Sorry all, must have forgotten to post this one - it is now out of sync but thought we would add it in anyway.
It is day 9 and after a very emotional and inspiring day yesterday we are all in need of a quiet day to recover. This morning started with a quick round of good mornings between the team between three rooms. Maggie got very excited when across the other main building she could see the monkeys playing and starting to make their way over to us. They kind of swing between buildings quite quickly and it is difficult to pick up where they actually are. After a while we all got quite relaxed again until Maggie started screaming there’s a monkey right there. Sure enough just out on our balcony a monkey was casually strolling by. We all quickly retreated into our rooms. They seemed pretty disinterested in us, or at least we thought. I went back into the room to do a couple of things only to hear Bec calling out “There’s a monkey in our room” from out on the balcony. Sure enough I come out to our small sitting area from the bedroom eyeball to eyeball with a monkey. He saw the bag of fruit on our table and we had a quick kind of stand off before whilst he summed me up. He must have determined that I was little resistance and he quickly swiped the fruit bag and made a beeline for the door. Not too fast on his tail I followed and when he dropped it heading out the door I seized my opportunity and managed to partially close the door with the fruit caught between. At least it was closed enough to keep the monkey from swiping but he was determined to get his fruit and between my shooing and his growling at me it was quite a racket. He eventually let go and then proceeded to jump on the balustrade and continue to growl at me for a while before clearly getting bored and wandering off. After a while we headed down to breakfast only to find one of the staff with his slingshot out shooting what looked like fairly soft pellets at the monkeys encouraging them on their way. Well that certainly got the crew awake this morning.
The kids headed out with Nicola and Eibhlin this morning to visit the Mysore Palace and came back with stories of riding an elephant, sitting on the elephants head like the real riders do it. Indy was also nearly arrested in the palace for smuggling in her camera and then taking a photo. Apparently it was ok to take photos using mobile phones but not cameras – not quite sure how that works and Indy being very logical would have had to argue the toss about this one. I blame Eibhlin ofcourse for leading my daughter astray! Maggie also said she had another monkey encounter but survived to tell the tale.
Jen and Nick went out to do a little shopping, much to Poppas lack of excitement – I think he said he fell asleep. He just wants to get back on the road again. Bec and I took Gus out in an auto for a ride this morning up to the supermarket and decided to buy him a little scooter. He is requiring a lot of attention at the moment and we thought a scooter might help him to occupy his insatiable need for activity and enable us to sit back and watch. Needless to say the scooter was a huge success and he hadn’t been off it for hours. He has now fallen asleep to recharge before no doubt going out and hammering it again for a few more hours. We also made a major purchase of a kettle which should prove almost as valuable as the scooter on this trip as we have to this point been surviving on jen’s little hand held element to boil one cup at a time. With Gus requiring several ‘cup teas’ a day this will be very useful.
We had another lovely meal here at the Green Hotel and Bec, Eibh, Nicola, Indy and Mags have decided to jump in an auto and head out to the shops for a quick bit of shopping before we hit the road again well away from any shopping. I have made the mistake of checking emails and getting drawn back into other stuff that I really shouldn’t be. Easily done in these modern times. I took a quiet glance out the window only to see a massive wasp caught in the inside of the window between the blind and the glass on the inside. This think was huge and its stinger was not to be messed with. There was no way to open the window to let him out and with Gus asleep in bed I had to take my chance and try to squash him carefully. My first attempts only succeeded to get him very agitated which only served as more evidence to ensure this guy didn’t get out into the room. Several attempts later and I succeeded to subdue our intruder. Hopefully he hasn’t invited his friends over!
The relentless flow of traffic with constant horn tooting continues on in the background as we enjoy a quiet moment under the fan of peace and quiet while the little master sleeps.
The girls enjoyed their trip out to the shops in the autos and came back with a few new things to wear, I think they enjoyed just some time out more than anything. Gus awoke after a good 2-3 hours sleep ready to party, he jumped straight out of bed basically on to his scooter and was ready to roll. The next few hours consisted of taking in turns following Gus around on his scooter, he particularly liked performing tricks for the other hotel guests and staff. In between scooter trips Gus was catching frogs in the hotel pond, trying to catch lizards in the garden and dodging the bats that come out at night. A quick and quiet dinner on the lawns before retiring to our room for a green tea and the girls to a game of uno in their room.
A quick calculation shows that whilst we have been here for 10 days we have only competed 15% of our walk with 6 straight walk days totalling more than 150kms in the next leg into Bangalore. Tomorrow we have a community visit plan and an opportunity to distribute some of the items we have raised funds for. It plans to be an amazing day.
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