India is both a very beautiful country and a challenging place. The toilets and the showers are next two each other without a curtain. You need to make sure the hot water tank is turned on before showering. The toilets have a spray hose next to them instead of toilet paper. How do you use the hose while wearing clothes? The things our mothers forgot to teach us! Fortunately, we've learned to take toilet paper with us. While writing this email, we lost power temporarily. This happens regularly.
We had a driver take us to Mundgod where we visited some beautiful Tibetan temples and to Jog Falls, the highest in India. The roads were mostly one lane with two way traffic, herds of water buffalo and goats, lots of people walking, and holy cows wandering. Of course there were pot holes and speed bumps. Our driver drove quickly through this all honking often as he went. Chuck got motion sickness. Jan swore he passed out. Chuck said, "I feels fine". Jan said, "You are lying".
Last night we boarded a bus in Hubli at 10pm to Bangalore. We got off at the right stop even though the name did sound right when the assistant shouted it in Kanada. We stepped off the bus into a swarm of three wheel taxi drivers. Fortunately, our scheduled driver came running to us and shepherded our baggage and us to his car to drive us to the Bangalore airport. We caught a Go Air flight to Kochi where we were met by another driver who will be with us for four days in Kerala state. We finally got a driver that doesn't have to be the fastest and honkiest on the road. Nascar should come here for their drivers.
He took us to several beautiful waterfalls (It is the monsoon season) as we drove up the Western Ghat coastal mountains and to a spice garden for tourists. We now know what many of the spices we use look like in the wild. We also walked around a tea plantation.
We are spending the night a Misty Mountain Resort (www.mistymountainresort.in) in Munnar. It is cool enough here that the Indians are wearing jackets. The temperature is comfortable but not jacket weather by our standards.
Jan took a cold shower. Chuck is waiting to see if hot water shows up. p.s. it did after the barefoot employee ran it for 20 minutes.
This may sound like complaining, but we laugh about it. It's just a very different standard of living because of a very poor infrastructure.
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