Elephants and Chai

If you've lived in the Gulf for a while, it's no big deal when your friends go off on a vacation to India. It's a normal thing, a 3-hour flight, like an extended weekend with the gals in Napa Valley. But to a lot of us, especially those from clean and remote North America, going to India is still exotic, a little scary, and well, a major undertaking. Or so I thought.

We decided to spend my two-week college break in India, largely because of the airfare (under $300 per ticket) and because our old pals from Colorado are now living in Bangalore and they extended an invitation to their home. We bought our tickets, borrowed a guide book, visited the pharmacist and off we were, two packs of malaria pills and one family-sized immodium pack later.

Our decision to stay in Southern India was made mostly with the kids in mind. India is big (who knew?) and road travel and day trips are slow. (...think 4 lanes of cars on two-lane roads, sharing with cows, cycles, monkeys, rickshaws and ladies carrying firewood on their heads..) We visited our friends in Bangalore for three days which included an all-day outing to Mysore. The palace there, where Indian royals still live, is well worth the potholed-three-hour treck from Bangalore, and the Hindu imagery painted and sculpted throughout the place is amazing. But poor 5-year-old Rosie, just when she was getting the hang of being a Christian in a Muslim country, we take her to a place where the gods have 12 arms and the heads of elephants. Surely, we tell ourselves, this confusion is really just a world-citizen in the making.

Our Banglore friends helped us arrange family-friendly lodging, first in Tea Country near Munnar, and then in the Backwaters, where the most popular activity is touring the canals via houseboat. Tea country is gorgeous and rugged, mile upon mile of nearly vertically planted groves of Tea, where every morning we looked out onto the green hills dotted with colorful and quiet tea workers picking the leaves by hand.

The best thing about hanging out in this part of India for me was the Masala Chai, a spicy Indian black tea served uniquely wherever you go. It's amazing with the caffeine that I got any sleep at all. The kids favorite part was surely the animals - the nature, the mango and papaya trees, cashew trees, vanilla beans, fields of lemon grass, cardamom, and coffee plantations, which all offered a natural background for outings, which was new and vibrant and funny, including a one-armed monkey eating coconuts and a guy chopping fruit with a giant cartoon-sized knife. We went on every India tourist's 'must-do' elephant ride where we fed the enormous laid-back animal whole pineapples onto the end of his curled trunk while sitting on his back. The boys absolutely loved the feeding part, and they were game to wait again in line, not for the ride, but to get the elephant to pluck food from their hands with his trunk. We also cruised the backwaters on a houseboat for a day, where we saw villagers doing their wash, rice workers out in their fields and Kingfishers diving for dinner. Billy enjoyed the bird viewing, which included cormorants, egrets, cranes, kingfishers and lots of other diving birds with funny names and beaks and bright green feet. But I'm sure he also agrees with me that the local fruit, chili omelets, and Indian sambar for breakfast made each day excellent before it even got started.