Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has been a wonderful surprise! We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and tried to change our Indian money at the airport. But we had forgotten that it is illegal to take foreign currency out of the country. We were a little stressed but our worries were quickly put at ease when a taxi driver offered to change it for us on the black market. It's silly now to think that we were worried at all. Of course there would be a black market here that was alive and well. We paid our driver in Indian rupees and he took us to the home of the Seneviratnes, parents of S's co-worker, in Kandy. Kandy is the second largest city in the country and it is known as the cultural capital- it was the last city to fall to colonial rule. Kandy is amazingly beautiful and I might go so far as to say the nicest city in Asia- it is really clean, people are really friendly and it is very beautiful as the city is located in a valley surrounded by hills. In the center of the city is a big lake and it is so incredibly peaceful to stroll around.
The Seneviratnes were so kind to welcome us into their home even though they had not previously met either of us. They really made us feel comfortable and really helped us plan out our 8-day whirlwind trip. Daisy cooked delicious food for us that we will never forget. We were so full yesterday after breakfast from the hoppers, jam and multiple curries that we were not even hungry by dinner time.
This morning we headed out early for Dambulla, a town that has amazing temple caves that date back to 2nd Century BC. On our way to the cave temple entrance, we walked past a active monastery and the monks invited us to chat with them. They brought out a large tray of Sri Lankan sweets and bananas and we spent the morning chatting with them. One of the monks randomly asked S if he was a vegetarian and if he was into yoga. After the monk found out he was right, the monks jokingly told S to join them in the monastery and become a monk, but not before they asked me if it was okay. All the while, there were about 10 little monks-in-training standing in the doorway smiling at us and nervously running away when I tried to ask them questions in Sinhala, the official language of the country.
After Dambulla, we took the bus to Sigiriya, which has a 262 m hill that was turned into a palace in the 5th century. We climbed the 1500 steps up to the top, along the way admiring rock paintings of buxom mistresses that were the concubines of the king in the 5th century. We are now about to go enjoy some curry and rice before we head off to bed.

Tamil Nadu

Written by S:

today we are in chennai, and it's our last day here in india. this is a huge, complex, confusing country, and we've covered a lot of ground in the last three months, which is an accomplishment of which to be proud. so far, india has had the best food, many of the best sights, and the craziest people. it's a little sad to be leaving. but on the other hand, this is a totally exhausting place to be a backpacker, and we are ready to move on to more relaxed sri lanka, and then southeast
asia.
since munnar, we've been to madurai, trichy, pondicherry, mamallapuram and now chennai, all in tamil nadu state. tamil nadu is one of the indian states that obstinately refuses to learn hindi, instead preferring tamil, a langauge that has been spoken here uninterruptedly for over 2000 years. apparently they still use the same slang that greek and roman traders heard here thousands of years ago. the
langauge is totally unrelated to the sanscrit-based hindi, which they view here as a form of northern cultural imperialism.

madurai and trichy have two of the largest hindu temples we've seen so far - tall, labyrinthine, and intricately decorated. pondicherry is the former heart of french india, today possessing a bizarre mix of french and indian culture. parts of the town look like you are in mediterranean france, or even martinique. french is still widely spoken here, and it can be somewhat surreal to see traditionally dressed indians jabbering back and forth to each other in perfect french.

mamallapuram is seaside temple town, that's kind of been overrun by backpackers. and today we are just relaxing in chennai, mentally preparing to leave to country. we will be in sri lanka for a week, then i will head to southeast asia while vickie heads home to interview for jobs.

Kerala

Written by S:

In Mysore we saw the famous Mysore Palace. At this point we've seen more of these things than I can count, so they are starting to blend together, but this one, like the others, is a massive monument to luxury, ostentation and waste. The ubiquity of these sorts of palaces in a country where poverty and serious deprivation are so widespread is pretty disturbing and i'm starting to suspect they aren't unrelated. Every time I see one I start thinking about what would have happened had all of these man-hours and physical resources gone into building factories or anything at all productive, then maybe this country wouldn't be in state it is today.

We spent three days in Kochin, which is starting to gain a reputation on the ground as being a little too touristy. I loved it though. As we've found in other places, if you make the extra effort, like avoid the guidebook and walk 10 minutes out of the tourist center, you find totally normal indian life going on all around you. Kerala itself is stunning. All palm trees and lush tropical scenery. We did a daylong
tour of the extensive backwaters there, and I fell in love with the place. It's the most picture perfect tropical scenery you've ever imagined.

We also spent a day at the beach about an hour north of the city. This was our first beach excursion since korea. The beach was beautiful, and we enjoyed the sunset into the arabian sea over dinner. the swimming didn't go exactly as planned though. In case you weren't aware, Indians are extremely, extremely conservative about women's
dress, and the idea of seeing a woman in a bikini is something that is totally foreign and particularly exciting to the young men. Aware of this, we made a serious effort to find an empty spot on the beach so vickie could swim. but on the way we encountered twenty different guys inviting us to go swimming with them. after 30 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of waiting to be sure the coast was clear, we finally thought it was safe. but sure enough, within 30 seconds of vickie
getting into the water, one of the guys we had met 20 minutes ago, having clearly followed us, materialized out of the bushes and began immediately stripping down to his bathing suit. we beat an immediate retreat off the beach, and at least the guy was a little embarrassed, but gender relations still have a long way to go here.

Karnataka

S and I have spent the last week exploring the state of Karnataka. From Hyderabad, we took a public overnight bus to Hampi, which is the site of some the most impressive Hindu ruins in the country. The town and ruins are located in a bizarre volcanic boulder landscape which gives the area a surrealistic feeling. We rented bikes today and toured the site, which is a vast capitol of a former southern empire that was completely abandoned hundreds of years ago. Ruined temples, palaces and old bazaars dot the 27 km landscape. As there are so many ruins covering such a large area, it was exciting to stumble upon an interesting ruin that we had not expected. We obviously only made a small dent in terms of what we were able to see in two days but it was full of delightful surprises. We decided to upgrade to a sleeper bus for our overnight journey to Bangalore. On sleeper buses, the bottom row has reclining chairs and the upper rows have double and single beds. S and I thought we were traveling in luxury and were very much looking forward to a good night's sleep but the bumpy road had us bouncing up and down all night long on our sleeper beds. We spent much of the next morning catching up on sleep in our hotel. Banagalore is the booming IT center of India and is also known as the City of Gardens. The gardens were quite beautiful and the city overall was clean by developed world standards and we enjoyed visiting old palaces ruled by the Wodeyars and the active temples in the area.
Yesterday we took a short bus (3 and a half hours) to Mysore, a city also ruled by the Wodeyars from the 16th century. In Mysore, however, the palaces left by the ruling family are much more ornate and bigger. After exploring the palace this afternoon, we will take our last overnight bus (yay to no more long buses or trains in India!!!) to Cochin in the stare of Kerala. Only 13 more days left in India- time has flown by so fast.

Visiting old friends in Hyderabad

We just had an amazing time with fellow Williams alumna Elizabeth Sewell '06 in Hyderabad and Kalleda, located in the state of Andra Pradesh. She has moved there to volunteer for an NGO and run a youth empowerment program at a rural school in the village of Kalleda. She picked us up on the crazy streets of the capital city Hyderabad and as her host had a business meeting over dinner, he invited all of us to come along and have an amazing meal on his partner's dime. It was great to catch up with Elizabeth and the next day we got on a 6AM train to her village. Kalleda is a small rural town in the district of Warangal where the majority of the residents are farmers. We were greeted by the neatly uniformed school children as we entered the school being run by the NGO Elizabeth is working for. The school is highly focused on spurring student creativity and creating a culture of ownership in the school and education. Walking through the halls I was very impressed with the culture created within the school and how eager teachers were to get feedback from us. We had a great dinner with Elizabeth's boss in the evening and I truly enjoyed listening to this spirited woman's vision for the school in Kalleda. This afternoon Elizabeth gave us a tour of Waranagal where we visited some beautiful temples and old fort ruins.
It was great to catch up with her and we look forward to when our paths will cross again.