Tag Archives: Tamil Nadu

Bus trip to Phnom Penh

After spending too much time in Siem Reap we were off  to Phnom Penh. The bus ride was about six hours long, the roads were bumpy and they bus wasn’t as nice as the buses in Malaysia (oh, how we miss the buses from Malaysia). A while back we found the best way to kill [...]

Best of India

During our mulit-hour wait to catch the bus to Mysore, we came up with a list of some of the “Best Of” our trip:
Best Riding Day: Cochi to Alleppy
Best Dal: Hotel Raya’s in Kumbakonam

Best Temple: Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple in Trichy
Best Pizza: New Creation Pizzaria in Auroville
Best TV show: No Reservations
Best [...]

Parotta

Greasy, Greasy Porotta

A couple of months back we had our first parotta. It was in Kerela, and from that point on we ordered them at any chance. A truly amazing taste, something that is hard to explain, if you know you Indian food, is kind of like butter naan, but smaller, thicker and more delicious. [...]

Sadhana Forest – Tanya’s Perspective

I thought I’d write another post about our time at Sadhana Forest. Kelly, as you’ve read, was busy everyday working on a specialized project because of his mad Forestry skills.  I, on the other hand, got to learn and do a wide variety of different tasks:

Developing an irrigation system in preparation for the upcoming monsoon [...]

Making a Map

In forestry, I couldn’t imagine working without a map. For the past five years, Sadhana forest has had no detailed map, it has all been pretty much all in Aviram’s head. Which is amazing, and it really shows you don’t need a map if you know the land really well. That however didn’t stop me [...]

Surveying the forest

After one shift of work at the forest I heard of someone who needed some help getting GPS points of the forest. My head perked right up and I met up with a guy named Yoav. Yoav is an American who got a scholarship from the US gov’t to make a book on landmark trees [...]

Sadhana Forest

I realize that the sound of going to forest in which you work for you room and the food you get is vegan doesn’t sound like the most popular tourist destination. That is because it is not a tourist destination. The minimum stay here is two weeks, and everyone works for 4-5 hours in the [...]

Pondycherry

Tanya and I are rolling over our boated belly’s reminiscing about the dinner we just had. We splurged (we have been doing that a lot lately) on dinner. A buffet, and it was very tasty (and only Rs400 each). Pondycherry has been good. The four days we have been here have passed quickly, which is [...]

To Chidambaram and Pondicherry

To Chidambaram
Distance: 79km
Roads: great
Traffic: Light (except for the last 7km)
The day started as any other day, asking for directions out of town. Having thought ahead, I had our route writen out in Tamil so it was smooth sailing. Except for one thing, our Rough Guides map blows. Often incorrect and not detailed enough, we kept [...]

Kumbakonam

Yesterday we took a rest day. We found a nice business hotel with room and checked out of our overpriced bad hotel and moved down the road to the nice AC room. The rest day was needed, as we were very tired  after having two days of intense temple trekking (life’s rough eh?).
Distance: 43km
Roads: Fair
Traffic: [...]