Jamie’s Trip to Nagarhole National Park (Mysore, India)

Jamie’s whole entire 7th grade class – that’s all 38 of them, plus teachers – went on an awesome “field trip” WEEK WITHOUT WALLS. In preparation for the trip, the kids were assigned some speech/reseach/social studies type projects, rumor has it they followed up with these assignements on the trip. I know Jamie did a speech on a three striped Mongoose (I think that is what the critter was), but they never did see one. The class met Sunday evening and boarded the night train from Chennai to Mysore, and returned Friday early morning. They visited the Nagarhole National Park and some falls that were nearby. As he babbled on the way home from picking him up on Friday, I wished I had taken notes or recorded him. So, being the mom that I am, I asked him to write down some of his thoughts on the trip. He told me it was awesome and shared many good things but this is what he wrote. Overall, he had a blast so if these notes don’t reflect it – just know it was a great trip. We followed the “rules” and didn’t send a camera so no photos from the trip but one of his friends and the teachers took photos. Hopefully, we can get some copies. In the meantime this is his recollection:

It was fun except the food. The food was vegetarian so I only ate jipates (chapattis) and rice for lunch and dinner. For breakfast I had corn flakes, 4-5 bowls each morning, and disgusting french toast. At lunch and dinner, they did have ice cream. The ice cream was vanilla, strawberry or mango. The mango was disgusting, the vanilla was perfect and the strawberry was milky.

The train was totally blue – blue walls, blue mattress, blue doors. Even the windows had a bluish tint. The ride was smooth. It was only loud in the bathroom because that is where the cars connected. The train station was filled with people and smelled disgusting because all the poop and pee that fell out of the trains. The train toilets dump onto the tracks.

The only good sleep I had was on the train: 8 hours. In the hotel it was only 4 hrs to 6 hrs. The train was better because I went to sleep at ten and woke up at 6. In the hotel, I only slept for 6 hrs because I would go to sleep at 10, wake up at 2, go back to sleep at 3, wake up at 5 or 6. Also at 5 and 4:30. In the hotel, my roommates woke me in the night by crunching on dry noodles.

The bus ride was freaky because it was 10x bumpier than the train. I would be sleeping normal (upright) and a bounce would toss me to the floor. My friend took a picture of me as I fell more with each bump.

On the safari, I saw elephants, 3 types of deer, adjutant stork, bee-eater mongoose, and langur monkeys (myself). My friend Holli named one of the monkeys James. The elephants were trained by being trapped in cages big enough for only 2 elephants. Did you know an elephant’s foot pad’s circumference tines 2 is the height of the elephant? The adjutant Stork can get up to 7 ½ feet tall and rarely 8 ft tall.

We drove to the base of the Irupu Falls then we walked about 50 meters up and 25 meters ahead of us. We saw dozens of leeches and everybody had leeches except a few people: me, Eric, and Eliza. Eliza didn’t go up. I did have one crawling through the weave of my sock. The falls were cool. (Then he drew a sketch of the leeches, that were brown, by the way  )

My roommates: Clement (French), Sang Wan (Korean), Takashi (Japanese) and me, James (USA)