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Published: January 22nd 2010
Just had the most fantastic 4 days in a place called Kodaikanal. Another hillstation in the Western Ghats. This is the mountain range that runs parallel with the coast for about 100kms and at this time of year it is pretty chilly! I had been told about Kodai by a guy we met in Hampi but also done my own research into an earthship being built in the same town so it seemed like there were more than enough reasons to spend 12 hours getting there on 3 buses!
Yes - when you look at it on the map it only looks about 50kms from Munnar - but how wrong can one woman be! Because of the mountainous landscape and the positioning of the villages and bus routes - it is all in all 12hours - but for a meer 89 rupees! (that is 1.20 in real money) National Express eat your heart out!
The ride out of Munnar is earth to sky - green and blue - tea fields as far as the eye can see. Twisting and turning roads up and down and the obligatory hooting at every bend! The most amazing scenery comes as you make your way down the 40 or so hairpin bends onto the plains of Tamil Nadu to a town called Theni. At Theni you change buses for a drive for 2 hours in the dust along the plains in the unbearable heat and then at a town called Vasagundi you take another bus up about 40 hairpin bends! A bridge over the top would have done nicely thanks! 😊
Again an arrival in the dark - where a nice man in a jeep picked us up and took us back down the 3 hairpin bends and off onto a dirt track road through a magical forest - where another nice man flagged us down with 2 torches - took our bags out of the jeep - balanced them on his head and ran down the mountainside - leaving us to pay the jeep driver and follow him in earnest with the tourches to find out where we were going!
On final arrival at the little farm, he showed us to our primitive stone cottages right on the side of the mountain over looking the plains of Tamil Nadu. Lights twinkling in the distance - we breathed a sigh of relief. Had dinner and hit the rather soft mattress!
To wake up and be above the clouds with the warm sun beating down on your face and the cool crisp air on your face is a welcome change to the noisy polluted streets of India. Neville the man who runs the farm is an old wizened man with long white hair and a long white beard. The kind of man you can imagine playing the sitar with the Beatles in the 60's. In fact there is no doubt in my mind that he was probably there. He spent years traveling around the world like a hippy, then returned to live in an ashram for 17 years and now he said he has found the balance and is wonderfully happy on his solar powered farm in the mountains! I feel very lucky to have met him and his wonderful land! It was breathtaking and a wonderful break. The days were warm and the nights absolutely freezing cold. I guess the only downside was going to squat in the outside toilet in the middle of the night in the pitch blackness!
We met some lovely folks and spent evenings eating salads - prepared in our kitchen - a nice change from masala this and curry that! All in all just a little bit of magic!
4 days later - Gail and I left each other in Kodai - she wanted to head to the coast and down south to get her flight and I am heading north to Mumbai! I continued to Ooty with an Israeli couple and their 2 year old. We went in search of this little train ride up the mountainside which is meant to be the most romantic way up to Ooty.... but after a 5 hour drive we learned that there had been a landslide a month ago and there was no rail track in places... so we thought best give that a miss! A little dissappointing as the mountainside was so tremendously beautiful with sheer cliffs and jungle through which this magical little toy train makes its way through. We took a taxi further to the top - and I kept making Chooo choooo noises with the 2 year old to pretend like we were on the train!
We arrived in the dark in the chaos of Ooty. Who would have thought it would be so busy at the top of the mountain - oh yes this is India - there is chaos everywhere! After 8 hours travelling I didn't feel much like exploring - so a quick warming soup and bed!
COLD - now I know you guys in England might be able to understand this - but my god!!! This is India - it shouldn't be like this - I could see my breath in bed! With only 1 warm jumper - which incidentally I have had on for 6 days on the trot (looking more brown now than white!) - COLD was beyond a joke! YWCA with the hardest beds in Ooty - but a remarkable building dating back to the 1800 and a classical colonial style - reminiscent of days gone by!
Up early in the morning and I packed up to move to another hotel with a slightly more bouncy bed (only just) and slightly warmer room. After a warm shower - to defrost myself - I went out to explore the hillstation! A visit to the botanical gardens - designed by a man from Kew Gardens would you believe - a perfect way to while away an afternoon. Not only were the hydrangeas and rodedendrons beautiful but the swarms of men on holiday from Bangalore found me a bit of an attraction! So I posed for I kid you not no less than 12 sets of photos with various groups of childlike men. I wonder what they would tell their friends at home - my girlfriend, my wife, this cool chick we found in the park.... who knows!
The following day I took a trek with a group of Frenchies and a nice tribal man from the area. He was very knowledgeable about the area, plants and the native tribe (his tribe) The place we were going to was on the way to my next destination, so he convinced me it would be a good idea to bring my bag with me - which is now verging on about 19kgs by the knots in my shoulders. We take the bus from Ooty 30 minutes up the mountainside and stop at a chai stall - he instructs me to leave all my worldly possessions in the back of the tea shop! I looked at him with a nervous twitch in my eye. Its like leaving your bag behind the Costa Coffee counter on the M25 really..... But now we were here - it felt like the right thing to do. He had honest eyes and my gut said ok!
So off we went into the mountains with a tribal man and a french lesbian couple. I couldn't help but giggle to myself! We spent the afternoon with a beautiful family in a stone cottage eating rice and learning about the Chloras of the Nilgiris! The most interesting of which is that their parents decide on a partner for them at the age of 2. When they have hit puberty they go to live with the partner and then they can decide weather to marry them or not.... as long as they marry within the tribe and don't split the gene pool everyone is happy! It was honestly the most magical day I have had. On return to the tea shop my bag was in exactly the same place I had left it - thankfully! The nice lady with the nice smile had come up trumps! As I boarded the bus to Mudumalai National Park my heart and mind was filled with the most humble and happy feeling!
God I love it here!
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