Home in Pomfret

We made it home to Pomfret. Thanks to Josh for meeting us at the car rental place at Bradley Int. Airport, and thanks to Anne Hinchman for the travel tip to get from JFK to home. Josh got a solid dose of India stories in the car ride. Gabe pulled out the new cricket bat and ball to practice in the back yard. Our neighbor came running out to play with kids. He's planning to have a cricket party now that he has more people to play the game with! We are all tired from the long trip, but very happy to be home. We are going to try to stay up until 8 tonight if possible to get try to adjust to the time change. Thanks for reading the blog. You are invited to come over for a beer and a visit at the house to swap stories from the summer.

Traveling home

We left the Footprint B&B at 3:15 pm on Monday. We took a 6:00 flight from Chennai to Delhi. We landed at 8:30; four hours to get our luggage, transfer to the international terminal, check in again for our Air India flight, go through security a few more time ( three check points to xray our bags), and go through India customs . We had an hour to spare to get some food, a drink for Brian and me, and check out the duty free shops. The kids did not fall asleep in the terminal as I had feared, but Garrett got so irritable that I wish he had. We were all asleep before the plane took off (an hour late). We are landing at 4:30pm India time, 7am east coast time. Yves is the only one who is got a decent amount of sleep, and he did it on east coast sleeping schedule. I wish he was old enough to drive us home! I'm so stuffed to the point of nausea with Indian airplane food. They brought food around three times during the flight. The flight attendant woke me up to eat the first meal. I decided to eat something just in case this was our only mean. I should have just kept sleeping. All I want right now is a good cup of coffee.

the croc bank

This "little" fella is called Jaws III. The director of the croc bank insisted that he is a very sweet and gentle crocodile. We were treated to a tour of the croc bank in Chennai by two of the directors. Ashish, our travel agent and host in Chennai, has a connection at the croc bank; his father is one of the trustees. We enjoyed strolling through the place, learning about crocodiles from all over the world. We got to go into the "staff only" areas where they keep the baby crocs and turtles. There was only one American alligator at the place. The kids dashed from tank to tank, yelling with delight at the size or quantity if crocodiles, asking the experts fun "kid questions". After the croc bank, we went to Ashish's parents house for a home- cooked meal. The kids got to swim with his kids, similar in age as my boys. They really enjoyed watching Garrett eat seconds and thirds of everything! Eating a lot is always a good way to please an Indian host, we do pretty well in that department. We were so fortunate to spend our last day with Ashish and his family.

Reflections on how we packed

Damage report:
Three lamps, one shower head, and one saucer

Things we used every day:
First aid kit
Medicine kit ( malarone for malaria, ibuprofen, and Pepto most frequently)
Nalgene bottle
Sandals (could have left the tennis shoes at home)
games: UNO, cards, and bananagrams (not all three every day, but usually one)
journals: mine by choice, boys by force
Backpack: I took mine everywhere with first aid kit, tp bag, water, and snacks
Snacks from home: we had enough snacks for the whole trip, amazing
Books: Brian and I read a lot, the kids used theirs in the last week
Boys blankets: Aunt Stephanie's hand made quilts were on the beds with the boys every night. It was comforting for then to have a piece of home, and good for the car rides. Doggie blanket is an international traveler now too. I was sure that he would get lost somewhere but he's still with us
Extra duffle bag: Brian's excellent idea
Brian's camera
iPad, even when internet wasn't available
India guide book and itinerary from Ashish
Plug adaptors
DSs

Things we didn't use enough to justify packing them:
Tennis shoes ( see above )
Rain gear
Second roll of t.p.
Water purification tables
Extra bottles of hand sanitizer
Charger for the car: most of the cars didn't have a cigarette lighter to plug the charger into
Flash lights: recommended in guide book and by a friend, but we never used them

My India Travel Project

This is the knitting project I've been working on over the last three weeks. It's a cowl neck and hood all rolled into one. Basically it's mindless knitting that I could pick up and put down without any counting. It kept my busy during the long car rides and some sleepless evenings. It didn't come out the way I was hoping ( it doesn't look like the picture in the book). This is my fiber challenge yarn, so at least I have something for the Sept spinning guild meeting. Here's how the fiber challenge works: in Feb we get a half pound of white fiber called roving, we have until the Sept meeting to make something out of it. I dyed the roving using a painting technique I like. I spun two bobbins of single ply yarn, and plied them together to finish the yarn. This fiber is a very soft alpaca, so I wanted to make something that I would wear next to my skin. I needed a mindless project, and here it is. I'm probably going to rip it out and make a hat or a pair of mittens after I share this weird thing with my fiber friends.

Our last guided tour in India

We visited the largest Hindu temple in India today, the Meenakshi Amman Temple. The colors, incense, and statues were very different from anything we have experienced so far. 20,000 people come to this temple every day to pray. We could not tour sections of the temple that admit Hindus only. There were interesting statues of the many of the Hindu gods in several incarnations. In the picture we are walking through the hall of 1,000 pillars. The ornate granite pillars depict many of the Hindu gods, others are decorative carvings. Our tour guide tried to explain to us what the statues mean and how believers pray to them. We were having a hard time taking it all in, there was so much to see and so many new names and stories. This poor man was the last tour guide we will have on our three week trip. He brought us through the afternoon in good humor and exhibited a great deal of patience with Garrett's complaining. All the kids wanted to do was get back to the hotel to swim. It's time to go home!

Feeding the monkeys

We made the short drive to Madurai this morning, but we were too early to go right to our hotel. (The kids get up at 6:30 here too! I can't sleep past 5am myself.) Manny took us to a small cave temple with lots of monkeys and peacocks.
After three weeks of my mantra "Don't feed the monkeys, stay way from the monkeys..." everything changed today. Manny stopped at a store to get some bread for the monkeys. We got out of the car and he handed me the loaf of bread. As I opened the package, the monkeys came running. I'll never forget the moment as I stood there with one small loaf of bread watching a swarm of monkeys run down from the hillside. It freaked me out a bit. About the same time, two guys pulled up with huge bunches of bananas for the monkeys. They gave them to the boys to pass out to the monkeys. We fed them so much that they actually retreated back to their perches in the trees to digest. Garrett and Yves started following them around handing out more bananas. It was great fun to finally feed the monkeys.