Friday 25/11/05 Fort Cochin
Our last day in India is whittled away panic tanning and spending our last cash, followed by a lavish seafood meal at the Brunton Boatyard’s terrace Grill – a meal that costs as much as most of fortnight’s accommodation put together. But the taste is worth the cost (especially as Lise's paying): the spiced lobster ranks second on our list of culinary highlights, just below those huge blue skewered prawns on the houseboat.

And then it’s over; suddenly we’re on a plane headed for sub-zero London, with only a few mosquito scars and a light t-shirt tan to show show for our troubles. Oh, and a coupla hundred photos.

Thursday 24/11/05 – Munnar to Fort Cochin

The bus from Munnar, high in the mountains, back to Fort Cochin on the coast takes five hours. The first half is a summertime luge down the coiled roads, the bus tippng and rocking at every turn while jungle and waterfall streak by like smeared paint. The second half is a brain-shaking, full-throttle ride along Kerala’s pot-holed highways.

The unwritted rules of the Indian roads seem to be:

1) Overtake at any opportunity. Never settle for second place.
2) Blast your horn as much as possible.

Rule two is especially important – it’s a substitute for any highway code. It means drivers don’t check mirrors before turning, don’t drive in lanes, don’t indicate… don’t do anything except listen and honk. Horn please.

There’s also a caste system in operation on the roads, in which buses overule lorries, which overrule jeeps, which overrule taxis… and thus it goes with cars, rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians and finally, at the bottom, dogs. Dogs aren’t so much Untouchable as Squashable. Some drivers actually seem to aim for them. The image of the three-legged dog-and-bone at Varkala returns.

Oh, and I forgot the cows: they’re at the top, like Brahmins. Everyone stops for cows.

On the day we return to Fort Cochin, a bus in Tamil Nadu, on the other side of the Ghats, crashes in the rain killing 19 passengers. The Israelis we met in Munnar wanted to go to Tamil Nadu. It was only flooded roads that prevented them, forcing them back to Kochi.

Next: the final day

Wednesday 23/11/05 – Munnar
Munnar is a low-rise town of dirty shacks set amid luscious tea plantations. It has the feel of a mining town, and with good reason – it’s where the British brought workers in the late 19th century, paying them in special money that was only accepted in local shops in order to stop the pickers leaving on pay day.

But the Tata Tea Company owns the plantations now, and the cloud-capped hills are stunningly beautiful, the stench of slavery washed away by the heavy rain that falls vertical, unmoved by the slightest breeze.

What’s the aesthetic appeal of these tea fields, these remnants of colonial deforestation? It’s the beauty of topology stripped bare, the undulations of the hills beneath a blanket of flat-topped tea trees separated by chaotically ordered picker-paths – man and nature in beautiful harmony… or maybe… maybe man winning against nature, taming… maybe it’s the domestication of the landscape that appeals. It sounds wrong, but it looks right.

Either way, this middle earth will stay with me for years.

After visiting the tea factory in Munnar we take a Tuk Tuk to Top Station. The journey was breathtaking – reservoirs, tea, elephants, monkeys – but at the peak we found our views obstructed by clouds. India was once again unknowable, incrutable.

Perhaps this is because we’re visiting at London pace, spending two weeks on a whistlestop tour that the travellers we meet say should take months. Perhaps. But more likely India is unknowable in its totality – its essence is beyond comprehension. It is a country understandable only in glimpses and glances.


ISD. STD. ODI, KSRTC… India likes acronyms. Enigmas.

Next up: Rules of the road

Tuesday 22/11/05 - Kumily to Munnar

We needed to leave it all behind. A perfect time, then, for the bus drivers to strike.

Stranded in a remote hilltop tourist trap in the Western Ghats, miles of winding, collapsing roads between us and any civilisation beyond Kashmiri gift shops (repeated pleas of ‘sir, please sir, come look at my shop’ are the worst begging we’ve encountered all trip) and hotel buffets (the cause of our intestinal scourge). Time, then, for another taxi.

Next: Understanding Munnar

Monday 21/11/05– Kumily for Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary

In Periyar, the wildlife stayed wild, inscrutable.

Our plans to trek and raft were cut short by a bout of Kumily Belly – and so the day was spend in bed waching movies on the PSP and furtively glancing at the jungle vista. No tigers. No elephants. Just a few cheeky macaques.

Next: Flea to the tea plantations