Trichur

Tuesday December 29^th –

We are now in Trichur where my grandparents have a house.  We are staying with them.  Tuesday, there was a bundh, a bundh is when everything is closed, even taxis and other forms of transportation. If you ignore the closure then people throw stones at you. Because my grandparents have no car, we walked everywhere today. The first thing we did today was walk down to my dad’s uncle’s house. When my dad went to school in India he lived there, and we also visited one of my dad’s old friends next door. That evening we went to one of my dad’s aunt’s house’s and ate a little bit, it was an okay day but I find myself hoping that this isn't all we do in Thrissur.

Wednesday December 30^th – Guruvayur Temple and Punnattur Kotta (elephants) and then Athilerapilli and Vazhachar

Today, we went to the Guruvayur Krishna temple, but I feel kind of like with temples, seen one seen all. After seeing the temple, we went to Punnatturkotta, which means place of elephants. There is supposedly 66 elephants in all. Of all the elephants we saw, only three were female, our favorite elephants were the ones with dark skin, they looked almost black. After we left Punnatturkotta we drove to some water falls, where there was a short hike to the bottom. It was really hot! When we got to the bottom, Brogan went crazy and was pretending to be Tarzan, as I write this he is slaping himself. The world’s oddest question, how many crazy siblings can one have and still be sane?

Christmas in Goa and the trip to Trichur, Kerala (December 24, - 27)

                                          CHRISTMAS EVE
     

            We were still in Goa.  On Christmas Eve, we were hanging out on beautiful beaches and relaxing by a clear-watered pool. Until 7:30. Then we took a path we've never taken before on a stroll to the Magical Forest for the Christmas Party. We were getting ready to party! We filled our plates with generous amounts of seafood, pasta, mashed potatoes, and intresting breads, then hit the dance floor. Afterwards it was time for dessert! There was every thing from passion fruit pudding to Christmas cookies. You'll never belive this, Santa Claus came to town!

                                          CHRISTMAS

            This Chirstmas will memorable only because we're in India. We didn't do much all day, and that's an understatement. Sure, it was relaxing and fun, but compared to the usual Christmas this was boring.

                                          TRIP TO TRICHUR

            After one more day we were out of luck; it was time to leave the resort. We got up at 4:30am and were driven to the train staion at about six. when we got there, our train was delayed two hours. So we had to wait in the stinky, dirty, make-me-want-to-barf, train station. When we finally got on the train, we didn't even have the seats we payed for, dad and i were all the way down the isle from mom and brogan. We were on there till 11:00, 14 hours! My mom says, at the moment, she's never going to ride MAX again.

December 23rd - First day in Goa

Breakfast was amazing! There were pastries and waffles and real sausage! After breakfast we went to the beach again, Brogan and I swam for a while then we built a pyramid out of balls of sand. The pyramid had a 3-by-3 base. After playing at the beach for a while we went to the pool. The water was cold in the pool though, so most of the time I read. For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant called Da Luigi. It was good to have Italian after so much Indian food. It was a very relaxing day.

Brogan's second blog

Wednesday December 23rd - first day in Goa
Hi I’m Brogan and I’m doing my second blog. We just arrived at a 5 star hotel in Goa on Tuesday December 22. The first thing we did was take a walk in the hotel. Then we had dinner at a restaurant called palms. next morning I had breakfast at the village café were there was a buffet (that had everything I like).  next we went to the beach and the pool. If I got one word to describe the beach I would say…crabs. Crabs are everywhere and when I say everywhere I mean everywhere on the first day I was picking up a certain kind of shell and I picked one and in side was a crab and I was so startled that I threw all my shells. Next we had lunch by the pool. So my dad was just sitting and there was a crow over him and I said “Ready, Aim, FIRE” and the bird missed by inches. The End.

Return to Mysore and Trip to Goa

December 21st, we left the hotel behind and went back to the biggest attraction in mysore, the palace. The palace was beautiful, but guess what?! It’s residents have always had electricity, it was built in the late 20th century after the old wooden one burned down. From there, we left mysore, and went to a bird sanctuary that wasn’t far away. It was cool, but it didn’t even make it to my top three favorite places in India, so far. From the bird sanctuary we went back to Bangalore, where we slept one last time.

December 22nd, we visited my grandfather’s cousin for breakfast. After we left their house we got on a plane and left for Goa and a resort. The flight took only about an hour. When we got to Goa we were picked up from the airport and driven to Park Hyatt, a beautiful resort and spa. After we unpacked, we took a walk on the beach. The sand was so soft and clean it squeaked beneath your feet, and there were crabs everywhere! At first glance, the crabs looked like tiny moving patches of sand, needless to say, they had great camouflage. After walking around for about an hour, we went back to the room, then found our way back to a beach side restaurant where there was a seafood buffet. Actually it was more like you picked it out, then they cooked it. There was lobster, prawns, squid, crabs, and three types of fish. It was really creepy when I realized a few of the crabs were moving. When these guys say fresh, they mean fresh!

Five Star Room with a View

We went on our last jeep ride in Bandipur. We saw our first gaur and first macaw along with tons of langur monkeys. After that, we left the jungle lodge and went to Chamundi Hills, near Mysore, to another temple. When we left the temple we drove back to Mysore. There we got a room at a five star hotel. At about 7 o’clock we drove to the Mysore palace which was lit with nearly 100,000 light bulbs. It was breathtaking! The hotel Rigaalis felt like a miracle after rock hard mattresses. We were on the 5th floor and there was a huge window with a great view of Mysore.

Tigger Spotting

TIGER SPOTTING!!!! INCREDIBLY RARE 25 FEET AWAY TIGER NOT IN A CAGE!!!! I SOOOOO LOVE TIGERS!!!!!!!!

December 19th, we went on a jeep safari, we spotted two tigers, one was only about 25 feet away. Later in the safari we spotted the same female with a male on the other side of a lake. We also saw a bunch of chitals (spotted deer), 14 elephants, a giant squirrel, 5 peacocks, 6 mini roosters, some small brown monkeys, a million termite mounds, 3 wild boar, tons of exotic birds, and a few other things. We were late to the jeep ride so we got a whole jeep to ourselves. Later that day, we were driven in an open toped jeep to a Krishna temple on top of a mountain, there was a great view! All in all a very busy and tiring day.

Brogan's response

Hi I’m Brogan and I am doing my first blog and if you read my sisters latest blog I am not a doofus. Let me tell you about the Mysore zoo. So if you saw my sisters blog she said what animals she liked well I liked all those animals but I like one kind of animal better then all of them…the snakes. The snakes are awesome let me tell you about two of my favorite snakes. First is the King Cobra. You would expect it to be 5 or 6 feet but this thing was huge. I am not talking huge, huge!!! I am talking HUGE, HUGE !!!! Next I have to tell you about a cage full of rat snakes and cobras. The cage was about 6 or 7 feet across. It had a big bush in the middle and inside of the bush there was like 17 snakes and outside the bush there was like 3. They were all trying to get out. The End.

Trip to Mysore

Friday December 18th.  we left Bangalore and drove to the Mysore zoo. At the zoo, over 5 active tigers, a few giraffes, giant squirrels (giant is part of the name, not a description), and 2 great Indian hornbills were among the things that caught my attention. Two of the seven tigers were white. After we hiked about 3 kilometers through the zoo, we got back in the car and drove to the Bandipur National Park and jungle lodge. The park was about 55 miles away and the drive took 2 hours.  At the lodge we watched a video about the wildlife, ate some Indian foods I was only vaguely familiar with, and fell asleep.

Yesterday (December 17th), we were still in Bangalore. We went to a lot of places, including three Indian temples. There was a Shiva temple, a Krishna temple, and a bull temple. The Shiva temple had two huge statues (bellow). We also went to some museums, we went to a cool art museum and an even cooler technology museum, it reminded us of OMSI. At the art museum, there were a lot of sculptures and paintings, these were orginized by artist. My favorite part of the technology museum was something kind of like a giant marble maze. One part of the marble maze that I thought was cool was a part when a giant marble fell, bounced off a table, and landed in a spiral thingy. Yesterday, we also went to a place called the Tipu Sultan's Palace. Brogan went a little crazy and pretty much acted like he was some sort of king I say he's really a major doofus. We also met some relatives, including my dad's older-than-nintey-year-old great aunt. All in all our busiest day so far!!!

Lalbagh Botanical Gardens

Yesterday (December 16) we went to Lalbagh Botanical Gardens. On the way there the vehicles consisted of mostly motorcycles, autorickshaws and taxis. A lot of the time I felt like there were no traffic lanes and people acted like there were no laws. At the botanical garden there was a 3 billion year old rock and an old guard tower. There were bonsais, topiaries and fountains. There was also a glass house. We spent about an hour at Lalbagh and the rest of the time recovering from our long trip.

Greetings from tomorrow! It seemed like there was no end to the long, persistant flights to the future. We were on the first plane to Vancouver, Canada (left) from 10 AM to 11:30. Our second plane, to Hong Kong, China, left at 2:30 PM we were on this plane for 15 hours. The last plane took 6 hours, it brought us to Bangalore, India, our destination, and we arrived at 2:30 AM local time. That is 1:00 PM your time, so you would've been out of school 2 hours after I arrived. We are staying with some family friends named Raju and Raji. Something that is different about India is that steering wheels of cars are on the right side. An observation I've made is that all of the places we have been a lot of people have spoken English. My mom says this is because of the British creating colonies all over the world.

Christmas Tree

Here is me and my brother in front of the Christmas tree. We put the tree up early because my grandparents were here, we were having a party at our house and because we are going to India!