Kodaikanal and back

2.5 days of Kodaikanal. It is just a wonderful place, but of course a total tourist rip off place --- but here it is mainly Indian tourists that pay insane amounts of money. Normaly, one easily finds a place for 300-400 rupies, decent, clean but not necessarily western toilets. In Kodaikanal, the cheapest was 500, a dark humid dirty room. Everything else was above 700. Even dinner, you easily pay more than 100 rupies. Well, once in a while this is affordable ;).

Saturday we, Bec, Delia and me, had a girls day. In the cool and fresh air of 2000m I could finally consume 3 meals a day and even finish them. And.... Kodaikanal is famous for chocolate and Tibetian food. So our day consisted of walking, eating, chocolate and eating. At night we wanted to find a bar, but there was no suitable bar for girls. So, we had rum and raisin chocolate, watching a thunderstorm in the valley. The night in the dorm was terrible with 5 boys tripping on the other thing Kodai is famous for: mushrooms. They were constantly yelling: "My momomomo-moments." Momo is a delicious Tibetian dish, at least they had a nice trip ;).

Anyway, the lack of sleep really made us vulnerable to what happened the next day: we hiked down from 2000m to 400m in the valley, with a group of Bangalore guys and a guide. It is Tuesday now and I can still not really walk stairs. In the middle of our walk we had an insane rain and only the left-over organized German in me had a waterproof backpack --- everything outside was soaked! The hike started to be really difficult, with the stones and so on being really wet. Sometimes I thought that it was quite dangerous as well but I didn't want to

say anything, it was enough that I had an internal panic and I didn't want Bec to panic as well. The boys, being cricket players, did a good job helping us from time to time over really slippery stones.

Anyway, we arrived in the valley at around 5-5:30pm. Totally exhausted, even the boys. I shared my leftover momos and everyone else just had cookies, so I was sooooooooo hungry. But except for a peanut store, there was nothing. We ended up in the district city, our guide promised to organize our busses, mine back to Chennai and Bec to Tiruvenelli. He didn't really, but he helped organizing one -- which entailed something I am NOT proud of. I bribed this damn bus driver to let me in his bus. He promised a special seat: the only one that didn't move back, close to the Bollywood blasting TV and the half deaf conductor yelling to the bus driver. Sleep was impossible. I arrived in Chennai at 5:45, went to Nita and didn't wake her up (thank god her watchman knows me) and then fell unconscious on her couch. The rest of the day I was in some kind of trance, teaching very unprepared but still enjoying it, having a great time with my collegues...