Thrissur (Kerala), India - December 30th, 2006

This morning I got up early becaues I wanted to visit two places out of town. One was the Sri Krishna Temple at Guruvayur, supposed to be the most famous in Kerala and popular pilgrim place. Turns out only Hindus are allowed to visit it.
So I then went to the Temple's Elephants. They have 60 elephants on the grounds of an old Zaromin palace. Each of these elephants is chainned to a tree, and the chain is only about 4 or 5 meters long. They said they are training them for their parade festivals and temple celebrations.
Since there was a German group with a tour guide, I was able to get under one of the elephant's tromp. It's brief but scary feeling to be behind that huge tromp...! Those elephants were so good at grabbing big branches and sand with their tromps and tossing all that up in the air, so I thought that maybe they could rap me in their tromp and toss me up just as well!
That afternoon I wanted to visit the Kerala Kalamandalam, a place of traditional art of Kerala, including Kathakali. After 1-1/2 hrs. of bus ride and packed inside the bus the worse ever (sardines are very happy in their cans comparing to me in that moment), it was all a wasted effort. Turned out that Saddam was killed this morning and I just found out about it because there was no connection but to wher I was going. There wasn't going to be a bus for the next 3 hours anywhere. Bus drivers had a 3 hr. strike. So I returned to my hotel in the train. I was so tired, that I missed my exit and went on to the next town.