Highlights from my first hike. Pillar Rocks. 27/7

I went for my first hike on Saturday. It was to the Pillar Rocks, a set of rocks cutting out from a rock face (should be fined for plagiarism from the three sister's though in my opinion) It took about 4 hours, there and back again. Misty and fun the whole way except the start. 

Enjoy the pics!

Whilst leaving the centre of Kodai

Walking through forest to a rest stop.

Still walking...

At Pillar rocks. We didn't know if they were there because we couldn't see them

Some more foggy flower

Panoramic shot of a village off of the road

Everyone had there conspiracy theory hats on at this point in the hike. 

What's been going on the last week.

Well, I haven’t been in India long, but I’ve experienced quite a few things already.

It’s been amazing so far. I’ve had people come up to me saying my name and asking where I’m from. Everyone has been nice!

I live in a dorm called East House some 5 min walk away from the school. There are 20 students total in the dorm. 9 of them are grade 12’s (called seniors), the rest of us are grade 11 (called juniors). The dorm is single story, so to get anywhere you need to move through others bedrooms. I share a bedroom with 2 other students. Their names are Luca (from Germany) and Ganesh (India). Our room is located on the side of the house, so people don’t go walking though it much.

The view outside out window

In the room I have the top bunk, a desk near the door and a wardrobe off in the far corner. 

Since I was the last to arrive at the room it seems fair that the better places would have been taken.

It took me a while but now my desk is full of books and toiletries, I am yet to buy enough cloths though.

A funny thing about the house is that there are sun roofs in every room to wake people up.

We have a kitchen and a lounge room with TV in the dorm. In the evenings there’s movies so some of us watch those. A lot of people make 2 minute noodles.

There are constantly car horns going outside our window, and the some of boys stay up till after midnight. I still manage to get my 8.5-9 hours of sleep each night though.

The power and internet at times cuts out randomly. It is especially hard for Luca, whose computer doesn’t have a battery. 

Luca when the power goes off

The Internet is ok, as in I can get work completed but it is unable to hold a video Skype call to Melbourne for long. It is a lot worse when it is raining though.

There is a lady who comes to the dorm who cleans and washes up after us. 

This was the morning after everyone had some noodles

 For our laundry, there is a man who comes on Wednesdays and Sundays, take ours dirty cloths and gives us back clean cloths from before. There is a fee for each of the cloths items to be washed. For a doona/quilt is 22 ruppee, about 50c Australian. I am constantly surprised by how cheap items are, I can’t help but go beyond my usual shopping standards and buy several items.

Since arriving at KIS I have so far gone to a dance called a ‘canteen’, delivered lunch to an old persons home then visited an orphanage. Tomorrow is my first proper day of school.

I’ll first tell you about the trip to give lunch and visiting the orphanage.

KIS is a very well resourced school in a town that has a long way to go.

To solve this, the school does charity work to the local area. It also provides IB students at the school a change to get their community service hours up. 

One of those charities involves taking excess food from meals and delivering them to places of care in Kodai.

On Saturday, they were taking the food to an aged care centre. We brought some rice and chicken curry. They came in large steel drums.

To get to the aged care centre we took a 4-wheel drive. The car didn’t have specifically allocated seats, it was designed to be able fit in up to 5 in the back row of seats (it was the same width as a standard 4 wheel drive). The people coming on the trip were 5 students from Kodai (myself included), a staff member from the school who organised these things and 4 others (possibly tourists with some link to the orphanage). All 10 of us needed to fit into a standard sized vehicle. The only way to get around in some comfort is by using a 4 wheel drive because the roads are so uneven. 

The solution? 4 in the front (driver included), 4 in the back seats and 2 riding in the boot of the car. There were no seats in the boot, so you had to sit on the risers that gave the wheels room to move, right on top of the suspension. When we were travelling to the aged care centre, then the orphanage I was jammed in the middle. The drive was very spectacular. The centre of Kodai is the lake, and everythings slopes down to face it. The roads travel around the lake between houses, making a sort of ring effect. You could look out and see the lake and the other side of the town. The roads were very thin, and at points were quite steep.

 In places, the tarmac is replaced with some interlocking tiles. These areas were mostly in places where there was steep mountain side beside the road. This leads me to believe that the tiles are there to let water drain away easily, and not cause pot holes in the road. There are also speed humps, that made sitting in the boot terrible.

Anyway, through much squeezing and being whacked against the window, we made it to the aged care place. It was just like a house, run down, not much furniture, steel roof. We tipped the food contents in the drums to some large bowls. We talked a little with them before we got back into the car and left.  

Another up and down and bouncy trip pasted as we arrived at the orphanage.

It had a dirt road leading up to it, and then a dry front yard. The inside was similar. There was a concrete floor, with long sets of tables and chairs in the first room. All the children were sitting down eating light fish curry. Some were sitting around a sheet of plastic on the floor. We went through and looked at the rest of the house. There were renovations going on in a couple of rooms. They were actually well painted, with pictures of faces and flowers on the walls. Besides the main area the floors were dirt and dusty. There was a cement mixer in a corner, with some woman tending to food. The kids were all happy, smiling at us and waving. One of the tourists went around, taking photo’s of the place. He tried to take a photo of the kids eating on the plastic mat, but a couple of them turned away in embarrassment. They talked about how much it’d changed. Our driver was talking with the kids, making them laugh. I’m so glad he’s my Social Experience teacher.

After that it was time for us to leave. We slowly backed out the door waving and saying goodbye. It was another boy from school and my turn to sit in the boot (if you can call it sitting). As we were leaving some of the boys came out with cricket bat and ball and started to play on the road.

It was a great experience, my first with helping the people. I am hoping to be doing a similar trip once a week.

That Saturday evening was the school canteen, a dance for the senior students.

It was a very casual event with people mainly putting on some better cloths, I came in my semi-hiking shows, green jumper and jeans (as my mum would expect). It was an amazing evening. There was fundraising outside selling food and drink. The canteen was inside Alumni hall, the school main hall used for assemblies. There was a DJ desk up on stage and several different lights around the place.

The event was from 7-9 non-stop. There was a lot of similar music that was played to the normal dances back in Melbourne, things like Nikki Minaj and LMFAO. People went crazy when Psy came on though, as I had expected. I’m sure all the Koreans were singing their hearts out to Gentlemen and Gangnam Style.

There were a couple of ‘boom lacka lacka lacka’ songs, but everyone didn’t doing traditional dance such as changing the light bulb while patting the dog.

I managed to become sick on wednesday. Since then I have had a painful stomach which hasn't lessened up. I don't know if it was food or altitude, but if it does persist I will go to the school's health centre called 'the dish', short for dispensary. 

It has taken me a while, but I feel like I am  becoming more and more comfortable in the school each day. In the week I have signed up for the school advanced band, and had a rehearsal for that. Also I went to the church service on Sunday morning last week, and said that I'd like to play drums for them. 

I am slowly recreating the life I had back in Melbourne here, with a lot more chaos and exploration to do. By busying myself, I think I am coping with the fact that I will miss taking part in all the activities back home and the people. I don't know how I will feel when it is time to leave all this again, whether it will be more difficult due to the that fact that I have lived and shared these experiences with people I live with. 

Sorry, getting a bit side tracked. 

Anyway, soon I will put up a post about my every day, school schedule and how I've been getting used to the sudden change in lifestyle. Also, a deeper blog which talks about my thought on India and how they've changed is on the cards. It may take me a while, but life is slowing down and I might be able to chip away at it.

It took a while at first to see what things were, but now I feel like I can get used to this.

If you want any more details, contact me at: comanduash@gmail.com

Thanks for all the support too!

The journey to Kodai. Chennai - Kodaikanal. Day 2

Travelling: Chennai – Kodai Day 2

Welcome back, to the Unaccompanied India Explorer, where I tackle the dangers of navigating foreign airports and trusting employees of airlines with my passport.

In the previous episode, I lost a book and some scissors.

Now, may the epic saga continue.

I woke at 6:30 to the sounds of car horns, and strange sunlight coming through my window. I tried to get back to sleep because breakfast was to be at 8, but I was stressed out. So I eventually got up at 7.

Got dressed, cleaned my room and organised my bag for another day of travel.

Afterwards I walked around the hotel a bit, going up and down the stairs to see if breakfast had started.

Down the end of the hall was a glass cylindrical wall that looked out towards the road. I stood there for a couple of minutes, just seeing the traffic moving. I was slightly expecting to see an accident, considering the traffic rules in India, but nothing really happened. Only a lot of horns constantly going. The Indian people seem to have developed a way of navigating through chaos extremely well. They use their horns more like indicators.

Antonia came out, and breakfast was ready so we went down and ate.

A TV was on in the little restaurant they had downstairs. It had an Indian news show on, but what I found most amusing was the ad’s.

My favourite was one for a concrete company.

An elephant had just broken out of a zoo and people were running and screaming. The elephant starts to run towards a house. There’s a man and woman inside, the woman starts screaming and tries pulling the man away. He sits still and tells her perhaps to not worry.

The elephant then runs into the concrete wall around the house. It stops, not even a mark on the wall. The elephant’s trunks begin to crumble, then the rest of his body falls to the ground in a rocky pile.

Then a man pops up and may have said something like ‘(insert company name here) concrete, made strong, unbreakable’

Of course it was in Tamil, so I had no idea what was being said, anyway it put a smile on my face.

Then the whole fisco began.

We went to call the person who was meant to come and take us to the airport, the same who dropped us off at the hotel the night before. It was about 8:10 at this time.

He said that he couldn’t come to pick us up at the hotel and to meet him at the airport. Then he said that we should go back to our rooms, cause we didn’t need to leave the hotel till 9:30. The flight was at 10:30 so it caused a lot of issues, because we needed to be the airport 2 hours before.

The biggest issue was that we couldn’t clearly communicate together. There was a lot of confusion, but we ended up waiting in the reception since we had checked out our rooms. Since we thought we needed to get to the airport at 8:30, and we didn’t understand why the man couldn’t get us from the hotel.

Antonia got onto her dad, who then called the man. After that her dad told me to organise to get to airport, see if the man was there, if he wasn’t then Antonia and I’d just go through without him.

So after a small wait, we got into a car and went to the airport.

Writing that experience down doesn’t quite do justice to how uncertain, confused and somewhat frightened we were.

But still, I could help but smile. We were having an actual adventure, with drama and things not going as hoped/planned. I was thrilled.

We got to the airport and quickly discovered that the weight limit for our bags was 15kg’s, not 20 like we had packed. We had to pay up 2750 rupee’s, which wasn’t fun.

We went through, with a bit of an issue with accents.

At security they took out my brushes, and the army officer there seemed to have never seen some before. I had to get them out, show him and explain how they worked. He also whacked it on the back of his hand to see if it inflicted pain, which is understandable but for me quite amusing.

Anyway, we got through and arrived at our departure gate. To get to the plane, we needed to take a small bus ride on the tarmac. As soon as we walked out the gate doors we were hit by a wave of hot humid air.

The 1:30 long flight from Chennai to Madurai turned out to be the most fun of all 3 flights. Whilst ascending, I looked out and saw houses and farms as far as I could see. The ground was a dry pale brown and the weak green of grass in summer.

Further into the flight, the clouds became a thicker layer. At one moment, I looked out of the window to see a blanket of pure white clouds, stretching to the horizon with mountains in the distance raising the heads through the covering.

Towards the end, the mountains became more numerous and the clouds disappeared.

I could see the ground again, except it was drier. Green peaks randomly jutted out of the otherwise flat plains. Soon there were many of them, and I started to guess which ones contained the hill station of Kodaikanal. Some were small, others were grey and seemed to be level with the plane.

Also, on the descent into Madurai Airport, the plane seemed to jerk down. So we felt ourselves loosing our seating. It was like riding the batman ride at Movie world, except a lot easier on the stomach.

During the flight we became concerned about what we were meant to do once in Madurai. Thankfully we got onto my dad and he told us there was to be some one there to take us to India.

It was 30+ degrees in Madurai on the ground. A driver was holding a sign for us. I had been told that we were to take a bus to Kodai, instead it was just his car.

When we first got out of the airport it really seemed like a foreign country. It was hot, dry and had mountains off into the distance. It was like no place I had been before

So, the final leg of our journey began.

It started with us driving through flat, dry countryside. We passed villages with houses made of scrap metal and wood. In these villages there were animals, mainly dogs and cows that held up traffic.

Cows are quite funny, they seem to take no notice of traffic trying to move around them. I suppose they have gotten used to it.

Another thing was the rubbish. There is SO MUCH rubbish around communities and on road-sides. Whilst driving I saw piles of rubbish off the road, with people looking through them. If there’s a vacant plot in a village, it will be filled with rubbish, mainly plastic. There’d be chickens and other animals looking through it for food.

In the plains I began to see poverty, but it wasn’t the overpowering sense of pain that I had expected. To me it seemed that everyone was getting by, as if they were used to this very simple lifestyle.

Whilst driving, we saw some sights that I would like to share:

·      2 trucks were parked on the side of the road. One of them was a tanker, filled with petroleum. The other was carrying stacks and rows of gas bottles. I couldn’t help but imagine how catastrophic it would be if a car veered off the road and hit them.

·      The next thing that caught my eye was when we were in some traffic, a car merged in front of us. The car’s number plate was a mirror, with the sequence printed onto it. From behind the car we could see what the number plate read, but I think if a speed camera (or some other traffic camera) was to try and take a photo of the number plate, they would only get a bright reflection and not be able to read the number plate.

    Number plates in India can be quite fancy. There is no standard model so people muck around, change the font, size and colour.

·      Another thing that drivers change in India is their horn sound. It’s no longer just the long, constant bleat, but sometimes a quick tune. Mostly it’s just changing the pitch quickly, but sometimes there is rhythm in their loud screeches. On Saturday, I was in a car that when reversing played a cut from a song.

It’s just these little things that make India an incredible place, so different from the rules in Australia.

·      We were driving through a town, and a bus was turning right in front of us. It was going around the turn, but before it had finished it stopped. There was a cow on the road, eating the grass that grew on the lane divider. The bus didn’t quite have enough room to complete the turn without hitting the cow. There suddenly became a line of stopped cars and buses behind the stuck one. It became a symphony of car horns like you couldn’t imagine. We all were just stuck there, with our driver pumping the horn. The bus became to slowly edge around the car and eventually managed to get going.

Whilst climbing through the mountains toward Kodai, at some points the roads were just terrible. There would be large rocks (not boulders but still could easily stop a car) that came out from the side of the road whilst going around a turn.

There were a lot of blind turns that were quite narrow. The problem was that cars coming the other way didn’t always stay straight in their lane.

The strangest of all was when we came across a car sized hole in the road. The mountainside was pretty steep at that point, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a small landslide that caused the hole. We had to go around by a temporary dirt road.

There would also be piles of dirt and gravel by the side of the road, making it a lot more narrower.

Of course there were times when you could look out off the side of the road and not see the bottom. Not quite as scary as Top Gears journey through the Andes mountains (I think).

There were very few trees at first, but that began to change as we approached the mountains. The first half an hour of our accent was amazing. The trees were quite short, so from the road we could look out over the valley. At one point, we could see that mountains surrounded a green valley. Everything got greener and lusher the further up and further in we went.

We pasted though many different towns, gradually becoming cleaner the further up we went.

Finally, after more than 3 hours we made it to Kodai.

I got settled into my room, and then had Domino’s pizza for dinner with Antonia, the Dean and assistant Dean of the school

That night was for dorm bonding, but I was in bed by 9:30. I was stuffed.

The rest of the dorm kept going till past midnight I think.

Well, that is the story of my journey to Kodai. I’m sure there will be many things to write about coming up, like my time in the back of a van taking food to an elderly person’s home and orphanage, then the school dance (where I received a compliment for my dancing, must be a very strange place for that to happen). Anyway, I hope this has provided you with some insight into the crazy goings in the life of India.

If you want any more info about my journey, please ask some question in the comments, or shoot me an email at: comanduash@gmail.com .

The journey to Kodai. Melbourne - Chennai. Day 1

Well, we made it!! Woot. 

I’m writing this on Friday, 19/7 but don’t have internet connection. I arrived at Kodai International school at 3 this afternoon.

What an adventure, I had always thought that getting to Kodai was going to be a challenge, but I never imagined it becoming a small adventure.

I couldn’t help but think about the Lord of the Rings, and how my adventure was similar to his. Even when things weren’t going to plan, I couldn't help but smile.

It’s hard to explain how this small journey has felt, but I might just go from the very beginning (a very good place to start, you begin with ABC…) and give you some of the details and thoughts I had.

My day started at 5:20am to the sounds of a shower and lights from the kitchen. I enjoyed quite a good sleep, considering it was the last one I was going to have in Australia for several months. My 110% full bag lay on the floor, after mum and I had struggled with it the night before.

We got ready, said goodbye to Matt (who couldn’t come due to school), and departed for Melbourne International Airport at 6:30.

It was a low-key trip; there was nothing of real interest to be told.

We arrived at the airport, met up with Antonia and checked-in our bags. After that, we went and had morning tea (coffee, apple scroll and hot chocolates).

I am glad I was able to spend those moments with Lach. Quality bro time is the priceless thing and I will miss it dearly (though it mostly comes in rare packets of 2-7 seconds).

After that we went to one of the workers from the airport who was going to accompany Antonia and I to the plane. I’ll admit that she was quite attractive. She lead us and the 2 families towards ‘the wall’, the walkway to security in the international terminal. 
It has such a dramatic name because relatives are not allowed through it, so it is the last time that passengers see their relatives till they return.

They were some gut renching seconds. Though, right now I feel a much stronger emotion looking back on it than when it actually happened, probably because I’d done all my crying the day before. Just as I went through I looked back and saw everyone standing there waving, 2 families united in a most unique way.

After that was security, where they had to put my brushes (some metal wires bunched together for playing drums) through the scanner again.

Unfortunately there was no shopping that could be done, so we moved straight through to the gate. It was there that I lost my first item, a book that was personally signed by the author.

We got onto the plane, and said goodbye to the wonderful helper.

On the flight, I watched David Attenbougher’s “natures curiosities”, then tried to listen to an audio book of Wind in the Willow, how ever when I went to pause it went back to the start, causing much frustration and ultimately rage quitting. I also watched ‘UP’, much enjoying the search to try find the Star Wars hints in the film. A couple I found was the characters escaping through a vent in the wall, and the 3 planes crashing into each other towards the end.

Some hours later we arrived in Singapore at about 4 in the afternoon. We got off the plane, and someone from the airline escorted us to where we were to wait a couple of hours till our next flight, called special services. We got there but there were no seats so Antonia and I went for a quick shop/look around. I had been told by a wise man named Mark that Singapore airport was something special, with foot massages.

We went walking and found several gardens... in the middle of the airport. They were truly magical (I suppose that’s why they were called the enchanted gardens)! One of them had a fish pond. At first I though all the flowers were fake, that there couldn’t be this sort beauty in an airport, but I was wrong. It was truly magnificent.

Then, feeling somewhat pekish, we located a McDonalds.

It was definitely a better, easier version of the Macca’s in Australia.

We returned to the special services, to find that we could have continued shopping for another hour. Instead, we sat and watched TV. 

Finally someone came and took us to the next flight. When going through, that’s when I lost my second item, some scissors. I had completely forgot about them since I packed my pencil case more than a week before. Anyway, we got onto the plane and off we went to Chennai, India.

It felt like a longer flight. We were so tired, due to a little jet lag. When we got into Chennai, the local time was 10, but our body clocks were at 2:30am. We managed to snatch a few short moments of rest on the plane though.

Navigating through Chennai airport proved to quite difficult, and seemingly impossibly without someone helping us from the airport. The accent and language barrier proved to be very difficult. I had a lot of trouble knowing what they were asking for. We got through it though, with my brushes being checked again.

We waited for a bit of time for someone to come and take us to the hotel nearby.

The pickup site outside international arrivals at Chennai airport is crazy. It is a constant stream of cars using their horns and weaving through randomly stopped vehicles. There is also a LOT of buses.

It was the first, or second time I’d been in a car with no seatbelts. In our semiconscious states I managed to enjoy the risk while moving though traffic.

We got to the hotel and went to our respectable rooms. After organising things I tried to have a shower. I discovered that the water didn’t come from the shower head like I hoped, but the bath tap. There were some buckets so I ended up tipping the water over my head. It was a strangely significant thing for me for 2 reasons. The first was that I had never done it before, and the second was that it created a link between the India I had seen from Australia and the real deal. It was sort of humbling as well, a realization that this is how thing’s are in this part of the world, the phrase ‘I don’t think we’re in Melbourne anymore Toto,’ came to mind.

After that I gradually got myself ready for bed, and eventually went to sleep around midnight Indian time, so 4:30am in Melbourne.

I was slightly stressed about how the morning was going to go, since I didn’t fully know. Little could I have known how drama filled and stressful it would be Antonia and the fam back home.

Tune in next time, for the sequel in this epic saga of story telling. 

Introduction to Me, the Indian Explorer

This is my Blog, where I will post updates about my adventures and struggles in the remarkable country of India as an exchange student. I cannot guarantee that this blog will be regularly updated, I haven't even left yet! I leave on the 18th of July btw :)

I might also make short posts about stories or single events that I think you'd like to hear about. 

Anyway, this is a post to introduce you to me, so here we go!

Hi, my name is Ashley Wild.

I am 16, live in Melbourne and go to Carey Baptist Grammar School.

For students in year 10, the school offers the William Carey Award, which is a school paid exchange to 1 of 2 school in India. In total there are 4 students who can win the award. 2 of the winners go to a school in the north of India called Woodstock, and 2 go to a school in the south called Kodaikanal International school (KIS). The school is situated in the town of Kodaikanal (or Kodai), which is a hill station in Tamil Nadu province. 

I was fortunate enough to be selected for the trip and am going to the southern school, Kodai. 

I am travelling there with only my other student, whose name is Antonia. We are unaccompanied minors, possibly the only Australians to be at the school. 

Antonia and I will be starting grade 11 there, since we arrive at the start of their academic year. The trip will last the entire semester there. I will be doing the KIS diploma, an easier version of the International Baccalaureate. 

The name "Indian Explorer" was given to me by the associate pastor at my local church, in my final service there for a while. 

I placed unaccompanied infront, due to the airline labelling me as an 'Unaccompanied Minor'. 

I decided to apply for this exchange due to a couple of friends in older year levels. They spoke highly of the life changing experiences they had whilst away. Back then, I didn't have any solid reasons to apply, so it's a miracle I got through the interview that followed. 

The reasons why I want to go to India come with the realisations of how fortunate I am. 

Carey will pay for my school expenses, my airfare and accommodation; it was impossible for many people of my parents generation to travel that far because their school couldn't support them; and many more. I am just so blessed to be in the place where I am. 

I am currently looking forward to trying to find out the true nature of India, such as: why is India the place to go before you die? What makes it indescribable and unable to explain? 

I want to see more than what tourists see. I don't mean this literally in the form of travelling all around India, but instead talking and discovering more about India. 

Another question that has recently been going through my head has been what it means to give your life to God. This is a question I've been trying to answer in preparation for my baptism in the future. 

Throughout the trip I will try and address these questions and others in my updates. 

Feel free to ask questions in the comments. 

Have a great start to term 3! :p

Ash

Email: comanduash@gmail.com