Kerala!

So now I'm officially back in the United states! Have been for about two and a half weeks, and I've just been too lazy to post. I was trying to wrap up by Christmas, but at least I'd like to get them done before leaving for Rome on the 23rd. (I'll be setting up a blog for that trip, too, and hopefully I'll post on it more regularly.)

So we had a week off for Diwali at the end of October/early November. I spent five days in Kerala, a tropical state along the Arabian Sea. They call it "God's Own Country," and believe me, it earns that name. I went with Chelsea and Dani, two girls that I like very much and who were wonderful to travel with.

First leg of our trip was to the city of Kochin. Kochin has lots of beautiful churches (Kerala was the home of St. Francis Xavier, the patron saint of the parish in Fairmount where my dad's family goes), but, more interestingly, it has a pretty substantial Jewish population. It's called (and I kid you not) Jew Town.

No, really, it's called Jew Town.

And here's my favorite thing that we saw there:

Yes, it's a massive golden calf. IN JEW TOWN. Cognitive dissonance ahoy!
Then we went to see a traditional dance show, which was really cool.

Another thing that's so incredible about Kerala is how many waterfalls you see there. Every road you go down there's another waterfall. It's amazing.

Me, Dani, and Chelsea.

Then we went to a lot of spice farms and tea plantations.



Obligatory Lilypad picture.



These are from a temple we visited up in the mountains:

Dani being adorable.

Aaaand then we got to what I thought would be the highlight of our trip: RIDING ELEPHANTS! Elephants are my favorite animals, so I was really excited to ride and see real Indian elephants outside of a zoo.
Unfortunately, the keepers were very cruel to these magnificent animals. We saw them beating them with sticks as we rode along. Now, this did not go down well with us, especially since Chelsea is a real environmental activist and all three of us are fierce animal lovers. 

Did you know elephants can cry? I didn't know that elephants cried.

Yeah, you can see how thrilled we were about that. We decided we had to come down and apologize to the elephant.

That made us feel better.

After that we went to a martial arts show, which was pretty cool.

Aaaaand we went trekking in a nature reserve:

For protection against leeches. I still haven't been able to clean off my sneakers.

MONKEYS.

Our wonderful guide.
Then we went on the famous backwaters in Alleppey. After a huge amount of searching, we managed to find a smaller houseboat that we could row ourselves (at least part of the way). (Houseboats can be really, REALLY big and expensive.)

Aaaand finally, our last night in Alleppey, playing in the ocean.

Chelsea, being a California girl, is very excited about the ocean.
And finally here are my feet in the Arabian Sea.

Happy New Year everybody! Two more posts, I promise.