A 15 minite blog on kerala India

Kerala is the southernmost state of India, It is every green. We stayed in the mountains where there were monkeys, there were also elephants. I got to wash one, I scrubbed his ears and he sprayed me with water through his trunk. We stayed in the area were many of India's spices are grown. There was lots of pepper, cardamom, nutmeg and cloves. The cardamom has a very pretty flower that’s part of the orchid family. The food in Kerala is very spicy. 

Then we went down to the back waters. It was a very poor area; the ladies bathed and washed their hair in the river. The river wasn’t very clean. They also did their laundry in the river; they beat the clothes on the rocks and then carried their clothes home in buckets. Everybody relied on the river, there were few roads. We saw men transporting the rice by boat to the only road were a truck was being loaded. They also transported coconuts by boat. Kerala supplies a lot of India with rice but the crop that was most abundant in the lower eras was rubber, it was everywhere. Rubber it got from trees by tapping the tree and waiting for the sap to drip into little coconut husks which are tied to the trees. We also saw lots of coffee plantations. 

Then we went back up into the mountains to Munnar. Tea plantations are very labour intensive because the tea pickers have to walk many kilometres every day and must only pick the fresh young leaves of the tops of the carefully cultivated plants, every leaf has to be picked separately. They get very small wages (less than 4 dollars a day) and women get paid even less. The landscape has had a huge amount of the rainforest cleared for the tea plantation. It looks like a big green jigsaw puzzle. There are lots of big granite tors scattered among the tee plants which suggests that the soil is very acidic. This is why tea grows so well here.

(Internet's bad I'll add photos later)

Egypt - The Pyramids

In England we booked a 7 day tour of Egypt focusing on Egypt's ancient history. The program was a day in Cairo, an overnight sleeper train to Aswan, a day in Aswan, two nights on a felucca, two days in Luxor before catching the sleeper train back to Cairo where we were to fly back to England. Unfortunately just before we arrived in Cairo we found out that the 5 star sleeper train was cancelled and we would travel overnight on a 12 seat mini bus instead.But enough about that, here's the blog on The Great Pyramids of Giza.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world and was built roughly 2540 BC. It took about 20 years to finish and was built by a pharaoh called Khufu. Originally it stood about 146 metres tall and was covered in smooth casing stones, it was the tallest man made structure for over 3, 500 years! Although today it is only 138 metres tall, and all the casing stones are gone, it is still a very impressive sight.

But hearing all that stuff is different from seeing it in person, to me it looked way bigger than 138 metres. It is absolutely amazing.

We arrived at around 9 in the morning from our five star hotel (with a view of the pyramids) and stepped out of the mini bus into the sandy desert. We had just bought tickets allowing us to go inside The Great Pyramid. I was so excited. As we walked towards the pyramids we were swamped with people trying to sell us souvenirs. One of their tactics was to give you free stuff and then later ask you for money, this happened to us several times and we gave back the free items. But one time the salesman didn't come back, so we got to keep the souvenirs.

The passage leading to the burial chamber was quite small so we had to bend down; it was bare because of tomb robbers but was still very exciting. Dad explained how they had great slabs of stone that slid down to block the passage after they finished working in the burial chambers. The king's chamber had a big stone sarcophagus in it but otherwise was empty.

Being inside the pyramids was an amazing experience; it was the best part of the tour.

the night time veiw from the roof of our hotel, you can see the pyramids

Laurence of arabia

Pyramid of Kufu (and camel)

Happy tourists

Having some fun

A salesman

A horse pulling a cart

France trip 2 part 5

At Jo's house we had a couple of days of rest while we caught up with them, them we went to the pool with a family that Jo knows who were originally English but have children who are very french. They have three children, a 9 year old boy and two girls aged 12 and 16.We had a lovely time with them at the pool and at their house for a BBQ. I enjoyed talking with the girl called Heloise who is my age about the differences between life in France and life in Australia. While we were there we also went on a few nice day trips.

One of the day trips I enjoyed was the trip to San beach where we strolled through the town looking in little shops.  A shop we stopped in was a two story pirate themed lollies shop that had barrels of all kinds of lollies, I bought some chilli flavoured ones. The town had some lovely old French buildings, it was very picturesque.  The beach was not as full as the Mediterranean but was considerably colder. We swam out to a big diving platform and had some fun jumping/diving off.

Another day we went to see a big citadel on a hill it was still very intact and had a school built in the middle with basketball courts in the long dry moat. I had fun imagining I was defending it from an attacking kingdom.  We walked around it and chatted about what strategies the attackers would have used.

The last big day trip was to a playwright's house. When he had made his fortune he had himself built his dream house. The house is painted in traditional bask style but is very luxurious inside. 

Bask is the name of a group of people who live in the south west of France. They do not have their own country but speak a different language. They traditionally live in and white houses with red or dark green shutters, even today almost every house is painted in this style.

We drove through lots of Bask country and another feature of their house that I noticed was that they tend to have long sloping rooves on one side.

Me in the pirate theme lolly shop

Dad made me change on the beach!

Imagining defending the Citadel

In the middle of the citadel there was a school, they had a basket ball court in the moat!

The playwrights house

The garden at the playwrights house was magnificent.

Buying lunch in a small cafe

Red and white are the traditional colors for houses in bask country

My 2 year old cousin Henry loved siting on our motor bike

A long sloping roof on a bask house

We drove through Spain to catch a ferry back to England. This was the end of our time in France. I loved France and can't wait till I am old enough to spend a year or more living there. But first I need to improve my French!

France 2 Part 4

While on the route Napoleon we drove through the Verdon George which was absolutely gorgeous and made the hours fly, I loved driving through the mountains. After we headed cross country through the Camargue. 

The Camargue was great and we saw some amazing sights including some flamingos! That night we camped by a canal and were swamped by mosquitoes. It wasn’t a very good night but the morning made up for it.

In the morning we stopped at a riding stable which had a big herd of Camargue ponies and about 10 Shetlands where dad tried to get a ride for me, but they didn't understand so dad spent about 30 min trying to talk to them while I patted the ponies. Just as we were about to give up and leave an old lady arrived and started feeding the ponies bread. At the last minute after she was on a horse and about to ride off when she asked if I was coming, so I got a nice ride after all. 

We had calculated that we had only about 2 hours to free time, but the horse ride took about 1 hour 40 minutes, so we were slightly behind time. Then disaster hit as we found ourselves in the middle of a colossal traffic jam which we found out later was all the people on holiday in the south of France where it was sunny and warm going back to the north for the beginning of school and work. We thought that there must have been a fuel strike because when we pulled into a servo for fuel there was about 60 cars lined up to use the pumps and only one person working at the till.

This put us seriously behind time so afterwards we just fanged along the motorway and had to skip a couple of things like Carcassonne which is a huge medieval fortified town and castle.

But we got to Jo's just on time so everything was OK.

Driving through the Camargue (you can see mosquitoes on our wind screen)

A picture of a canal and a lake in the Camargue

Me with the lady who got me a ride.

Some of the  horses walking to the feeding troughs

Horses at the troughs

Me heading of on the ride

A panorama of the country we rode on

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this, for some reason all the snails where on this side of this post. I didn't see any snails anywhere else, it was like they were having a meeting.

Camping on the Camargue