Camping in India

The first few days in Kerala state were not what I imagined India would be like. As our fantastic interport students told us, India is an enormous country with many languages, cultures, traditions, and geographies. Kochi is the city in Kerala state, on the southwestern coast of India, where the MV Explorer is currently docked. I wrote most of this post on Friday when we had been in India since Wednesday. On Wednesday, Jr and I went on a day trip to the Alleppy Backwaters. Sr had a field lab for the course he is auditing on women writers around the world, and Grandpa left as soon as the ship cleared immigration for a three day trip to the Taj Mahal and northern India. Jr and I had a very relaxing day with about 10 other SAS folks on a little houseboat that toured the canals of the Alleppy area. It was hot, but the boat was shaded and the scenery was very pretty.

I wrote some of this post from inside my tent on the side of a mountain above the town of Munnar. Jr, Sr, and I came on an overnight SAS trip to Hike and camp in the tea plantation area. We knew it was the right choice when we saw the weather forecast for Kochi (100 degrees) then the forecast for Munnar (85 degrees). I took the opportunity to blog while it was pouring rain and we were all huddled in tents.

The trip to Munnar was amazing. There were 33 adventurous students, along with the two teaching assistants from the ship. Somehow I got nominated to be the trip leader, which I thought would be pretty much making sure we come back with the same number of people we left with. It was been that, but I also had some interesting cultural experiences as the liaison with the local guides. Somehow I thought in the land of Indira and Sonia Gandhi that a female trip leader with accompanying son and husband would not be an oddity, but I was incorrect. It was been fun to talk with the guides and the students about cultural differences and expectations.

Below are pictures of our trek through the tea plantations. We hiked for about 6 hours and got up to an altitude of maybe 6000 feet. The campsite is was at about 4000 feet. All of us were delighted to find a beautiful, sparsely populated destination for a few days in India. After Munnar, we headed back to Kochi, where we explored for a couple of days from the ship before departing on Monday. I definitely preferred our time in the mountains to the time in the city, though I think that would be true for our family no matter where we were. Kochi was a lot more of what I expected India to be like, with traffic, pollution, chaos, heat, and interesting sites and people. 

Today is Sr's and my anniversary. We didn't get each other anything except a trip around the world, so we borrowed one of the student's signs when we were in Munnar. There is a SAS meme of students taking pictures of themselves in spectacular locations and posting the photos for their parents, so we jumped in on the fun.