The road higher maintains its narrow snakiness, as our driver, Ganesh, continues the death-defying act of negotiating roads on which drivers think nothing of passing on blind corners, at speed, whether in a car, bus, truck or auto rickshaw. A few near misses let you know you're alive, as both vehicles come to a screeching halt almost nose-to-nose, then inch their ways past each other and continue.
Add to the excitement of the perilous road journey periodic heavy downpours that create coffee-coloured foam as silt and water mix down the cascades of narrow gorges and vertical drops. Along the way, at the unlikeliest of locations, villages have sprung up over the year. A few micro-businesses sell anything from crisps, soft drinks and pens, to plumbing supplies, saris or motorbike parts. There are also countless people selling home-cooked food, which it's probably sensible to politely decline. All the while along the way, everyone is quick with a smile and a wave at this impossibly large bus and its contents.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Travelling in South India, or, How I Developed My Quads & Hamstrings Through the Use of Squat Toilets on the Subcontinent
So, stopped to take a leak by the side of the road the other day - as all good Indians do - in the middle of a national park, with the threat of attack from tigers, spotted deer, and several species of monkey, and thunder rolling with grey clouds overhead. At least it's cleaner than most Indian public toilets and you don't need to wear gumboots.
How far can you walk once the rumblings of an Indian post-lunch experience come on? About a kilometre, it would seem, but with ever increasing speed and ever tighter clenching. The sweat drips from you, from the heat of a Thekkady afternoon and the anxiety of the situation, while each vacant block and alleyway becomes more and more inviting as you look around for ways to solve your problem. A mantra rolls over and over in your head - I will maintain my dignity. I will walk briskly to the hotel.
As you race down the street, another couple from the tour passes - smile weakly, eyes ahead. I will maintain my dignity. I will find the toilet at reception because my room is another 50 metres further away. The entry walls to the Muthoot Cardamom County Resort welcome you, but can you make reception or the pool loos? Why are all those people staring? I will maintain my dignity. I will maintain my dignity. You shut the door; you lift the seat.
Dignity maintained.
I find out later that the other couple had speculated that Damian and I had had an argument, because we were returning to the hotel separately, about 100 metres apart, one more desperate than the other to make it back to the resort.
When traveling in places such as this, never EVER leave the bus without wet-wipes or tissues, or at the very VERY least, a left-over serviette from breakfast. Because what you're left with is a hole in the ground and a bucket of questionable water, and if you're very lucky, a small plastic jug. Ensure that if you don't have your little bottle of hand sanitiser with you, that it is in the bus and that you don't shake friends' hands until you have accessed said bottle of sanitiser. Ah, Ooty.
Enough said!
The squatting, of course, has been very helpful in developing the muscles for temple step climbing.
How far can you walk once the rumblings of an Indian post-lunch experience come on? About a kilometre, it would seem, but with ever increasing speed and ever tighter clenching. The sweat drips from you, from the heat of a Thekkady afternoon and the anxiety of the situation, while each vacant block and alleyway becomes more and more inviting as you look around for ways to solve your problem. A mantra rolls over and over in your head - I will maintain my dignity. I will walk briskly to the hotel.
As you race down the street, another couple from the tour passes - smile weakly, eyes ahead. I will maintain my dignity. I will find the toilet at reception because my room is another 50 metres further away. The entry walls to the Muthoot Cardamom County Resort welcome you, but can you make reception or the pool loos? Why are all those people staring? I will maintain my dignity. I will maintain my dignity. You shut the door; you lift the seat.
Dignity maintained.
I find out later that the other couple had speculated that Damian and I had had an argument, because we were returning to the hotel separately, about 100 metres apart, one more desperate than the other to make it back to the resort.
When traveling in places such as this, never EVER leave the bus without wet-wipes or tissues, or at the very VERY least, a left-over serviette from breakfast. Because what you're left with is a hole in the ground and a bucket of questionable water, and if you're very lucky, a small plastic jug. Ensure that if you don't have your little bottle of hand sanitiser with you, that it is in the bus and that you don't shake friends' hands until you have accessed said bottle of sanitiser. Ah, Ooty.
Enough said!
The squatting, of course, has been very helpful in developing the muscles for temple step climbing.
Waving at the natives
Nine hours on the bus today - twenty-three seats, eleven travellers, and countless bumps and turns from Coonoor to Munnar. These are both hill towns, separated by a vast plain at about 400 metres. Across the plains we see coconut palms, ginger, sugar cane and rice, the rice more so at sea level. In places, narrow streams fed by mountain rain flow through forests of beetel nut palms or ginger.
All along the way, townspeople go about their business, generally oblivious to the bus nudging its way through their streets. Looking out, you notice the men with their lustrous black hair well beyond middle age, and nary a sign of male pattern baldness. The women's hair too is dark and long, some trying to emulate the images of impossibly beautiful women on billboards, cloaked in saris and bejewelled in gold, diamonds and other precious gems. No matter a person's station in life and apparent poverty, most women have some form jewellery - bangles, bracelets and anklets; toe, nose and earrings.
In the hills, the crop is tea, grown between 3000 and 7000 metres. As we climb to Munnar, mist clings to the tea bushes carpeting the slopes, with a criss-cross of paths for the pickers to move around. Only women, generally from the state of Tamil Nadu, are employed to pick tea in this region. Interspersed among the bushes - tea is actually a tree, but is kept to 2 foot bush height for ease of picking - are imported Australian she-oaks, planted to give shade to the bushes during the hotter times. The seeds for the she-oaks were actually not imported, but smuggled into India illegally in the skirts of the wife of a planter!
All along the way, townspeople go about their business, generally oblivious to the bus nudging its way through their streets. Looking out, you notice the men with their lustrous black hair well beyond middle age, and nary a sign of male pattern baldness. The women's hair too is dark and long, some trying to emulate the images of impossibly beautiful women on billboards, cloaked in saris and bejewelled in gold, diamonds and other precious gems. No matter a person's station in life and apparent poverty, most women have some form jewellery - bangles, bracelets and anklets; toe, nose and earrings.
In the hills, the crop is tea, grown between 3000 and 7000 metres. As we climb to Munnar, mist clings to the tea bushes carpeting the slopes, with a criss-cross of paths for the pickers to move around. Only women, generally from the state of Tamil Nadu, are employed to pick tea in this region. Interspersed among the bushes - tea is actually a tree, but is kept to 2 foot bush height for ease of picking - are imported Australian she-oaks, planted to give shade to the bushes during the hotter times. The seeds for the she-oaks were actually not imported, but smuggled into India illegally in the skirts of the wife of a planter!
Saturday, October 15, 2011
The Munnar High Range Club
14 October
Visited the Munnar High Range Club today, a remnant of the Raj and tea plantations of the early twentieth century. We walked in, after another treacherous auto rickshaw ride, to white-washed walls and dark wood panelling. The walls were adorned with faded sepia and black & white photos of planters and plantation managers and their wives, mid-century cricket teams, and other groups gathered overlooking the vast carpets of tea bushes covering the mountain sides. One particular photo was the focus of our flying visit, that of the Kundaly Club, circa 1900. In it, according to an email from Mum, we had to "look for a man with a stick about seventh or eighth from the right in the front row. Behind him, and behind that man again, a touch to the right is your GGF" - Christopher Eric Ley Ward, a member of the High Range Club and manager of the Kanan Devan Hills Plantation Company (Madupatty Tea Estates) in the early 1900s. I now feel even greater claim to being an Anglo-Indian!
Will post photos when we access a computer (using the iPad now, and Blogger doesn't like it re photos).
Visited the Munnar High Range Club today, a remnant of the Raj and tea plantations of the early twentieth century. We walked in, after another treacherous auto rickshaw ride, to white-washed walls and dark wood panelling. The walls were adorned with faded sepia and black & white photos of planters and plantation managers and their wives, mid-century cricket teams, and other groups gathered overlooking the vast carpets of tea bushes covering the mountain sides. One particular photo was the focus of our flying visit, that of the Kundaly Club, circa 1900. In it, according to an email from Mum, we had to "look for a man with a stick about seventh or eighth from the right in the front row. Behind him, and behind that man again, a touch to the right is your GGF" - Christopher Eric Ley Ward, a member of the High Range Club and manager of the Kanan Devan Hills Plantation Company (Madupatty Tea Estates) in the early 1900s. I now feel even greater claim to being an Anglo-Indian!
Will post photos when we access a computer (using the iPad now, and Blogger doesn't like it re photos).
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
You can piss in the street, just don't kiss in the street
12 October
So goes a local expression, which encapsulates the contrasts of India, both visual and social. The streets of every town and along the highways are extensively littered with rubbish of all kinds: paper and plastic bags, food scraps, bits of clothing and leather and rubber (from shoe manufacture), and walking passed all of this can be every type of person - beautiful women in beautiful saris, too cool westernized men wearing the latest inspired by Indian GQ and pop videos, shoeless auto rickshaw drivers and street vendors, and beggars (whether crippled or simply destitute). The paradox is such that outside boutique shops and five-star hotel entries, the rubbish can be found.
And then there are the bodily functions! Pissing (as in the title); spitting, here, there and everywhere (though there's generally plenty of warning to get out of the way as they all have the guttural, back of the nasal cavity snort); and the occasional squat that is the tell-tale sign of something more odourous. Compared to the last time I was here (1982), there actually seems to be much less spitting in the streets (and fewer beggars, come to that).
India remains very conservative - public displays of affection are infrequent, though both women and men hold hands or have their arms around each other's shoulders or waists, similar to what you see in the Middle East. So, yeah, no kissing in the street.
So goes a local expression, which encapsulates the contrasts of India, both visual and social. The streets of every town and along the highways are extensively littered with rubbish of all kinds: paper and plastic bags, food scraps, bits of clothing and leather and rubber (from shoe manufacture), and walking passed all of this can be every type of person - beautiful women in beautiful saris, too cool westernized men wearing the latest inspired by Indian GQ and pop videos, shoeless auto rickshaw drivers and street vendors, and beggars (whether crippled or simply destitute). The paradox is such that outside boutique shops and five-star hotel entries, the rubbish can be found.
And then there are the bodily functions! Pissing (as in the title); spitting, here, there and everywhere (though there's generally plenty of warning to get out of the way as they all have the guttural, back of the nasal cavity snort); and the occasional squat that is the tell-tale sign of something more odourous. Compared to the last time I was here (1982), there actually seems to be much less spitting in the streets (and fewer beggars, come to that).
India remains very conservative - public displays of affection are infrequent, though both women and men hold hands or have their arms around each other's shoulders or waists, similar to what you see in the Middle East. So, yeah, no kissing in the street.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Crowds, noise, food
7 October
Sitting in our hotel room with a cacophony of traffic sounds below, glasses of Kingfisher beer in hand. We're just back from Spencer Plaza, a shopping mall in the throes of renovation. Lots of stores selling brass statuettes, rugs and pashmina shawls, with traders and spruikers touting their wares - 'just opened today', 'brand new', 'best price'. Also though, department and speciality stores with fixed prices. Damian came away with new sunglasses (dropped his this morning), and I have a new pair of walking shoes - just because. Learning the art of haggling and walking away with the auto rickshaw (took-took) drivers - in the end it's just a few cents difference.
The day started though with a combination Indian and Western breakfast - masala omelette or beans and eggs, and a lot else besides; can highly recommend the masala omelette - plenty of oil, eggs, onion and spices, similar to something we had on our Nile cruise a few years ago. Crowds and noise are the key words on India so far - the streets, the temples, the markets. Visited a Hindu temple as part of a sightseeing tour this afternoon - no shoes, no photos inside certain shrines, and no non-Hindus within other parts too. We did get blessed by a Hindu priest though, so maybe we will come back as sacred cows in the next life. After receiving his jasmine flower necklace from a woman in the temple, Damian paraded around for an hour looking very holy. Not knowing what to do with it later, though, we worried that simply tossing it away would lead to other less favourable reincarnations. Luckily the two Hindu god statues in the foyer of our floor at the hotel accepted the offering.
On another religious note, we visited the Cathedral Basilica of St Thomas (the doubting one). I have always been fascinated by the fact that Christianity has been in India almost from day one - St Thomas is said to have arrived on the west coast of India in about 60AD and died in Mylapore (now Madras/Chennai) in about 72AD, murdered by the spear of a local on a hilltop in the region. Images of Christ and the apostles in the cathedral have a distinctly Indian quality to them - vibrant colours, flashing neon lights, and saintly images likely modelled on Bollywood actors, though St John had a touch of the Chuck Norrises about him. Another fascinating fact - the Cathedral Basilica of St Thomas is one of only three ini the world build on the tomb of a saint, the others being St Peter's in Rome and the Cathedral of Santiago (St James) de Compostela in Spain.
As The Communards once sang - 'Don't Leave Me This Way'
6 October
Uneventful flight to and arrival in Madras, and then... abandonment! Apparently someone at the travel agency forgot to tell someone at the tour company that we would be on a flight much earlier than anyone else in the group. Arrived at 3:30pm, not expected by Mr Mahesh the tour leader till 10:00pm. Ah, India! Stood waiting, waiting, waiting till 4:30pm, fending off offers of taxi rides, till a kindly airport security guard offered that we use his mobile phone to make some calls. There was an implied suggestion and mention of call charges so I complied with the connotation and handed over 100 rupees. The upshot of the phone calls was... Best you catch a taxi to the hotel!
Ah well, made it one one piece, didn't get murdered and had dinner (in the hotel's Chinese restaurant) without developing diarrhea; it's early days though.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
The glamorous life
Damian being glamorous in the opulent Ambassador Lounge of the extravagant Changi Airport. We have six hours here of free food and drink (no alcohol, but it is only 8.00am), and access to showers and gym (LOL!). Have snoozed a bit, after not snoozing on the plane - alas Temazepam and Bry don't effectively together, especially in the heightened state of the first day of a holiday, it seems). We get to Madras about 3.30pm and meet the rest of the tour group, with things getting underway Friday morning.
Stay tuned and नमस्ते
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Namaste all
So, here we are at Brisbane International, a little weary and waiting for the plane while trying to master Blogger using an iPad - compatability issues. Hopefully we will be able to keep the world up-to-date on the trip.Come back and have a read!
B&D
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