Arts festival!

There has been no shortage of arts festivals in the general Nilambur area. I've been to one at Manavaydan school, one in a neighboring town at Keralai school for districts, and to the district finals. First of all, I can never complain again about being too hot in full costume under some lights because these children get in full costume and makeup and dance their little hearts out in 90 degree heat outside, with lights on them. My god. The dances are very interesting too because each one has a story behind it. There was also miming and mimicking.These pictures are from my second trip to the arts festival at Keralai school. I lasted about 2 hours before I had to leave because of the heat. We met up with a few of the teachers and they took us to lunch, but not before we were whisked away to the media tent to do an interview. By the district finals, there were 16 stages, 6,000 meals served, and 10,000 participants. That's a lot of body heat. Here are just a few of the pictures because after a while it can get overwhelming.

The day I felt like Mowgli

One weekend in the not too distant past, we were taken on an overnight retreat to Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, and I I taught the animals how to make fire. Just kidding, I wouldn't do that. That's what separates the men from the animals...right? Everything I needed to know here I learned from The Jungle Book. Anyways, we were taken to a great little homestay about 10 minutes away called Whispering Willows. Here's their website:

http://www.whisperingwillows.in/

They were lovely people and had plenty of clean beds (and a gorgeous garden!), but of course I chose to stay in a tent (which was also very clean). It was so cold that night, we had a bonfire so I was feeling particularly in my camping element that evening. We played a few rousing games of gin rummy and went to bed early because we needed to leave at 6:00 a.m. in order to get to the reserve in time to see some animals before their nap. Once we got into the park, we were on a mission to see elephants. It says tiger reserve, but rarely are tigers seen these days. We saw plenty of peacocks, some bison, a warthog boar/Pumbaa that charged at some unsuspecting woman, monkeys, deer, a malabar squirrel (you wouldn't believe it until you saw it...google it), aaaaaaaaaand....elephants! Sadly there were chains on most of them, but that's fairly common here. I really enjoyed seeing some wildlife of the area so here are some pictures for you to enjoy too!

Just FYI, while at the park, you can only drive through and you're not allowed to stop, so getting some of these pictures was a challenge.