Ooty-Mysore

(Lesley) We were cold in Ooty but we survived it. We wore all our clothes and our tuques nightly. The locals did too, it was like Winnipeg in winter without the snow. Sam has probably blogged about some of our adventures. The highlight was a 10 km trek in the hills. It was a day out of town wandering through hill tribe villages and tea plantations. Mhari did well with her knee. She was careful but had no trouble keeping pace with any of the adults. Our guide said he hadn't had any kids on a trek in a while.

After Ooty, en route to Mysore, we drove through The Mudulamai Nature Park and Tiger Reserve. We didn't see any tigers, but we did see about a dozen elephants. It was nice to see lots of forest and parklands with no litter.

Mysore, in Karnataka, is very regal. There is an impressive palace here where we spent the morning. I also went to a silk factory for a tour. The tour was funny; I signed in and got a visitor pass and was let in to go check out the factory. There were a few English words explaining each section of the factory (soaking, threading, weaving,) Other than that I was just allowed to wander through and watch. The workers were used to people venturing in and some of them indicated that I should lean in and try or touch something. I helped the man do the quality control at the end, by looking through the silk in front of a window and two florescent lights. I can attest to the quality of the silk from Mysore!

The market in Mysore was neat too. We were there last night and were impressed. However, the vendors here are a bit too used to tourists; they are persistent, annoyingly so at times.

We have also discovered that train booking as we move north has got a bit trickier. In Kerala, the distances were small so just showing up at a station worked well, but for longer journeys one seems to need to book in advance to get a sleeper spot. We might need to do some planning and purchasing of tickets ASAP.

We are all still enjoying ourselves. And we are still loving India.