Elephants and Kappad Beach

I got my article published in yesterday's newspaper! It's a little more than half a page and has two colorful photos, which I have taken in the villages.

On Friday, I went to the Mysore Mail again, but didn't expect a motorcycle ride to the Mysore Palace and to a beautiful lake afterwards. Once again, no sense of a traffic law.

This weekend, four of the girls and I went to the Renaissance Cochin Kappad Beach Resort in Calicut. We left Saturday at 5 a.m. and returned at about 6 p.m. Sunday. The ride took us about six hours, but was very interesting. We drove through the forest and saw bissons, monkeys and elephants! We also passed mountains, waterfalls and many fields of exotic trees and plants. Because it was raining throughout the day, several roads were flooded and people seemed to have a difficult time working outside.

Kappad Beach lies 18 km south of Kozhikode, the most famous district of North Kerala. Vasco da Gama landed there in 1498 with 170 men in search of the faded spices of Kerala. Our hotel was very nice and had a breathtaking view of the ocean.

This morning, I attended a press conference, which was mainly in Kannada. The focus was on a new company, the website mysorenetworks.com, to enable networking to local businesses. About 35 people were present, most of which were men. The webpage includes several sections, including blogs, international business, net news, events, marketplace and discussion forums. After the conference, I hung around the Mysore Mail office for a few hours, talking to the chief editor and reading through the newspapers from the weekend. I took a rickshaw (three-wheeled taxi) home and cooked some tomato rice. Tonight, we have a Kannada language lesson.