Amridhi Forrest

Vellore has been one of the hottest, driest, and oddly enough, most humid places we have ever been to. In an attempt to escape this we took a trip up into some nearby mountains to an area called Amridhi Forrest, where we heard it was a bit cooler, there were streams without piles of garbage, and a zoo.

It was a pretty neat zoo, with many Indian animals we likely won't get a chance to see in the wild, like the crocodile, cobra, and the deer that the sign proclaimed were the most beautiful deer in the world. The signs were actually one of the best parts of the zoo, full of misspellings, odd turns of phrase, and proclamations that jackals did good work. They also had a pigeon exhibit! I especially liked seeing the monkeys climbing around outside of the cages, as if laughing at the animals trapped inside.

We saw one of these beautiful deer outside of the zoo in a roadside food stand, and the owner let us pet it. No, neither of us were bitten by the deer.

Outside of the zoo there were also some monkeys playing on the rickshaw and motorcycles, our driver said they were giving the rickshaw a checkup. We took a short stroll along the stream running through the woods, very peaceful.

The way there and back the driver asked us to get out of the rickshaw in order to cross the river, and walk across, tossing assurances in broken English that the water was clean. Hopefully we can take is word for it.

Before we returned the our hostel, the driver asked if we would mind stopping by a temple so that he could bless his rickshaw. Willing to take any step to make a ride in a rickshaw safer, we eagerly agreed. The temple had a large statue of shiva the destroyer out front, the green face with the snakes. The driver first washed his rickshaw, and then had a friend bless it with some wax over a small lime, moved in a pattern in front of the auto. He then took us the rest of the way home.

Shiva, the destroyer