A complete change of scenery

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With an additional three weeks up our sleeves we decided that we would check out the Nilgiri hills district and in particular a place called Ooty. We have made an effort on this trip to eat a wide range of local cuisines where available and situated right next door to my old work in Sydney was an award winning restaurant named Nilgiri's, so I thought that it must be a great place to sample some fresh and inspiring food. Travelling anywhere in India takes time and after doing a little bit of reading we decided on our route to the hill station of Ooty knowing that it would take 2 days to get there if we didn't want to rush.

We checked out of our Ernakalum guest house at around 6.30am to make a 7:15 train back to Tamil Nadu and the city of Coimabotre. After a month in Tamil Nadu and only 3 weeks of Kerala we were heading back to our favourite state to date. As the train pulled up at the station we watched in complete amazement as streams of commuters disembarked to go to work. Never before had I seen so many people exit a train at once but considering how many can be fit into a carriage in true Tetris style I should not have been surprised. An easy 5 hours later we arrived in the bustling and dusty Coimbatore to the greetings of hundreds of ambitious rickshaw drivers vying for our business, we had no real desire to stay in this town so we stayed close to the station as the next mornings train was to leave at 5am.

Next to the station and it seems next to the station in a lot of the cities in India was a collection of trashy hotels with attached bars which catered for the highest quality of Indian alcoholic. We arrived at midday and already men were supporting each others weight in not the normal affectionate way that Indian males do but in a my mate is shitfaced and I need to get him home to his wife/mother before he passes out kind of way. The hotel we checked into was not any better or worse than anywhere else that we had stayed but with an early train in the morning we were pleased to see a sign on the wall stating that 'Alcohol is not permitted'. I am not sure who the sign (written in English) was actually intended for as over the course of the evening we had a series of knocks on the door from heavily drunken men who I am sure really just wanted to let us know that they were staying there and even walked past the open door of a pair of old monks sharing a bottle of Old Monk.

One thing that we both really looked forward to on our journey to Ooty was a ride up the mountain in a miniature train as it was said to be a really rewarding experience. The miniature train was to connect with the incoming Nilgiri Express which we boarded in Coimbatore a little after 5 but as everyone disembarked at the last and final stop we were promptly informed that our connecting service had been temporarily cancelled and we would need to catch another local bus up the 2500 metres to Ooty. We found the bus station without too much trouble by following the sea of locals trying to make their way home and after fighting our way onto a bus a short while later were on our way once again.

Over the course of the next three hours we felt an amazing shift from the humid and uncomfortable heat of Southern India to a much more pleasant temperature of around 20c degrees before dropping even further to something that you would experience during the middle of winter in Sydney. We shivered but happily enjoyed the scenery until ¾ of the way up the mountain a passenger standing directly in front of us decided that they would start a fight with the ticket salesman who stood directly behind us. When someone is speaking to friends quickly in the Tamil language, an unknowledgeable listener could easily interpret the conversation to be an argument, but when two people are yelling at each other in anger in Tamil an unknowledgeable listener could think that they have walked into world war 3. Strangely until now Danielle and I had not spoken of the fight that happened around us for over half an hour but at the time we were both thinking that we would at some point get in the way of a flying fist, foot or chicken.
Ooty, situated 2500 metres above sea level is a step outside of India. During their stay, the British Raj realised that the best way to avoid the heat would be to head up into the hills and in doing so established a community unlike anything that we had seen until this point. With the much cooler climate and terraced houses covering the mountainous terrain I could only compare it to images of Peru that my cousin had shown me from his trip to South America over a year ago. One of the things that the Raj left with Ooty when its reign ended was inflated hotel prices, no longer were we staying in 300 rupee a night accommodation but suddenly paying double that for the cheapest room in a hotel where the only added feature was hot water.

The Nilgiri hills host a large number of forrested area's and still have tribesmen living amongst nature and upon hearing of a museum dedicated to the traditional collection of honey we set forth in search of answers to questions I don't think that I'd thought of before. The bee museum gave us a new understanding of the methods in which honey is gathered from the cliff faces using modern abseiling techniques with cuttings of incredibly fragile vine and an overall new appreciation for our honey making friends. Still not content with how much we had learnt for the day we then ventured on to the Tea museum to grow our knowledge on the pride of the Nilgiri hills. India has had it big for its Chai for a long time now and is currently the largest producer of the product in the world, due to the products demand within India exports do not turn such a profit and puts it behind China and Sri Lanka in quantity shipped but watching how many cups get consumed on a 6 hour train ride there is no wonder why it isn't the market leader.

On one of our days exploring we felt for the first time in our lives what it would be like to be an A-list celebrity. Up until this point we were more than used to young Indian men taking sneaky photo's of Danielle's boobs from a distance but after finding a nice space in the sun to do a bit of reading at Ooty's Botanical gardens, queues of people began to line up to have a photograph with the two of us. For at least half an hour we patiently sat there posing for photos with young and old from many a variations of the camera. We did eventually have to pack up our things and get out of there before we had an outburst worthy of all of your trashy celebrity magazines, completely understanding the pressures of everyday life that the likes of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt experience.

We enjoyed Ooty most for its temperature, for two months we had been carrying jeans in our bags for no reason whatsoever and suddenly they we an essential piece of clothing. The days were cool but until the sun punched its way through the clouds at around midday each day it was bloody freezing. Each and every day since we arrived in India the air has seemed to get heavier and heavier as the wet season gets closer and to be somewhere where you could be comfortable in more clothing than a singlet was incredibly appealing.

In terms of food, besides a lovely jar of honey and a bag of Tea from the tea museum we were sadly dissapointed by the Nilgiri's. I had looked forward to some magical cuisine that would blow both my mind and my taste buds away but was left to eat my first kebab in months after eating a few rather ordinary meals. So after a few days exploring the township and upwards to the highest peak in southern India, Mt Dobabetta we decidided to head down the other side of the mountain to Mysore.

Past bus journeys had prepared us well and truly for the next leg of our trip and we were more than pleased when instead of a tatty local bus a grand and luxurious coach on its way to Bangalore pulled in at the bus station. We found a seat at the back of the bus much to Danielles displeasure and as we took off down the mountain it was clear that she was not alone when it comes to motion sickness. Within 3 hairpin bends two men had stuck their entire heads out the window and painted the side of the bus in a whole new rainbow colour while themselves sporting a lovely shade of green on their faces. The rest of the ride was the smoothest we had experienced in India apart from the one point where we passed a bus with the whole drivers side crushed in leaving us searching for seat belts that of course didn't exist and we were soon pulling into Mysore.

After leaving the relaxed and slow paced mountains we were immediately into the chaos of city life as we jumped off the bus. Suddenly the rickshaw drivers were pushy rather than helpful and while frustrating at times we were glad to be back in what to us felt like the real India. Excited to be in not only a new city but state also we immediately set out to go exploring. Sunday it appears is not a day of rest in Mysore with thousands of people buzzing around the streets and any spare gutter space being utilised as a makeshift market stores offering everything from cucumbers to door handles. We spent the rest of the afternoon soaking in the sights and sounds of the streets from a restaurant overlooking Mahatma Ghandi Square and as the day turned to night we headed off to one of the main attractions of Mysore.

Sunday evening offers a great opportunity to see the citys centrepiece in the Maharaja Palace in full neon Christmas tree glory. Walking through the gates with hundreds of other eager and excited people you could be mistaken to think that you were not actually at the Royal Easter Show with people offering fairy floss while children ran around screaming in excitement. Accompanying the illuminated walls of the palace was a marching band that stood in a stationary position over a hundred metres away from its adoring fans and blasted its way through a number of songs that were all reminiscent of 'When the saints go marching in'. The tension and anticipation continued amongst the thousands of people within the palace grounds as the clock neared towards closing time and as the clock hit 8pm we finally got what we had been waiting for. As not to break our holidays theme of 'expect the unexpected' at 8pm on the dot every one of the thousands of lights illuminating the palace turned off and police officers with rifles began yelling at the crowd to leave the grounds immediately. I don't know why I expected anything more than this to happen but the atmosphere of the grounds was not unlike that a large festival and watching the faces of the people around me I don't think I was the only one.

Sometimes in life you will hear something after the fact and wish that you didn't hear it at all and a couple of weeks after leaving Mysore I had one of those moments. It was approaching Tibetan new year and as we walked through the streets we were noticing more and more monks of all ages going about their business happily. This didn't strike me as being overly strange but on one of the days we passed by a large number of Tibetans on an oval being addressed by a speaker. Usually we are of an inquisitive nature but on this day for some unknown reason we didn't stop to pay attention to what was going on much to our current regret. Addressing the crowd was one of the Buddhist religions most influential figures the Dalai Lama. With the crowd made up of at least 95% Tibetan people and no translator for the other 5% his speech may not quite have changed my religious position however I am now quite disappointed that we chose to keep on walking rather than simply stop and ask someone what the hell was going on.

On our final evening in Mysore we ventured in a different direction to where we were familiar and walked straight into the middle of a festival celebrating the birth of the Mohammed. Every Muslim within 50 kilometers had ventured into town to take part in the parade and it felt quite fitting to have unexpectedly found ourselves a part of this celebration considering that we had already had a taste of a number of India's different religious perspectives in the months past. The number of people taking part in celebrating the prophets birth was completely overwhelming and when we ran into a young boy named Mufasa who we had met earlier in the day gave a quick run down on the happenings of the festival we felt a bit more comfortable than we did earlier. As part of his well rehearsed speech he convinced us to visit a perfume and incense making store not far from the action and we were soon following him down back alleys and dim lit streets. As he turned down a completely blackened alley we began to feel apprehensive as thoughts of a mugging popped into both of our minds. Complete embarrassment followed as when we paused at the last lamp post before the endless blackness the young boy not more than 12 years old turned around and said in the most innocent of voices “Don't be scared, I am not going to kill you” before walking into the doorway of the legitimate oils and perfume store he had said he was taking us to.

The rest of the evening was spent watching a parade of enthusiastic children and young men demonstrate their knife, staff and swordsmanship while making their way through the Muslim quarter as part of a parade. Again like in the Botanical gardens of Ooty we were transformed into celebrities or in this case more of a novelty as we made our way through the sea of devotees. I don't think I have ever shaken as many hands as I did on this evening as every man, women and child that we passed went out of their way to say hello or introduce themselves. Watching the smiling and happy faces both in the parade and the crowd gave the both of us a new and enjoyable insight into a religion that I do not know all that much about and we were ever pleased by yet another suprise that India has thrown our way.

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