Jan 3rd
We packed our bags and embarked on a scheduled 3-hour journey, which immediately got an hour added trying to get through the traffic jams in Cochin. Still wondered why it was going to take 3 hours to do 100km, but as the forest and hills approached, the road started to wind and the pace slowed as the spice plantations emerged.
We stopped after 2 hours for tea and a quick tour of the different plants in a small nursery – pepper, cardamom, vanilla, coffee and the amazing jackfruit.
But the pace slowed as the hills were only foot-hills – now it was in minutes per km. As we got higher the tea plantations started the road became more winding, narrower, potholed, and vertiginous; stomachs became queasy. Eventually at around 5,000 feet we arrived at the hotel too late for lunch, but a complimentary fruit bowl and a glass of beer sufficed (we had bought the beer en-route at a state liquor shop of forbidding aspect – metal barrier ensured a single file to the first grille where the order was placed and paid for, collected at a second grille before exiting).
We then toured the tea plantation on foot where the guide explained that the bushes, which by plucking and pruning would normally grow to 80 foot trees, were at waist height, closely packed, but with room to reach over each bush to pick the leaves (every 12 days).
The bushes are pruned every 3 years and live for 100 years. The complicated ownership of the plantation, and its history were explained by the guide who said that most of the product went to Tetley’s –thus soothing my annoyance at come to a tea plantation hotel and finding Tetley tea bags in our room. We also had a long discussion about the telegraph poles, made of old (1901) pieces of narrow gauge railway track (labeled BNR, which we later decoded as Bengal Nagpur Railway). Several red-bearded Bulbuls were spotted before the evening drew in and we returned to our room snapping the setting sun (see photos).
As we prepared for dinner, the phone rang and an invitation to a local dance demonstration issued – this turned out to be 3 young lads doing fire dancing to Bollywood hits – very impressive in close-up it was and left the mystery intensified as we felt the heat of fire-breathing a couple of yards away, but almost unable to feel the heat of a handful of flames as they were offered to us.
I looked forward to a quiet night’s sleep in the forest silence but as soon as I turned off my light something crawled down my arm – only after two attempts did I espy a hopping insect and give it a terminal sleep.
