Dear All,
This time in 4 weeks we will be home! Wowzies, I cant believe how fast it has all gone. Suddenly were planning our last few weeks in India, adding places and cutting some out. Starting to donate my manky (favourite Scottish term for nasty/dirty/stinky) clothes as I’ve been wearing them for 2 years and they are well overdue. But my bag dosnt seem to be getting lighter…the shopping is great in India. Luckily we’ve already paid for the “large luggage” option with our budget airline to get home…on the 12th Feb!!!
Anyway back to the journey. Its not only the trains that have a range of classes..the buses are the same. From Coimbatore we caught a lovely airconditioned, reclining chair bus to Munnar.very comfy. The opposite scale is the pink windowless, grinding and grunting bus that was shared with bamboo, chickens and way too many people from Munnar to Kumily. However the drivers did share the same philosophy; drive at breakneck speed along windy narrow roads, break very suddenly but only if really necessary coming into the hairpin corners and my favourite talent: overtaking on BLIND CORNERS!!! Going really fast and then giving a little toot one second before you overtake is scary..really scary. At some corners I was grimacing whilst looking down at the extremely steep hills. It didn’t help that some of the barriers had been smashed off where other vehicles had left the road. Luckily someone was looking out for us and we arrived safely after both trips.
Munnar was great from the first second we stepped off the bus. No touts or rickshaw drivers bothering us, the people glanced and then moved on with their business and dan and I were free to find a place to stay. We found a really nice homestay on top of the hill looking over the town. The house had 3 rooms that were clean and the family were really friendly. The kids put dan to work; because of his height he was pulling paper aeroplanes of the roof. Munnar is the main town for hundreds of acres of the worlds highest tea-growing estates (some even becomes Tetley!). There are small villages all along the hills, however villagers come to Munnar for shopping and prayer.
We visited a tea museum in Munnar and it was amazing to hear the history of the hills. The Kannan Devan Tea plantations were owned by an English company up until the 1940’s. However now 60 percent is owned by the workers and the remaining 40 percent split up between other groups. The workers are provided with free housing, education and medical services. I was also impressed that there are also schools and jobs for disabled children available to the families. The whole setup was impressive. The women collect the tea leaves while the men work in the factories and prune and spray the plants…and there are A LOT of plants. I never knew how tea is made, but its actually quiet simple. The tea plants are regularly pruned and then the fresh green leaves are collected, mushed up, oxidised and then dried. I’m still not sure what the oxidisation bit is, we asked and got a weird well rehearsed answer that didn’t make sense, it looked like a drying type machine? Who knows. The factory smelt amazing, like freshly brewed tea.
Indians like their tea crushed very finely so that the flavour and colour are stronger. However most teabags are filled with a coarsely chopped tea. However after our tea tasting session we discovered the best tea is the full dried leaves, very nice. Although we didn’t get to try it, the best tea is the “white tips” it is the whole dried very tip of the fresh leaves. A kilogram sold for 4,000 rupees (around $80 aus). In our tea tasting session we also tried some horrible stuff..tea and cardamom, green tea and rose and tea and vanilla…yuk. Luckily like wine tasting theres a bucket for spitting.
We spent 4 days in Munnar wandering the tea plantations, eating great food and one morning we went for a hike. We left when it was still dark..5am..and drove to the base of a huge boulder filled hill. I started strongly..and then faded quickly, I never really liked sport at school very much. In the end we climbed for 4 hours and the view was definitely worth it. We had a guide with us who pointed out the wild flowers and the trail. There was no one else on the trail which was really nice to be alone for a little while. We also spotted 10 wild endangered native goats..they’re huge, more like a pony than a goat. At the top we had fruit for breakfast and watched the clouds racing up the side of the hill and over the top of us.
Munnar is now up there with Mysore for the favourite place. However we’ve just arrived in Fort Cochin which has a really laidback relaxed feel to it already..I’ll have three favourite places (:
In between Munnar and Fort Cochin we stopped at Kumily which is the town for the Periyar Tiger Sanctuary. We were hoping to spend a few days trekking within the park however as were winging most of this trip we had nothing prebooked and arrived to find that all the treks were fully booked till the 24th January. Bummer. So we have booked a 2 day trek for the end of January and will stop on our through to Madurai, which is on the way to Trichy (Tirchirappalli) where our flight leaves from. Periyar has wild elephants, bison, macaques, otters, dhols and snakes..there is also a very slim chance we may be able to spot a tiger! Maybe, fingers are crossed for the end of January.
As we suddenly had spare time before the next bus to Fort Cochin we went and visited a Spice Garden. Kumily is significantly lower than Munnar, so there is no tea plantations, instead hundreds of acres of Coffee, Cardamon, Pepper, Rubber Trees and Bananas. In a large 4 hectare private garden we saw a huge variety of spices that I would definitely not recognise. Huge Cardamon plants (a low palm type plant) nutmeg tree (the seed is contained in a horribly bitter fruit) cinnamon tree (fresh cinnamon smells amazing) Pepper (its actually a vine) allspice (I always thought it was a mix of spices, but its actually one plant that smells like a mix of spices) and a lot of plants and herbs that are used in traditional Indian Herbal medicine. There was also bananas, beautiful colourful tropical flowers (my favourite was a red and white bleeding heart) strawberries and tiny little cute chillies that are ridiculously hot.
As we were walking around the garden at around 1pm the light went strange and the birds went quiet. There was a 91% eclipse of the sun! I gave myself as headache trying to look at it,2 pairs of sunglasses only just makes it bearable, it looked really weird to see a huge chunk of sun covered. The people were out with xray film, camera film and welders masks on looking at the eclipse..and the really dumb people *cough jess and dan cough* were looking with 2 pairs of sunglasses..no wonder I got a headache. The eclipse lasted for over an hour, which makes it the longest eclipse for this millenium. Very cool we thought.
At the moment we are in Fort Cochin. Cochin is on the west coast of India and is the capital of the state of Kerala, however the city is made up of Islands. Were staying on a small island that feels more like a village. It’s really nice so we may stay 4 nights or so. From here were planning on going down to Alleppey and staying on a traditional houseboat for a few nights.
Hope the sun is shining..but not too hot (: Right now I really feel like a cheese sandwich, so someone have a cheese sandwich for me…and maybe a piece of mums chocolate cake…
Lots of love, see you all in 4 weeks! that’s only 28 days (: I’m very very excited
Love jess xo
