A week back home after an awesome vacation and I sit and wish I were back in Munnar. The hills, the weather, the slow-paced life, the greenery, the tea plantations, the lack of cellular network and of course, the strong Malyali accent have all become part of my life now. (Although I haven't got the accent yet, I assure you). I'm sure Jhumur and Rohinton would agree with me there.
Where do I begin? It's like I went into a painting that was 10 degrees celcius and came out into hot, sweltering Mumbai. I never knew, and come to think of it, I'm sure most women reading this blog won't know that there are so many shades of green. Guys anyway see the world in 16 colors, so there's no hope with getting shades out of us.
So anyway, Munnar is around 180km from Cochin airport. So when we reached Cochin, we acclimatized immediately because it's hot and humid like Mumbai is. However, there are fewer vehicles, which made the car ride quite pleasant. Cochin, according to Jhumur, is a lot like North Goa. Loads of palm trees, narrow roads and vehicles lazily moving along, following traffic rules. What put me off, however, were the buildings. I have nothing against experimenting, but painting your building with pink and purple stripes is not my idea of being aesthetic. And Cochin wasn't the only place that had this. It was there everywhere. It's so ironic that a state that is known as God's Own Country has a bunch of color blind architects and house painters. Like what the hell were they thinking when they hired them? Dirty buildings and even dirtier colours.
The natural surroundings, however, made up for the dismal buildings. In the span of an hour the weather had gone from being hot and humid to warm and dry and in the next hour, i felt a slight breeze as we began going up one of the several ghats towards Munnar. The view was magnificent. Curved narrow roads representing National Highway 49, trees on one side and a valley on the other was pretty much what the doctor ordered. That was when disaster stuck!
I began getting my sister's camera ready when I discovered to my horror that the battery had died. I requested the driver to stop at the nearest town for a battery charger, but nobody had an Olympus. As a last resort I called my sister, Harini up and she said that she'd send the charger as soon as I give her the details of my hotel.
Jhumur's camera then came to our rescue. The Nokia N-95 camera is as good as a point and shoot digital still camera. The picture quality is good. The camera has good resolution and it's the ideal emergency camera. Plus, it was a 5 megapixel camera and the pictures have turned out quite well.
So, while clicking several pictures here and there, I suddenly felt the temperature drop suddenly and as it did, the vehicle turned and my heart stopped for a second. There were just tea estates and more tea estates and even more tea estates. Like I mentioned before, it looked straight out of a painting and 20 minutes later we were in Munnar town.
While the Munnar area boasts of its beauty to the world, the town was like any other small town in India. There was a large taxi stand and next to that, an even large bus stand. There were restaurants serving local food, as well as the Gujarati Thali. Foreign tourists opted to sit at Krishna Snacks to sip a cup of cardamom tea and discuss where they will trek to next.
The beauty of a tourist town is that even if you speak the local language, they can spot a tourist a mile away. It was election weekend so a long one. So there were a few families who had come from Cochin and other parts of the state to unwind over the weekend, much to my dismay. Tourists have never been my favourite people. The compensation at least was they were locals and loved their state and would die to keep the place clean.
Our resort and Club Mahindra, where Jhumur stayed were approximately 20 km from the main town and it was another drive uphill. And what a ride it was! There was a stretch when I saw mist overtaking us and parts where it just thickened and fogged our vision at 12 noon. It was very surreal and I wondered what it would be like driving at night.
I gave Harini the details of the resort I was staying at, as well as the Cochin office. I was told that I would get the charger in a couple of days, which I was okay with. I had always had faith in Jhumur's old faithful camera and it would yet serve its purpose once again.
The room Rohinton and I shared was pretty comfy. It had a huge bed, a large bathroom and excellent water supply. It had a television that had 60 local channels out of the 99 available ones. Rohinton wanted to watch the IPL and we sat scanning the damn thing for 10 minutes before we found Set Max. The tournament was scheduled to begin the following day, but we kept the channel number in mind.
We then went to Club Mahindra, which in my opinion is the rich man's Keseri Travels. This was Jhumur's original opinion and I happened to agree with her. The lunch buffet had pasta, puranpoli, butter naan, butter chicken, paneer laziza. Fuck, I hadn't come all the way to eat paneer or naan. We then called the waiter and asked for local food. He got us three curries: one vegetarian and two non-vegetarian and something called Kerala paratha, which was quite tasty and really heavy.
However, Jhumur and I were quite irritated with the lack of a concept of dessert in a Malayali meal. When we would ask the waiter at any restaurant what there was as a sweet, he would smile and say, "
Paaaayasam!" While I love
payasam (or kheer), the kheer my mom' makes is the best on earth and I will not even bother trying anything else. We then decided to opt for old faithful ice cream. I ordered a black current, which turned out quite nice. Jhumur and Rohinton wanted something else which wasn't there. Then they asked for another flavor, which wasn't there either. Third, Fourth and Fifth flavor and the reply was, "Saarie sir, all are over." They then tried their luck with another dessert and the waiter's eyes went bright and said, "Yes, yes, we have!" Five minutes later, he returned saying, "Saarie, all over!" They then decided to have what I was having.
After lunch, we went and checked the travel desk at Club Mahindra to see the places around Munnar. We wanted to see the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, The Rajamalay National Park and the Matupetti Dam (rechristened Motupetu by Jhumur). We then compared prices at Mahindra and the Chancellor, where we were staying and discovered that we were getting a better deal with the Chancellor.
Rohinton and I then decided to walk back to the Chancellor at 7.30. For your information, lights go out at 6.30 at Munnar. There isn't a single shop open unless you're in town and it's quite dark. The only source of light available is from vehicles coming in the opposite direction and Rohinton's ever reliable torch that died on the day we left Munnar.
Day 1Rohinton doesn't know how to sleep. He gets restless at 6 am. Tosses and turns and in the process wakes me up. Now, I'm NOT a morning person. I'm cranky, pissed and can be a pain in the ass - a bigger one than I usually am. So this guy wakes me up and now I can't go back to sleep. But this guy has covered his face and is happily snoring away. I'm pissed by now. So i get up and open the veranda door. It's 8 degrees outside, but that's okay. The bastard can freeze for waking me up. He looks at me. I smile say, get ready.
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Matupeti Dam is beautiful. The lake is huge and the biggest attraction there is the speed boat ride. I was apprehensive initially, but Jhumur wanted to go. So we paid and we began waiting for our turn. Suddenly I hear someone yell,
"James Bond speed boat ma farey che!" Horrified, I turned around and saw this family of 30 Gujarati tourists. I call that a family because 31 Gujaratis will be the number of Gujarati businessmen playing cards in the first class compartment while travelling from Virar to Churchgate station during rush hour. Jhumur looked at me and she was equally horrified. Rohinton, on the other hand, had zoned out and I assume that he began thinking of Isiac Asimov's Secound Foundation series.
Twenty minutes later, our turn to get onto the boat arrived. The wait seemed like 20 years and in that time, Jhumur and I had learned of the rates at Rameshwaram, Kanyakumari and Kovalam to the last pie. The recital was done by this obnoxious looking woman, who was wearing a pair of green and floral harem pants - something that would make the customers run away, methinks. However, when we got onto the boat, things changed for the better. The driver, who had probably graduated from Volvo Luxury Bus Driving School (where driving under 90 mph labels you a pussy) was glad to see us. I'm assuming that he had been taking families and senior citizens throughout the day and our presence on the boat gave him renewed energy.
He took off, swayed from side to side, took Jhumur's phone camera, took some insane pictures and in 15-minute boat ride, made our day.
At the end of the boat ride, the guy began screaming something to Rohinton, who was sitting right next to him. He first yelled paambu, which I didn't hear well. Rohinton looked lost. He then yelled, Saap. Rohinton still looked lost. Finally, the guy, in frustration of Rohinton's lack of reaction, yelled, SNAKE. And there it was! Swimming to get to land, the six-foot long thing slithered into a hole it had made at the bed of the dam. I froze because I'm scared to death of snakes and Jhumur kept on going, ooh. it's big. I didn't care. I wanted dry land. A helicopter preferably to keep me away from that disgusting thing.
As soon as we got off the boat, I ran to the car, locked my door and rolled the windows up. No more snakes happening in this trip, I was thinking.
After Matupetti Dam, we went and had lunch at one of the restaurants in Munnar town. We told the staff that we wanted local food that was not on the menu. The menu, fyi, was full of pastas, puranpolis and paneers as well. So we had some really spicy
rasam and a few other local dishes., one of them being something called the Travancore chicken. It had a dry gravy, but was really delicious. Just the right amount of spices and green chillies.
After lunch, however, I wanted to do nothing, but we were going to Rajamalai National Park that is home to the blue goat or the
Nilgiri Tahr, as it is popularly known. The only way to get there is by a local bus and during the ride, we discovered how beautiful the place is. Trees on one side and mountains on the other was quite a breathtaking experience. And the beauty is that none of the photographs that are on this blog reflect Munnar's beauty. The whole experience was surreal and I still wish that I'm back over there.
Anyway, when the bus reached its final destination, we had to trek a bit before we saw the goats. They were sure footed things and had a lovely shiny bluish grey coat. We saw one, then another came and then the third. In excitement, this moron of a woman, who Jhumur and I wanted to slap, walked like a penguin towards one of the goats causing it to go
away.
I don't get human behaviour sometimes. We've been given a good brain, but no, we have to act like complete morons. To prove this, I'll give one more example. Same place, same goat, but different set of morons. This kid (probably a year old) was standing in front of the goat trying to reach out to it and pull its tail and the father was standing and admiring how cute it looked. I was getting pissed off and it was pretty evident on my face. But oh well, there's nothing much you can do with morons. Even telling them off will seem like something funny and they'll do a penguin dance to appreciate the humour making you feel stupid for telling them that they're stupid.
Speaking of stupid, when we got down and reached the town again, I called my hotel to ask about the camera charger. "Sir, you will get it by Tuesday," came the reply. "But I'm checking out on Wednesday," I said. "It has reached Cochin, sir, but it cannot come here," came the reply. "Why not?" I yelled, clearly pissed. "Because sir, we don't know what the charger looks like," was the reply. I lost it and disconnected in disgust and yelled some choice explicits to poor Rohinton who was standing next to me.
Thankfully, my mood cheered up in five minutes when we entered the Krishna Spices gift shop that was run by this really pretty woman. While Jhumur and Rohinton were looking around for things to buy, I pretended to be interested in the artifacts and other cool things around the shop. I saw this crazy looking thing that had a string attached to a wooden ball and making an excuse to talk to the woman, I asked her what it was. "Oh this. It's a baaskhetball," she said without batting an eyelid and becan trying to get the ball into the other structure that was attached to the string on the other side. It was quite funny and I burst out laughing and she grinned back at me, clearly enjoying the game. Unfortunately, that was all for our 'flirting' because Jhumur came with a few things and decided to pay her bill at that time, totally oblivious to what had happened.
When I got back to the hotel, the guy at the front desk told me that my charger would be coming the next morning. Finally, I thought to myself, I can use the SLR!
