Day 11 13th
Jan 13 Munnar. Made it Ma - top of the world.
Across the
lower jungly covered hills up, up, the road becomes one car wide. It’s Sunday
and everyone is out in coaches and buses, tin traps to air conditioned luxury, not forgetting the three and four up bikes and tenacious
Tuk Tuks. How do they get up here? Rattle, bang, slow for the potholes, speed up as soon as a gap is spotted, whahoo.
The hills
are covered in tea plantations and turn into green felt dumplings. Cardamom
farms with electric fences line the roads. Is there a smugglers’ market in
cardamom? ‘No Mem it’s to keep the elephants out.’ The fences must carry quite a high charge
then, I won’t get too close. I can’t associate the beautiful plump green tea
leaves with the T bags I buy at home. Here the tea is made in pots and is
delicious, a good brown colour. It is drunk sweet with no milk.
Crowds pass by waving and smiling, especially the children. Sunday saris are bright colours with as much glittery bling as can be afforded. Men in shirts and lungis – not many western trousers because I suppose they would be uncomfortably hot. We keep climbing and the Ghats are stunning, stretching away in the distance, misty like Japanese prints. The road cracks at the edges and becomes steep. Everyone drives in the middle and it can get complicated. A truck has become stuck across the road and a jam seems inevitable but drivers are patient as well and reverse to give it space to turn back into the queue. I wonder if Europeans have something to learn. Yes it’s dangerous but so are the M25, the Périphérique, Barcelona, and Rome in the rush hour.
We turn a corner and there is the Casa del Fauna sitting, waiting for us. What a place:
what a view:
I'm coming back here too.
We roll down the drive
and wander into the bungalow. No-one there. Birds and whispering bamboos mingle
with sounds of far away cars. A man in a woolly beanie sweeping the leaves from
the grass runs off and comes back with another smiley man who is embarrassed not
to have been here to welcome us. He takes me inside and shows me a lovely room.
I sit outside for a sandwich lunch and a cold beer. The label on the bottle
says, ‘drunken driving is punishable.’
The view from Casa del Fauna.
The road outside shows they really haven't got their heads round rubbish disposal. There is a fortune waiting to be made by someone inventing bin men.
Only three
rooms in the Casa and we all eat together but at separate tables. A very personal service.
The man looking after us asks me if I would like to go for a short walk in the
jungle – why not?
We walk down into the
undergrowth
I ask if there are tigers? ‘ No Mem. ‘ ‘Elephants?’ ‘ Yes wild
elephants.’ ‘ Will we see them?’ ‘ If we do we will be running quickly back to
the bungalow, Mem, they are very dangerous.’ ‘OK.’
We see a banyan tree
but no Buddha. It is a pleasant walk, cooler here on top of the mountains.
An English couple arrive.
We talk. They paid to take a tour of the Delhi slums and were horrified to
witness the deprivation. Money earned from these tours goes towards helping
slum dwellers. I cannot rationalise the necessity to witness first hand
something we all know exists. But then maybe we don’t all know it. Perhaps seeing
it does make a difference. I think of London at the time of Hogarth. We had
deprivation but over time and with investment we moved away from such chronic
poverty. Perhaps India is in its Georgian era. Certainly Kerala doesn’t suffer the same kind of poverty
as Mumbai and Delhi. India is a big, big country, full of contradictions and
fascinations.
I retire quite early
and sleep deeply. Off to Cochin tomorrow for the final two days.