The street Brent and Connie live on in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. The boys are playing cricket.
A street in Madurai, near where Brent and Connie live.
An auto ride through Madurai. “Auto” is short for “auto-rickshaw.”
A fruit stand.
Homemade Indian food. Idilis (“iddlies,” in white) are rice and lentil cakes? Sambar (in orange) is a spicy veggie gravy.
Fish at sunset at a restaraunt in Varkala. That is the Arabian Sea, you make have heard of it.
The beach at Varkala, Kerala, India. A place full of Western, Free-Tibet hippies.
The Sri Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. For Hindus, Meenakshi is the goddess wife of Vishnu.
The Temple is being renovated, hence the scaffold and covering. This is a close up of one of the thousands of painted carvings being rehabbed.
It was pilgrimage season, so the Temple was a busy place.
Bus station in Theni, Tamil Nadu, on the way to Munnar, Kerala.
Munnar, a hill station. Hill Stations are where British colonizers retreated when it got ridiculously hot in the lowlands.
Trash piles in Munnar. With no trash pick up, people burn the piles periodically, after cows and birds have picked over them.
Kerala has a communist government, elected democratically. Its other major party is the Indian National Congress.
Munnar is a center for tea. This is a view within a tea plantation.
Tea, harvested every seven days.
A tea blossom.
A woman washing carrots.
A view in the Eravikulam National Park in Kerala.
From our early morning cruise in the backwaters near Kottayam, Kerala, India. Look at my crazy family.
A lotus flower. Lotus flowers are very meaningful for Hindus.
A house on the canal.
A kingfisher perched on our boatman's stick.
Elaine getting sprayed. We rode elephants like good tourists.
A wild elephant in the Periyar Tiger Preserve, Thekkady, Kerala, India.
A view from a boat in the Periyar Tiger Preserve.
A view within the Periyar Tiger Preserve. The town in the distance is Thekkady and Kumily.
Flowers in Periyar.
Elephant bones!
Tiger paw print!
We bought a few beautiful things from this shop in Thekkady.
An example of the stars Christians hang in front of their houses.
St. George (Syrian) Orthodox Church, Thekkady, Kerala, India.
St. George's cemetery.
A roadside shrine to St. George. You can kind of make out the dragon...
The sanctuary of a Syrian Orthodox church in Kumily, Kerala, India.
A Roman Catholic church. We saw three of these huge statues.
More carvings.
