Adios from Kodai

Hello, folks,

Well, these will likely be the last photos from India on this blog for a while, as I don't think internet cafes will accept the photos from my camcorder. Tasha and I are leaving Kodai on Saturday morning for 2 1/2 weeks of jetting around India on whatever type of moving vehicle we can find.

The first photos are of us looking as Indian as possible while still being white. The garments we are wearing are authentic. We found out later, however, we had put them on somewhat incorrectly.

The final photos are random images that didn't belong to a certain group, but what can I say, they had to see the light of day.


Tasha in a sari, Eric in a skirt (not the official name of the garment).


Eric in a skirt, John in a skirt. Bad look on both counts.


Eric in a skirt, John in a skirt, Caye in a (real) skirt.

Monkey really needed a skirt.


This guy was walking his elephant down the street as we drove to Alleppey. Not something you see every day.

The Thrissur Pooram

At long last, here are the photos and some information from the Thrissur Pooram, a two-day Hindu festival. The elephants line up in rows of 15, with three riders per elephant. The center elephant in each line represents a different Hindu god. This is apparently the biggest Pooram in Kerala, if not India.

Thrissur Pooram, Pt. 2

These are more pictures from the first day of Thrissur Pooram. The last photo is during the main ceremony, where two lines of elephants, with about 300,000 people between them, face off in front of the Sri Vadakkunathan Temple. The guys on top then switch parasols dozens of times over the course of an hour, with drummers and horn players blasting away the whole time. It is called the Elanjithara Melam.

As you'll notice, the elephant in the first picture has no one riding it. He and another elephant had what a newspaper described as "a tiff," injuring 15 people and sending hundreds running. The elephant's name is either Nayarambalam Rajasekharan or Thiruvambady Unnikrishnan (I can never tell those two apart).

More from Thrissur Pooram

These are from the second day