Three Point Five

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 18, 2007

Yesterday was the three-and-a-half-year anniversary of my getting married to Amy! Pretty exciting! (At least for me, but I always tend to get excited by these monthly anniversaries that we get to celebrate).

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Thurs. Jan 18 – Various Modes of Transportation

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 18, 2007

This day was interesting because we managed to pack in three different modes of transportation in one day. We started out early in the morning driving from Mysore to Bangalore. In Bangalore, we got on a plane to go to Mumbai. In Mumbai, we got a train to go to Jagaon.

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Wed. Jan 17 – Mysore

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 17, 2007

Child labor in the flower market….

The main attraction in Mysore for us was the palace and the market. The last time that Amy and I went to Mysore, we didn’t get a chance to visit the palace, and from what everyone had told us, it was something that we had to see at some point. Overall, palaces aren’t totally my thing, but it is always interesting to see how people lived at a certain period in time. The residence was also pretty interesting, especially the displays of what the maharaja collected….

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Tues. Jan 16 – Floating Some More & Driving to Mysore

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 16, 2007

The houseboat was a nice contrast to the busyness that seems to go on everywhere else, but these good things must come to an end, right?

After we made our way back to our starting point, we said goodbye to the staff of the houseboat, and said hello to our driver who would be taking us on a slow, bumpy road to Mysore.

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What’s been going on….

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 15, 2007

So, it has been sort of refreshingly quiet the last few weeks. Mostly, it’s because I’m not in a class at the moment, but that should change by Tuesday. There was some problem processing my financial aid application, so they delayed the start date of my class for a couple of weeks, so this has actually given me a chance to do some stuff for myself and stuff like organizing and uploading lots of photos to my site.

Apparently, my account with iPower should be upgradeable to 200GB of storage (from 50GB) for free, but, since that would require them actually moving my site to a new server, I figure I’ll hold off until I actually need that much space.

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Mon. Jan 15 – Floating Around (on a Houseboat in Kerala)

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 15, 2007

Pretty much, a houseboat experience is something like this: you get up in the morning, have breakfast, lay around waiting for breakfast to digest (they bring coffee to help with this), have lunch, lay around waiting for lunch to digest (in between, you get tea or coffee and biscuits to help you with that), watch the sunset, have dinner, and go to sleep.

Thank god for the new 4GB memory card that Axle bought for me to accompany the new camera.... Gave me a good chance to take lots more photos of the sunset than was necessary....

Thank god for the new 4GB memory card that Axle bought for me to accompany the new camera.... Gave me a good chance to take lots more photos of the sunset than was necessary....

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Sun. Jan 14 – Madurai to Allepy & Houseboat

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 14, 2007

This was, again, another car ride. Not as long as our first, and surprisingly on schedule. We got to cross the mountains, so again, we had a chance to see some more varied scenery and vegetation on the way—tea plantations, rubber plantations, forests, and so on….

Speeding by the tea and rubber plantations....

Speeding by the tea and rubber plantations....

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Sat. Jan 13 – Madurai

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 13, 2007
Hanuman was just glowing today…. Henny went up to him and said the little “Jai jai Hanuman jee kee swaha” that Axle taught her (I really doubt I spelled that correctly…).

Hanuman was just glowing today…. Henny went up to him and said the little “Jai jai Hanuman jee kee swaha” that Axle taught her (I really doubt I spelled that correctly…).

This was mostly “temple day” for us in Madurai, with a few extras thrown in. We got started really late (people were still recovering from our bumpy ride I guess…) so we decided to be a little more limited in our adventures. We started by going to the tailors/the temple market so that they could think about spending some of their rupees. Axle got some cool paintings, I had some kurtas made, there were a few handbags bought… Then we decided that it was late enough to have lunch, so we found somewhere to have some meals, and continued on to the Gandhi museum.

After our history lesson, we returned to the temple area to actually see the temple this time. Henny and Karin had a really hard time trying to figure out what’s going on with all the different gods. You know… this one is the same as that one, but this is a different incarnation of him… that one is the son of so-and-so and is famous because…. But I could tell that the temple really impressed them, so that was definitely a hit with them.

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Fri. Jan 12 – Chennai to Madurai

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 12, 2007

Most of Friday was spent in transit to Madurai. The drive, for some reason, took a lot longer than it should have. We left at around 8AM and didn’t get in until the late afternoon… well, more like early evening…. Despite being tiring, the drive was really cool—lots of cows, varied agriculture, varied landscape….

We passed lots of trucks loaded with sugarcane....

We passed lots of trucks loaded with sugarcane....

If it weren’t for the horrible potholes in the road, it would have been great…. Since we got in late, we decided to just lay low that evening. We went and had dinner at the rooftop restaurant at our hotel—it gives us a very nice view of the temple—and just relaxed in general.

This is the view of the Menakshi Temple from our hotels restaurant Temple View rooftop-restaurant....

This is the view of the Menakshi Temple from our hotel's restaurant "Temple View" rooftop-restaurant....

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Thurs. Jan 11 – Chennai

By Ananda Mahto | Published: February 11, 2007

Because of jetlag, they were all up pretty early. Technically, we had reserved the morning to unpack their bags and repack them seriously. As could be expected, despite their efforts to travel light, they still came with much much more than they should have. Axle at least had an excuse for her extra bag—it was entirely full of candy, chocolate, and Christmas cookies for Amy and I—so that was totally acceptable.

Of course, Henny, in true Henny fashion, didn’t want to deal with having to unpack and repack already. She kept complaining that all the old ladies here seemed to be perfectly acceptable walking around showing their back-fat-rolls, and why couldn’t she just wear her sleeveless tops? So, instead of thinning out her luggage contents, she decided to prune our wilting, dying plants and clean one of our porches.

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