The Horned Spoonbills, and other things…

We really got lucky with the wildlife we saw. In addition to some pretty close views of elephant groups and rhinos, we saw several pairs of Horned Spoonbills, large birds, and it’s their mating season.

We had three total jeep safaris to see the wild life, and had planned one day to visit a tea plantation. There was ANOTHER communication problem and the tour company left us a morning to figure out on our own how to visit the tea plantations. There wasn’t much going on this time of year, and so there are apparently no ongoing tours. We did stop to look at one tea estate that had tall trees with black pepper vines growing up the trees. The still green pepper corns were plenty spicy.

We then continued wandering around and found a rubber plantation, also without anyone to give a formal tour. But we ran into a field trip of a “Home Science” college class. The young lady and I bonded over our pink clothing and my limited Hindi.

And finally, we ended up at a co-operative venture with an orchidarium, and an ethnic museum, which does dance displays from about twenty of the local tribes, some of whom are trying to maintain a traditional lifestyle of sorts.

Ok. I have arrived at the Taramani Guest House on the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology- Madras. They have blessedly fast wi-fi and so I have gone a little nuts uploading these photos and videos much less painlessly than the last post entailed.

Tomorrow, I am going to Periyar University in Salem, Tamil Nadu, to a Smart Materials Conference. It was a last minute invitation. I’ll be traveling with another person who is attending the main conference I came to India to participate in. So I will have two chances to present my Keynote Talk on The Yoga of Failure Analysis. We’ll be taking a short flight in the morning, staying overnight, giving our talks, then driving back to Chennai to participate in the Heat Treating and Surface Engineering Conference. So I guess it is time to practice my presentation a few more times!