Last South Tour Pictures

This is the last post of South Tour pictures, too bad I'm leaving for the North Tour in less than a month! I'm almost caught up to current events...

I took this from a restaurant deck in Kovalam, a beach, resort town. It was one of the more touristy places we went but it was also extremely beautiful and a fun place to stay.

The Kovalam lighthouse.

I just realized I don't have any Goa pictures. Goa is probably one of the more famous cities in India, it's a total beach, tourist town. This picture is in a Cafe Coffee Day, which is like the Indian version or Starbucks I guess, in Mumbai. They're in every city and we, the exchange students, tend to go there a lot.  I'm wearing my new favorite pants, they're SO comfortable and baggy and purple... The other person is my friend Nisha Khan from near Toronto.

The Mumbai train station.

SouthTour Pictures Part Seven (Kanyakumari)

Kanyakumari is the town at the very southernmost tip of India. It's also a holy place because it's waters are where three seas meet, the Indian Ocean in the south, the Bay of Bengal in the east, and the Arabian Sea in the west. It's also a fishing town. 

There are a few rock islands just off the coast that have temples built on the to tribute philosophers, poets, and great thinkers. It was a fairly rainy and windy day on the water when we took the boats out. 

This point is the farthest south you can go an still be in India.

There were many people swimming in the waters near to where the seas meet. They actually meet a little further out, you can see it in the water because each body of water is a slightly different color. 

Gandhi's ashes were once held here for a few days until some of them were thrown into the water where the three seas meet. The light only hits the stone on one day a year, his birthday is I remember correctly but it might also be the day of his death.

South Tour Pictures Part Six (Alleppey Backwaters, Houseboat)

I've had a hard time deciding whether I should write about the wedding while it's still fresh in my mind or try to finish up with the rest of my tour pictures. I decided to go with the latter to make things easier for me. I haven't written in my journal about the wedding yet but I think I'll get to it tonight or tomorrow (I'm a few days behind).
Anyways, we spent an evening, one night, and the nest morning on houseboats in the backwaters or Alleppey towards the end of our tour. It was really warm, but beautiful and extremely peaceful! I wish we could have spent another day on board...

We had two boats, this is looking from mine to our other one.

Again, the other boat.

We stopped at a little, little island for the night and tied the two boats together just as the sun was setting. 

WEDDING!

I just spent the last four days at a wedding!
Right now I'm trying to be quick with the internet and I'm having a hard time concentrating on typing because I'm really tired. The ceremony lasted until 5 am this morning and for the 4 nights before that I was up way past midnight. I need some good sleep tonight so I can go to school tomorrow...

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.