Periyar

Nerd squared. I had already embraced my nerd side. Who would have thought Curtis the Cannon had one too?



My favorite picture of the entire India trip. Maybe my favorite picture of the year.



Jungle safari! We got up really early, rode a jeep (with the Brittish couple) into the wildlife reserve, then went on a 3 hour hike. I like to lovingly call it the 'leach hike'. We wore the brown sock things so we could see the leaches crawling up our legs and flick them off before they reached their goal. The hike was really pretty, and wet, and leachy. A fun adventure. Notice how I haven't talked about the wildlife. That's because writing about spotting cows and elephant poo on a safari is kind of anticlimatic. Wait, there was a monkey spotting too.






Arguably the most delicious meal we had in India. And we made it! Well, sort of. We were more moral support and adding a ingredients here and there, but the cooking class with Sherrin and his sister Sherril and their mom was definitely a highlight.



Finally, I lost the 'ghetto booty' competition. Results may have been different if this had taken place at the end of my freshmen year of college...



We finially figured out what 'elephant bath and shower' meant. I thought that meant we gave the elephants a bath and shower and wondered why we had to pay more to do that. Then the man told Curtis to take off his shirt and climb on the elephant's back. Curtis still had no idea what was going on until the elephant started spraying him with his trunk. According to Curtis, it was well worth the money:)



It was fun to scrub them, although I didn't feel like I was making much of a difference. They seemed to like it though.





Elephant ride. I was so happy we got Hari Krishna. He was hilarious. And the French couple in front of us got Panthum, who was pretty sassy herself.