mountains with a runny nose

For better or worse we prefer driving the minor roads through small villages and farmland, avoiding the highways when possible. Often these roads are in shocking condition and none of them are on our maps, but potholes and asking directions is all part of it. Whether its small coastal fishing communities or mountainous villages, it is great to stop and see a bit of village life: drying crops on the roads, lying around sleeping, industrious cultivation of fields and paddies, or the bright flags and flowers of celebrations. Even if a woman has half a tonne of wood on her head or a man is breaking rocks in the heat, a friendly greeting is always returned with a genuine big white smile. Learning the basics of the state's language has been well worth it, often people literally laugh out loud in suprise when you come out with a bit of Tamil!
In the areas we travel without established tourism we have always found people to be friendly and genuinely interested in us and the landcruiser, rather than our rupees. Unfortunately many tourists seem to be ignorant of the value of their money outside of their own country, and their well-meaning but irresponsible handouts just make the situation worse. So this is the real benefit of having our own vehicle - few tourists would be able to take these routes, and the less tourists the better!

To most Indians however, it is incomprehensible logisticaly and financially that we would take a minor route rather than the highway, so getting directions is often not so straight-forward. It took a few asks before we got even an admission that minor roads exist for the route we wanted to take to Fort Kochi. Once we were on the way we were glad we persisted with our directions off the highway as the drive through the waterways was beautiful, even though I was feeling sick as an indian dog with my cold and ear infection. We found a very nice colonial hotel with walled garden who let us camp and use their dodgy staff squatter for 100 rupee a night. We stayed two nights as i was quite ill, so i rested reading while amelia brought me back chappatti and chenna masala, and the crows dropped seafood scraps like fishheads and crabshells out of the palm trees all around me. Bizarrely the hotel gave us our money back when we left.



Driving towards Munnar we stopped at our first 'Toddy bar', where drunk friendly old men serve alcoholic fermented sap from coconut palms, similar to the palm wine in Africa. Arriving at Munnar, a hill station town built around tea plantations high in the mountains, there was not a lot in the way of camping opportunities so we ended up stayed in a very nice 100 yr old hotel with character. We had dinner that night at a street stall. It was jumper weather, not really cold, but all the indian tourists were walking round in woolly hats, big tiger-stripe earmuffs and wrapped in blankets like they were out in the arctic. The next day my ear was worse so we visited the local hospital set up for tea plantation workers. It was very clean and efficient and i was out with antibiotics quicker than you can say 'NHS'. Afterwards we went to tea museum where we had tour of the factory and saw how all different types of tea are made, very interesting indeed, i wont be able to look at a cup of tea in the same way again! We consulted the rubbish map and decided to head to 'top-station', which turned out to be a few houses at the top of the tea plantations at 2500m. We drank a lot of tea waiting for tourists to leave and a small kitten was the closest we have come to a tiger yet. Sadly that night we ate the penultimate tin of baked beans. We woke up to the sun rising up over the mountains of Kerala in through our tent window, drank more tea and eventually discovered a 4wd shortcut through a national park north to Udumalpettai.
Irritatingly four lads on motorbikes insisted on following us as they were afraid of elephant attacks. Luckily after fifteen minutes of low-range 4wd crawling over rocks with krausey out in front directing, they opted for the elephants and left us. Back in Tamil Nadu again we put the pressure back up in the tyres with the on-board air compressor, watched by the usual crowd of interested onlookers. That night we stayed in a hot dusty town called Udumalpettai, where an old guy cleaned the car which was good as the landcruiser hadn't been washed since Melbourne. Every other car in india is spotlessly clean...