49,000 Hectares of Tea.

Our mad dash across the south, from coast to coast continues. We've been moving on every day or, not so much because we dislike places, but because we run out of things to do. As unemployed people with no connections who don't really speak the language most cities offer a limited number of interesting activities, and the ones which have a broader selection are inevitably so touristy we can't afford to do most of them. We spent the better part of two days in Pondicherry, mostly waiting for it cool off, or for a bus. The humidity just drains the life right out of you. We've stopped asking at the hotels about hot water, partly because they always lie, and partly because we come back from the day soaked already. Pondicherry(Pondi) was a French colony until recently and still feels kind of French. The same way I can kind of speak French by speaking Spanish with an accent. The streets are laid out mostly on a grid and people seem to obey traffic cops, and there's sewers. And of course the occasional technicolor Hindu temple with a real live elephant inside(no pictures please), just like Paris. I got a sandwich on a baguette and fell in love with France all over again.

From there onto Madurai which has the most fantastic temple I've never seen. It has huge towers covered with a riot of brightly painted Hindu sculpture, which were completely covered with scaffolding, and palmfronds just to make sure that you really couldn't see any part of it. The inside is huge, and has long collonades with intricate carvings and bright paintings and again an elephant(camera died). It was very keep there and we ate a lot of dosas and uttapam(oothapan?utthapham? everyone spelled it differently), which are essentially Sharada's favorite foods. Then we had a nice bus ride through the plains and mountains where they seem to grow most of the world's spices and coconuts up to Periyar wildlife sanctuary. Didn't see much wildlife(one huge bison(guar, much better name), but the jungle was fantastic. Met some nice tourists on a much larger budget than us(they took a taxi 200 miles!) and saw some crazy Keralan dancing. From there we got(eventuallly) to Munnar, which is even higher in the mountains and grows tea, tea, and more tea. It's much cooler and drier here, and there's lot's to see, but again, we can only afford so much of it. It's very beautiful, and it looks like Switzerland, I think. In fact there is an Indo-Swiss dairy. Swiss cows look very buttoned-down compared to their anything goes Indian counterparts. The town is surrounded by 49,000 hectares of tea plantations which is probably a lot(I think we skipped hectares in the metric unit at school) all of which are owned by the Tata corporation, which is the biggest company you've never heard of, the make steel, autos, luggage, and lots and lots of tea, which is very picturesque when it's growing. My time is nearly up and I'm trying to cram as much in without killing myself as I can before leaving. Moving on again tomorrow, down to the seaside, which is meant to be fantastic, and then, back to Delhi and then back to the U.S. Crazy.