As the new weekend approaches (one that promises to be a lot more relaxed than the past wonderful two have been), I am fiiiiiiiiiiiinally getting around to posting about what are now old adventures. Last weekend I had a field trip for my Environmental Perspectives class to the Hill Station of Mahabaleshwar. I cannot believe places like this exist just 3 hours outside of the chaotic city I have come to call my home (for only a few more months if you can believe it!). Although we weren't told what we would be doing and had no idea how to prepare for our trip because we didn't know what to expect at all (I think the general consensus was that we would be living in the woods for the weekend sleeping outside under the stars being eaten by mosquitoes suffering a painful existence) it turned out to be an amazing trip! We took a journey to see the Western Ghats, went to a temple that is supposedly thousands of years old where we meditated at the origin of the Krishna River, stayed at and learned about organic farms, met the coolest old man EVER, and concluded our wonderful weekend of food, friends, and fun with a glorious trek through the mountains!
The Western Ghats:
The Western Ghats:
(The breath-taking Ghats. The Western Ghats are the mountain range that run through the Western coast of India. Mahabaleshwar is nestled in the mountains. They were literally breath-taking as we were at such high altitude during our trip, but an absolutely beautiful sight to see for sure).
(This monkey-mamma and her baby kept us entertained for longer than you'd think. The baby was a bit unstable on the bars as we watched him slip quite a few times insistent that he still hold on to his food)
(Another picture of the Ghats. A ghat is generally a set of steps leading to a river, here you can see the ridges of the Western Ghats, which are certainly not stairs I would ever hope to attempt to climb.)
(There were monkeys everywhere at the site we stopped at...you can see the little bugger on the left luckily got his hands on my favorite food...STREET CORN, which I luckily got my hands on too...can you say delicious?!)
Shiva Temple:
(This temple, located at the origin of the Krishna River is thousands of years old!)
(After learning a bit about the temple, our professor led us in meditation. You can see why this would be the perfect place for it-just look at that view!)
Farmhouse Fun:
(We were lucky enough to stay at our professor's friend's organic farm! Not only was the house we stayed in tons of fun, the food we were served super delicious, the view beautiful, but the man who owned the farm-Peter was by far one of the coolest nearly-blind old men I have yet to meet. We all loved him and thanked him for the great time...Can you believe he climbed a mountain with us?!)
(His farm was filled with lime trees!)
(This lady goes down as a champion in my book, and slightly disturbing...in the picture on the left she is shown demonstrating a method of composting to us: take one part cow dung, one part water, and STIR WITH HANDS [gross] and slap it on some organic waste! In the picture on the right [after she touched the cow dung mind you] she demonstrated how to separate rice from its outer husk as well as how to use the grinder to make flour...it takes some serious effort as some of my friends learned. My friend Sai is shown in the picture giving the grinder a whirl!)
Final Day: A Brisk Trek up the mountains
(Our professor and Peter seemed to be overly ambitious at the beginning of the hike [or so I thought] as they pointed out that our ending point of the journey was far into the horizon as you can see in the picture on the right [note: the circled tower was where we would end our journey], but luckily we all made it safe and sound to our destination after many hours [not because of the difficulty, it was a super easy, light trek, but because we were asked to explore the world around us, stopping to look at flowers, waterfalls [mini ones like in the photo below and huge ones at the edges of the mountains], and maybe even stop to pick up a few toads!)
(definitely not up there with best photos ever of me, but the background was gorgeous...and stepping in the ice cold water to get to that tree felt AMAZING!)
dream.love.discover,
Dachelle
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