Madurai to BOoty!

So Aaron may be faster at blogging than I am but if you want the real story of what went down, you'll just have to wait. The real story goes like this:

We left lovely Varkala for a smelly overnight train to Madurai where we proceeded to get lost at 4:30am then finally found a place that had a room (squat and very sticky toilet and all) that was open (sort of) at 5 in the morning. Of course we show up in one of the holiest cities in India during a 5 day annual pilgrimage festival where thousands of holy men dressed all in black swarm the city and the temples and the train and the streets and everywhere running and hooting and generally being Indian. We spent much of our first day there catching up on some zzz's then figuring how we were going to get out of the city to Ooty... and GAH! India! Screwed me again! After shuffling to the train station to travel agents and back again we settled on buying an overnight bus ticket direct to Ooty. Sweet. Done. But no. That night "rat-ta-tat-tat" on our door. Aaron's in bed reading, I'm in PJ's.

"What?" (to some random guy)
"Problem. No bus."
"What do you mean 'no bus'?"
"Bus have problem. Not going"
He hands me a note for the original travel agent we booked with. blah blah blah.
"Okkkkkkkkaaaay."
"You take train"
"Okkkkkkkkaaaay."

After filling out a few train forms and one emergency request form and agreeing to see buddy first thing in the morning I gave up. Dammit! India! The sun rose and we went to have a chat about this whole train thing seeing as all the trains were totally booked due to the festival.

"So you're going to try to get us on the train to Mallapuram where we will then have to take a 5+ hour local bus up the mountain to Ooty?"
"Yes, this is correct"
"Ok, how much does the train cost?"
"140rps for sleeper class, each person"
"Alright, so will you be giving us back some of the 600rps we gave you for the bus tickets?"
"Ahhhh, well, it is very very hard to get a train ticket. We have to pay many people."
"Yes, I understand this. But it does not cost 600rps."

This goes on.... 100rps later I fold. Gah! India!

Buddy hands me the train ticket. Number 82 and 83 on the wait list....great.

"You're kidding right?"
"No no. You come tonight and I will tell you which berth you are in"
"Fine"

Later that evening, hours before the train leaves we check in. Again.

"S2. Berth 22" He says.
"22 and.....?"
"Only one. Very very hard to get this"
"So you're saying I'm paying you over twice as much as this is supposed to cost for one tiny sleeper that two people are supposed to fit in?"
"Yes very very hard to get"

Dammit! India! Needless to say, it was a very tight overnight.

Madurai didn't have a whole lot to offer besides the breathtaking temple complex that justifies the city itself. We spent a morning wandering the hand carved and painted temples, shrines and courtyards watching the massive bussle going on around the festival happenings. The women were looking their best in beautiful saris with matching bangles of course and the men, well they were looking like men. We jumped right in and made some flower offerings to Ganesh and Shiva, were blessed with tikka lines, posed for pictures, and Aaron even got a blessing from the temple elephant (his first elephant blessing - it went well). We also made an attempt to see the super sound and light show at the City Palace but we arrived to find that it had been closed for maintenance "By Order of the State!". That was a miss and the palace was ugly anyway. Instead we jumped in a rickshaw to take us for a little city tour for an hour - clearly demanding we DID NOT want to go see the water tank. Twenty minutes of struggled peddling later... the freaking water tank! Dammit! India! We didn't even have a chance to look at it before we were kicked off the sidewalk by a police officer - reason unknown. The "tour" didn't show us much else, ended early and failed to drop us at the agreed place so we wandered the busy streets fending off silk and gold vendors until we found our smelly little room.

Getting to Ooty was interesting. The train was smaller than any I've been on so far (only 6 bunks per room) and the bunks were about two thirds the size of regular bunks...then there was the matter of myself and Aaron having to sleep in just one. We arrived in a pit-stop city at 4:30am where we were originally going to get a local bus up the mountains to Ooty (2245m) but when to British women approached us with the idea of splitting the cost of a minibus we jumped in. Ooty was a great little town with a similar feel to Darjeeling. The days were warm and the nights were chhhhiiiiiilllllyyyyy! We got a great room with a lake view just on the outskirts of the town and spent our few days there wandering the markets and streets buying home made cashew nut chocolate and bananas, seeing the "world famous" thread museum where a man from Kerala created lifelike flowers and plants using only thread and doing all the work only by hand with over 60 million meters of thread used (wild!), and also spent a day trekking in the hills and visiting Toda villages where I once again learned: Indian children don't share, only fight - after trying once again to bring joy with Canada balloons. No go. Trekking over the mountains and looking into the valleys provided a very clear explanation as to why my nose was black every night and my throat sore every morning. The pollution was overwhelming and hung in the valley with an L.A smog type presence. The people of Ooty were the ones who gave it it's real charm as they were warm and very welcoming. Although it was a great stop and well worth the squished train ride we left on the miniture train to catch a bus over to the Eaaaaaaasssst Ssssiiiiiddddeeee to ponder cherries next.