Life in the clouds!

Friday, September 18th

Today was quite eventful! We woke up to warm coffee and a different treat for breakfast- eggs dipped in coconut chutney! After breakfast we went to bring down our plates and talk to Rani and Jason a while. Rani tends to want to speak to us in Tamil, and she's so friendly that we just smile, laugh and nod even though we really have no idea what she's saying. We gave her a bar of chocolate, which she appreciated!
At 9.30 we were met by Anthony who took us in his van for a driving tour of Kodai and the surround area. It was beautiful! We drove higher up into the mountains, taking pictures of the town below, monkeys on the street, cows grazing on the side of the road, and several groups of women walking single file on the edge of the street, elegantly balancing timber tied together with string on their heads... At times it felt as if we were inside of a cloud, it was so foggy and the air was thin. We first stopped at a pine tree forest, woods filled with only very tall, skinny pine trees. There were steep hills throughout, all with these thin pine trees. There were many tourists also there, lighting up the woods with their brightly colored saris. We were stopped by four teenage school girls who started talking to us in English, saying, "Hello. Your name is? Very beautiful! Beautiful hair!" Soon, the rest of the girl's group came over to us, until we were surrounded by a group of more than a dozen giggling school girls asking us questions. It was fun, and they were quite amused by us. It must be quite rare to get two teenage white girls traveling on their own here! We took lots of photos with our new friends.
We continued our drive to different spots where we walked to see views of pillar rock. Unfortunately, because of the rainy weather we couldn't see too well except for when the fog lifted. It was hard to always keep up with Anthony as he expertly navigated his way through streams and over rocks. We aren't used to the altitude yet and when walking felt out of breath really quickly! It seemed like Anthony was sprinting ahead of us as he walked at his normal pace.
We stopped for a while at the popular pillar rock viewing point, where we bought some postcards so that we could tell what view we were supposed to have from there! We also stopped to walk around in the flower garden where about 7 men asked to take pictures with us. Somehow they had the pictures printed out by the time we were leaving the garden, and we probably confused them by taking a picture of them holding pictures of all of us :)

After this, we went to see Green View which was supposed to have a spectacular view of the valley if it weren't for the fog. Nevertheless, we had an amusing time seeing all of the vendors and tons of monkeys running around, playing, growling and stealing from the vendors. They were eating out of people's hands and sneaking food out of the garbage. We got some good close-up pictures of them, as they all seemed to have forgotten to be scared around people. Boys ran to hit them with sticks while some people held out their hands to feed the monkeys.!
Continuing our drive, we saw a waterfall, view of Kodai lake, and a 500 year old Jaman tree. We then stopped at Our Lady of La Saleth shrine church, which is 150 years old. We learned that it is only one of two churches in world dedicated to Our Lady of La Saleth, the other being in France. The Tamil-French architecture was beautiful, with a sky blue outline on the white building framing the church before the surrounding mountains.
Inside the architecture was quite interesting. The colorful Madonna statue and sparkly gold paper covering the back wall evoked the bright colors so present in Indian culture. People knelt on the floor and prayed.
As we headed back into town, we stopped at a Natural History museum of the old Christian College. It was full of jars of preserved animals like snakes and goats, as well as stuffed mammals such as jackals, tigers, monkeys and bison, as well as other species that used to be found here whose populations have since been wiped out. It had an aura of colonial-time scientific experiments involving the biology and practices of "natives" and their animals. It was interesting to see, though was somewhat creepy. Besides this, they had old coins from around the world and, completely unrelated to anything else there, a newspaper cut out announcing President Obama's inauguration.
We then stopped at the oldest post office of Tamil Nadu, where people had to travel to from far away if they wanted to mail anything in the olden days. It was very sweet, small one room, red building with a large desk, behind which a nice woman dressed in a simple sari sold stamps. After this, we headed for lunch at a nice hotel where we ordered 4 separate dishes to share and spent less than $4 in total, including a too large tip! The waiters really enjoyed serving us from the dishes on our table and piled our plates high with much more food than we wanted!
After returning back to our cottage, we went for another walk around the lake. We had our portraits painted by an artist, blind in one eye with a friendly smile. He charged us a lot, even after we bargained him down. But when Paige sat down near him to sketch the lake, he ran over to join us. Giving us other artwork that he had done and sketching for us the trees, lake and more portraits. He so much enjoyed Paige's pen, from her dentist, we let him keep it. We were joined there by his father, a man dressed in tattered clothes intent on selling us honey, but also very generous in sharing his umbrella. A homeless beggar also joined our lake side, art crew and we shared some Costco fruit snacks with him. When the rain came down too hard, we took our art and decided to take cover and say goodbye. Walking back, we were once again caught in a downpour!