Aimlessly Ambling Across Asia: Aurangabad, Ooty and Bangalore

The Maharaja's Palace in Myesore.

Tea grows in a temperate climate at about 6,000 feet elevation

Ladies clip the top leaves and put them in bags. These plants are 60 years old.

Tea plants need some shade

The leaves are taken to a factory where they are partially dried for 12-14 hours.

The leaves are ground up

They are put on the floor for one hour's fermenting

The powder is then baked to dry it. It is then sifted to take out the big pieces, and packed to sell.

By Sam, on his birthday.

Fruit stand, Ooty.

Jan 8 - 13 Aurangabad-Ooty-Bangalore
January 8
We got up at 3 a.m. packed, and walked the dark, deadly silent, deserted streets the 1/2 mile to the railrosd station. There were many people sleeping on the ground outside the station, and even more sleeping inside the station on the floor. Caught the 4:30 train and climbed into bed. Slept??? till about 7, got up and spent a looooong day on the train. The land wasvery dry. Lots of dead grassy open space, with a few small green trees. Every now and then there were harvested fields scattered with big,golden, conical stacks of corn stalks. Where the wells had not yet gone dry, there were small fields of onions, garlic and cotton. As we passed from Maharashtra State across the corner of Karnataka and ito Andhara Pradesh, there were more rivers and lakes, and many people were planting rice. We got off the train in Segundarabad and hung out at the station for 4 hours waiting for our next train. We calculated that approximately half the population of India must be here at the train station with us. Never seen such mobs!!

Bottanical Gardens, Ooty

Tea plantation in the fog, Ooty.

Back on the train for Bangalore. Ben and I were in 3d class, (6 per cubicle), and about 12 cars from Martha and Sam. Arrved at our cubicle to find that there were already 9 people in it. They turned out to be pat of a group of 1,000 people from Himachal Pradesh in northern India travelling to do a workshop in Bangalore. They were part of an NGO called The Art of Living" started by the famous sitar player, Ravi Shankar. From what I could gather, the organization is all about living, loving and serving joyfully, and the members do lots of volunteer social work. What an amazing group of positive, happy people to have to hang out in crowded quarters with! We started off our time with them singing Hindu worship songs for about an hour, then got into deep discussions on a dozen or more fascinatingly different subjects. Crashed about 10:30.

January 9
Up and off the train at 7:30 a.m. We went to a tavel agent near the station and booked a private car with driver! Very unlike us, but after 25 hours of trains and stations, why not? We have the car and driver for 5 days. He will drive us the 7 hours to Ooty, be available for us for the 3 days there to take us wherever we like, then take us back to Bangalore to catch the train to travel to the southeast coastal town of Mahabalipuram. A car and driver for 5 days and 5 or 600 miles for $220-not bad. We passed through Mutamali National Park on the way and saw elephants, wild boar, deer and lots of monkeys.
Arrived at our destination, Ughadamandalam, better known as Ooty, at sunset. Ooty was set up by the British as a "Hill Station", a retreat town 6,000 feet up in the hills, and a great place to get away from the scorching summer heat of the lowands. It is now a popular tourist destination for Indians, as well as a tea growing area.

Ben and gum tree.

January 10
Guess what? We are north of the equator, so it is winter here, and this morning the ground was white with frost! Even going to bed fully dressed and under a ton of blankets isn't quite warm enough for me. No pace is heated, but when the sun shines, usually between 8 and noon, just standing in the sunshine feels sooo good! In 3 days, we will be complaining about the heat! We drove up to the Dolphin's Nose this morning, an incredible viewpoint high up in the hills. The clouds were racing up the hillsides all around us, creating some of te most dramatic views. Lots of monkeys with dorky hairstyles hanging around. There were ladies clipping tea leaves in the nearby fields. We visited a tea processing plant on the way back to the hotel. Sam will be telling you all about it soon.
Weare slowing right down to Indian speed! We drove about 25 miles and made two stops plus lunch, left at 9 a.m. and didn't arrive home until 3:30 p.m.. Wow!
We ate "western" at a pretty fancy restaurant. Had a whole rotissarized chicken, then stopped for a couple pounds of chocolate on the way home.

Rural Indian school bus

January 11
We left at 8 this morning, stopped for breakfast, then went to the highest point in southern India, 8,600 feet above sea level. Good views, but not spectacular.
I forgot to mention yesterday's morning snack, fresh corn off the cob (probably taken off before cooking, as the kernels were whole), with masala spices, (green cardomum,cinnamon, ginger, cloves and a bit of cayenne pepper) plus lime juice,butter and salt. It was totally and awesomely delicious!

Hindu temple

January 12
The ground was white with frost again this morning. We went to the Tribal Museum this morning.It was pretty interesting. It looked desreted when we arrived, but a man appeared from somewhere, let us in, and gave us a great tour. It was all about the indigenous tribal people of the Nilgiri Hills and had lots of old artifacts, photos and paintings. Our guide let us pick up things, put on stuff and play some of the musical instruments, something that is rarely possible in most such museums. The stuffed animals, especially the snake with plastic scarf and the turkey and mongoose from hell could use some help.

Mongoose from hell

January 13
We retraced our route to Bangalore. It was nice to get back down out of the hills to "warm country" again. We stopped in Matamali Natonal Park for a bit to watch a herd of tamed elephants. We also saw lots of wild deer, boar and of course, monkeys.

Sam wearing the "original" umbrella, Tribal Museum

We stopped at Mysore Palace, palace of the former Maharaja. It was magnificent, all 7.4 acres of INSIDE floor space-approximately 35,000 square feet. Quite a comfy little place for a family of 5. The walls were covered with huge, very detailed paintings, the halls were lined with 3 foot diameter 30 feet high intricately designed, brightly colored pillars. Rooms were the size of a basketball gym, but with 60 foot high stain glass covered domes. Some of the items used by the Maharaja were on display, which included the gold throne in a large gold box? that was strappd on the back of his elephant and used for, duh.......trips down to the local store for cigarettes?? As we wandered through the cavernous hallways and the rooms big enough for our house to fit in, I just kept thinking, "Why?" and I wondered how many thousands of people lived their whole lives in the squalor so that this family could live such an almost unimaginably wealthy lifestyle.