed villages and single homes built into terraces that were very close to what I imagine the South American villages up in the Andes look like. When we left the mountain side and drove through valley was when the vegetation turned from the scrubby, rock hugging trees, to tall ancient pines and ferns. The weather was perfectly cold and the air felt so pure and clean.

(sorry about the quality of the pictures for some reason this time they didn't upload in the best quality)

A view shot looking back into the valley we started from taken from the bus. It's hard to get a scope of the height and elevation was well as the drop off. 

One of the small, single homes along the road on the way up.

From left to right, Hannah (Germany), Sabrina (Austria), and Dascha (Oregon) sitting on their balcony at our hotel looking down on the town of Ooty.

A view from one of the highest peaks in South India.

All around Ooty were hundreds of tea plantations.

We saw a family of wild elephants grazing near the road along a lake in Ooty. 

A walk in a tea plantation.

The road on the way down crossed over a river and waterfall.

South Tour Pictures Part Four (Belur Temple)

A larger than life sized carved statue of Shiva's bull. The three main Hindu gods each have a "vehicle that they use for transportation and Shiva's is this bull. 

Belur is one of two temples that were built in to be a pair 16 kms apart. They two temples, Belur and Haldbidu are considered to be the most beautiful and detailed pieces of architecture in the state of Karnataka. They took hundreds of year to finish and were once at the heart of the Hoysala Empire.

The guide was demonstrating the detail by showing that each section is full carved through enough to stick a straw through. Yet the whole section is one stone, so one mistake and everything had to be restarted.

The temple was made in a sort of cross or plus sign shape. This is one of the extending arms ( I don't know how else to describe it). The main section of the temple was in the center of the cross and each arm had a little, minor shrine on it.

Each of the 12 (I think) layer represented something else and were carved with great detail. No elephant, dancer,  flower, or animal was exactly the same and these layer went all the way around the temple. 

The top of the gate leading into the temple compound.

South Tour Pictures Part Three

Southern India's (and maybe all of India) biggest botanical garden in Mysore (23rd November). 

A temple in the garden.

The rest of the pictures on this post are from a temple we visited. The temple itself isn't even visible in this picture. We had to climb hundreds of carved stairs to reach it (I forget the exact number)

About a third of the way up...

The last portion of climbing was sort of inside an exterior wall or compound that contained stairs and some small temples)

Looking back over the landscape there was a rainbow.

This statue is hundreds of feet tall and he stood in the middle of the temple at the top of the mountain. 

Goodbye Sebastian

Last night we dropped Sebastian off at the airport for his flight home. He'd already been here for a whole year!
The last two weeks he spent traveling around with his family and was supposed tot return to Indore on the 7th when we had planned to spend most of the day with him. Unfortunately, he missed his plane in Mumbai so had to spend the night in the Bombay airport where non of us could reach him on his phone that only works when he's in the same state as you...
Yesterday though, we got to spend all spent a few hours with him and got to take him to the airport. Amanda had come from Bhopal to say goodbye too. We went out to coffee and gave him an excessive amount of cards, candy, and some other gifts and he gave us each a printed one of his pictures.
I hate goodbyes when you don't know when you're nest going to see a person again if ever. Amanda made him promise to invite us all to his wedding whenever he got married...
Now there is very little to do besides live life here until the next tour in February. Except the wedding next weekend that we all got invited to!!! I'm very excited, seeing an Indian wedding was one of my goals for the year!

South Tour Pictures Part Two

A massive Buddha statue on an island in the lake that separates the two parts of Hydrabad. Our last stop on the first day of sight seeing was to take a boat out to the island. 

Mahabalipuram (November 18, i think). The beach here was amazing and the evening was a perfect temperature, slightly warm but just barely. After everyone had returned from an evening of wandering around the touristy town, we decided to build a bonfire on the beach. We sat on driftwood, listened to Bob Marley, danced, waded, and played games. It felt like a perfect summer evening that everyone dreams of having except it was the middle of November.

Mahabalipuram (November 19th, i think). We had a guided tour of some of the historical places around the town. 

I took this from a peninsula looking back at the beach in front of our hotel the next day. Looking at the picture, our hotel was just back off the beach from the part of the beach between the nearest person in a red shirt and the next closest person (I hope that made sense). 

A part of the temple located on the peninsula mentioned in the prior picture. 

These stands cam be found all over the south. They are sugar cane juicers where you can buy delicious and extremely fresh sugar cane juice.