Ooty

Early mornings. Beautiful scenery. 36 hairpin curves. Involved in 2 accidents. Participated in a tribal dance. Toured a tea factory. Rode an elephant. Saw a-….Wait what?

                Yes. I rode an elephant!!! I RODE AN ELEPHANT!!! This has been on my bucket list for quite sometime and I promised myself I wouldn’t leave India without riding on elephant. And on Saturday, I got my chance. Let me back up a bit.

                Our weekend trip was to Ooty. We left Coimbatore at 6:00 and traveled in jeeps. Ooty is at the top of a huge hill/mountain so the road was tons of switchbacks and hairpin curves. There were so many times where I thought we might not make it when I saw the busses careening toward us in our lane around a hairpin curve. My favorite part was that the hairpin curves were numbered 6 of 36 etc!

                In the afternoon we went to Madumalai Tiger Reserve to go on a tiger safari. Before you get oober jealous- don’t. We didn’t see any tigers. Or panthers. Or elephants. So what did we see? Well, we went in a huge camouflaged bus (presumably so the tigers wouldn’t see us?) and saw some monkeys, deer, birds, and peacocks. Next we went over to see the elephants be fed. That was cool to me since I haven’t really seen Asian elephants up close before. It was so interesting to watch their riders get on the elephant. They would say something and the elephant would lift its leg up. The man would then climb on the elephants knee and pull himself up.

             

   The next morning we were ready at 6:30 to go for an elephant ride!! I and three other people rode an elephant named John. It was pretty cool-much cooler than riding a camel or an ostrich. I wish I could have sat on the elephants neck, but it was still cool to sit on the back. We rocked back and forth and it was so tall! We actually got to ride for about 30 minutes through the bush to look for more animals. After we got off, we got to take pictures with another elephant. Our elephant, John, had tusks and so was “very dangerous” so this is actually a different elephant.

  Afterward we went to the Chamaraj Tea factory. Found out that they sell their tea to Tazo, Lipton, and other big name brands. It was actually very interesting to see how they pick the tea and process it. Plus, we got to taste-test different kinds of tea! And of course it was absolutely gorgeous with all the tea plantations and old colonial style houses. Made me think of Brakenhurst.

                Before driving home we visited a village where we heard an elder talk about how the culture used to be. Then we saw and participated in a tribal dance.

                The road home was long and very windy to get back down the mountain in the dark. And yes, we got hit twice. I’m actually quite shocked it didn’t happen more times and there was no actual damage.

                Happy to be back home and we were all so tired and ready to go to bed…except we had one more adventure. Julianna (one of my roommates) accidently brought a huge spider home with her in her backpack!! Being the one from Africa, I figured I could handle it and so had our electric bat ready. It was hilarious to watch one girl holding a knife ready and then a frying pan. Unfortunately the zapper didn’t work and I admit that I was not the one to kill it. However, we do have a hilarious video of the 10 minute episode of trying to kill it!