Travel Week: Intro...

Alright, so on Friday I will be leaving Manipal for nine days to embark on an epic week of traveling throughout south India. I'm inevitably going to have way too much to write about when I get back, so to avoid spending hours on that post, I'm going to give a little teaser first. So here are the places I'm going and the very little I know/copied from wikipedia about them. Hopefully it goes without saying that, as I have not yet been to any of these places, all of these pictures were stolen from the internet.

Bangalore: the capital city of Karnataka, India's "silicone valley,"and the third most populated city in India. We will be spending one night at the Bangalore Club (an old british hangout where apparently Winston Churchill was known to make an appearance), seeing the Karnataka legislature, and hopefully doing some shopping. I'm really looking forward to being in a real city again, Manipal is quite small and even Mangalore is more of a port town than a major city.

legislature building

bangalore club, swank-ay

Mysore: The next largest city in Karnataka, a former princely state with a beautiful palace and home of the Infosys headquarters (India's Microsoft, a HUGE company). Supposedly it's one of the cleanest cities in India...

Ooty: a famous hill station in Tamil Nadu. hill stations are exactly like they sound, areas on top of hills where the British used to hang out to get away from the oppressive heat

ahh, breezy

Hampi: a village in northern karnataka where there's a group of ruins/monuments that are UNESCO world heritage site.

Nilgiri Tribal Area: near Mysore in Tamil Nadu (I think) where we'll get a feel for what the tribal areas in India are like.

Kabini Wildlife Preserve: Taking both an evening and a morning safari to hang out with some elephants and hopefully finding some tiger friends, as well. 

rawrrrrrrrr

so that's all for now. I'll update post-travel week with all the great pictures, new learning and experiences I gain. now it's time to pass some midterms, I really cannot believe I'm almost halfway done with my time in India. crazy how the time flies.