Sunday, May 29 - Kodaicanal

Hello! Today was our only day to explore Kodaikanal so we started it off with a breakfast of assorted dosa down the street from the hostel. Since Kodaikanal functions largely as a tourist attraction the traffic all day long was very heavy all throughout the city. Regardless, we had a wonderful view of the city from our restaurant, where we got to practice our photography and hand-eating skills.

After breakfast, we went to the lake, which had paddle boats on the water and every shop you could imagine on the lakeside. The team explored the shops for a while and got to invest in Indian souvenirs. The sheer amount of tea and chocolate that was consumed on this day is record-breaking. Other than sweets and spices we were able to buy some traditional Indian jewelry and other Kodaicanal staples.

After shopping, half of the group made it out on the water. Team India laughs in the face of adversity, a little bit of rain was absolutely not going to stop us from becoming Olympic paddlers out on Kodaikanal Lake. Legend has it we paddled around the lake faster than the speed of light, but it was too fast for anyone to see so don’t ask anyone about it, just take our word.

By the time the rain had stopped and everyone was off the lake, our entire team was absolutely starving from all the shopping and paddling we’d been doing this morning. Despite our greatest efforts to get to a restaurant at the same speed we had been paddling, the weekend traffic got the best of us. Instead of waiting in the car, the team decided to use all this extra time as an opportunity to walk the streets of Kodaikanal and really get to know the city (and the jungle it sat in).

Despite being outed as foreigners everywhere we went, our team has quickly become accustomed to Indian cuisine and already knew our orders almost as soon as we were seated. After dinner, we set out on the road, only this time the Kodaikanal traffic extended our already long drive back to the village by roughly 2 hours. To say the least, our team had some great bonding time on the road, had a great experience exploring Kodaikanal, and really enjoyed getting to understand Indian culture.

We were all so tired after the long drive that some of us passed out immediately upon getting out of the car. The rest of us were barely able to make it up the stairs onto the terrace before we fell asleep under the stars.

Sophie

PUC India 2022