On to Madurai
We finished our visit to Trichy and headed off relatively early to Madurai. Again, falling asleep was not often possible as there was so much to see. Usually as you fell asleep someone would say look at that and you are awake again!
The scenery is marvelous, and we got near the Ghats today so the mountain ranges in the background were fabulous. We passed chili pepper fields, sugar cane, coconut fields (yes farmed just like apple orchards), the trees that they make their homes with are planted just like our forests are replanted, teak trees (which the ones we saw have about 15 years to go), rice is big here as well. The drought here though is having a severe effect on everyone. The fields are quite dry and they are hoping for some heavy rains. I’ve never seen cashews in their shell, so that was interesting as well. They look like a hard white kidney bean. The interesting thing is that many of the farmers dry their rice, nuts etc on the road. So a 2 or 4 lane highway will have about a 2X6 ft area covered in the farmers crop drying. Consider Greenland, the roads to the cottage, #7 with something drying on the road and us seeing and not driving over it. One thing we recognize here is that everyone assumes the driver will not hit, drive over etc anything on the road - so children, cattle, goats, dogs, adults will walk leisurely across a 2 or 4 lane highway and traffic will swerve around to avoid them. We have been aware of a few misses in this area, so seat belts are mandatory!
The highlight of our day was stopping along the highway and having a coconut opened and drinking the seemingly never ending milk inside. All four of us had a drink and we could barely finish it. The coconut itself was much sweeter than we thought, so we gave most of it to the goats.
Our hotel, the TAJ Gateway, was a nice oasis on top of a hill overlooking Madurai. The girls opted to have a snooze by the pool as Jack and I went to see the local, very large, temple in the middle of town.
It is Independence Day in India, so we were treated to a wonderful display of fireworks and sheet lightening this evening!
Pictures will be posted when we get reliable internet access!