Rocky road to Calicut and rich (tea) pickings in Ooty...

Kovalam is the place for Gav, due to my injury I have to make do with watching him tackle the waves. The place is like no other, you literally can sit for hours on end mesmerised by the waves and the people having fun with them. Seeking safety in numbers, the Indian families are the best they all holds hands and huddle up together as they try and find the courage to edge a little bit further in. I make quite a few friends, Radha and her friend who bring me fruit each day, Sanjeev Kumar that is S A N J E E V K U M A R as he spells it everytime someone asks him his name, there is also Ramesh with the sarongs and lunghis. Their stories really touch my heart, and it is sad to say goodbye.

The one thing I won't miss about Kovalam is the cockroaches!! I see them every night in the loo and as Gav is fast asleep he thinks they are the phantom cockroaches. Nonetheless I hate cockroaches so have trouble totally relaxing at night out of fear of having one on me at night.

Its right about now that we start feeling homesick and are also a little bit fed up with the heat and moving around and so decide to go to the cooler climes of Ooty. Ooty is a hill station founded by the British in the Western Ghats. Since we are not that organised, it is impossible to get a train ticket and we instead decide to do the nine hour journey by bus. Trivandarum is at a stand still on the day we leave due to the labour day marches. We make it to the bus station in time by but our bus is delayed by a couple of hours and no one seems to know where it is or why. We've noticed that the men have a particularly annoying way of not communicating...firstly there is no acknowledgement - of you being there let alone saying anything and secondly giving a one word answer with a particular look that can only be interpreted as "the matter has been dealt with". If one persists with further questions or queries they turn into robots looking right through you and repeating the one word answer. Thus, by the time our bus finally arrives the calmness of Kovalam has well and truly left our spirits.

The bus rides in India are adventures in themselves and this one is no exception. We settle in with our iPOD and both manage to catch some sleep only to be awoken by the conductor growling at us to get up, get off and change buses. We are both shocked by the rude awakening but grab our luggage and get onto the next bus. Maybe it is the rocking motion of the bus, maybe the sleepless nights have caught up with me, I'm not sure what it is but I manage to go back to sleep which is more than can be said for Gav who is more then a little pissed off with the bus, the journey and the moody conductor. We arrive at our destination, Calicut at 4.30am and are promptly taken to the only decent and way over-priced hotel in town. This just adds to the bad feeling and we promise to book bus bus tickets the next day to get out of town.

We wake up late morning and head for some breakkie at a coffee shop where we get chatting to Patrick. Patrick is a British South Indian who has jacked in his job as a teacher to come to play professional football in India for a year. We talk about the frustrations of communication in India (his coach is an old school Indian who hasn't quite grasped the idea of team building), love of Indian food and of course our beloved London. We leave Patrick to go to book our bus tickets and after an hour of walking in the burning sun we are no closer to finding anyone who can help us with our quest. People either laugh and walk away, point to a direction over yonder or simply just ignore us. As you can imagine this does not really help our already low opinion of Calicut. Feeling defeated we decide to get a car instead and spend the rest of the day chilling. In the evening we decide to get mall food, we know its super crappy but we can't be bothered with trying to find anything else. The mall in Calicut is the first of its kind and Gav and I spend some time after dinner being entertained by people trying to use escalators, mainly unsuccessfully. Childish we know but it gives our spirits a much needed boost.

The next day is a 6am start for the 5 hour journey to Ooty. The journey is pretty uneventful except for the driver trying to rip us off for 300 Rs. We know we are close when we can wind down the windows without it feeling like we've opened the oven door. We breathe in the cool mountain air, sit back and enjoy the windy road up to Ooty.

Now, we've heard that many people come to Ooty to escape the scorching heat, but the sight that beholds us as we get to the town centre is like no other. It feels like the centre is a magnet that pulls traffic from every direction. The noise is not the calm we had anticipated but instead a din of blaring horns and people shouting. Then there are the people...so many people that it feels like everyone is in town and there is no room to move. We try to find our hotel but the map of Ooty is impossible to work out and we draw blanks from the police, traffic wardens and rickshaw drivers. We eventually find the Lonely Planet's recommendation for best budget stays at the YWCA, the building is an old brewery "possessing an old Tuscan vibe". Gav checks out the room and the look upon him returning it says it all - filthy and smelling of "tuscan" wee which is where we draw the line at where it is acceptable to stay. Since everyone is in town everywhere is booked up so it takes some time to find a place. We manage to nab a cancellation at Willow Hill which is an alpine-chalet type affair set high above town. The views from our room and the garden are breath taking but more importantly the silence is golden, no horns, no people, no traffic.

Our days in Ooty are spent feeling homesick (probably exacerbated by the UK-like climate), chilling, walking (to train for Machu Pichu) and eating. Ooty is inexplicably famous for making their own chocolate, consequently the town is aflood with chocolate shops...

This is how cold it gets in Ooty...

We book ourselves on a day trek (12km) with a tribal guy - Rajeev. After a few false starts our trek gets underway with two other couples - Andrew and Cara (from London) and Jack and Mariam (from Goa). Rajeev is a diamond. He's a member of the Toda tribe, a people that have farmed and lived in these hills for 5000 years. He takes us through the Nilgiri hills explaining about the flora and fauna. The place is so lush and green that we could very easily be walking in the South Downs or the Lake District. In fact it does feel like walking on a piece of England when Rajeev tells us about about how many trees, plants, vegetables, types of grass were brought over by the British. Our guide is very knowledgeable about the hills and is also a very proud Indian, we get another side of the British colonization story when he tells us that Ooty would not be the place it is or that the tribal people would not have survived had it not been for what the British did for Ooty.

We get to meet some of Rajeev's family when we stop for lunch (a healthy affair of tea, biscuits and crisps). He explains how the girls have been stopped from furthering their education after a certain point due to them meeting boys at college and consequently wanting to marry outside the tribe. The tribe disowns anyone who marrys outside and as such there is a high level of inter-breeding which of course means a high number of mental and physical defects in newborns. We are told that they are aware of this problem, however, due to the tribes wanting to keep a strong blood line these things are ignored. Its quite sad when later that evening, Rajeev tells us that he doesn't think his tribe will last for more than 25 years.

Rajeev finds a deer skull which he says was recently killed by a tiger...

After lunch we carry on and proceed to the tea plantations on the Nilgiri hills. We are meet by a group of young boys who insist on us taking their photos. It really is the best thing to hear them getting so excited and shrieking with joy when we take a picture and then show it to them. I think this goes on for almost an hour and their excitement does not wane a tiny bit, picture after picture they look, shriek and then ask for another picture, of course we are more than happy to oblige.

How much does she look like Vija?

Apart from this, the best part of my day is when Rajeev leads us to a tea plantation and explains all things (OK maybe not all) about tea. We learn about the different types - white, green and black and then have a go at picking some ourselves. The people who work on the plantation work nine hour days and earn 200 Rs per day picking tea, this is regarded as a good wage.

Our day ends with a walk and bus ride back into town followed by a coffee with our new friends.

Andy and Cara are up for a beer before dinner at the hotel but as we have a few chores to run they wait for us at a bar in town which Rajeev takes us to. Cara describes the bar as a speakeasy and it being the first "proper" bar that we have been to in India I am not really shocked or surprised at the watering hole for the local men folk. Gav and I complete our chores and return to our drinking buddies. Cara and I are the only girls in the bar so we get a lot of stares. I kind of think that it is probably a little bit more acceptable for Cara to be there as a foreigner whereas I am probably considered to be lower than the brown stuff on their shoes due to my Indian descent. I feel totally uncomfortable and can feel eyes boring into my head as I sip on the beer and make merry with my friends. I mention how I am feeling to Rajeev and he tells me that what I think is very true but not to worry as he's got our back. I find it incredibly sad but hey I am in their territory and since you never know how alcohol can flare tempers, I tell my friends that I would not be happy for us to stay if Rajeev left. As luck would have it Rajeev misses his last bus (not our fault, blame it on his quadruple vodkas...straight!) and stays until closing time! Andy, Cara, Gav and I take some beer back to our hotel and cotch up in the garden for a night cap. It is our best night in Ooty, under a blanket of starts shooting the breeze with some fellow Londoners.

The next day we are up early for our onward journey to Chennai. Our driver picks us up at 7.30am for a lovely drive down to Coimbatore airport. We make our plane and land in Chennai late afternoon. Chennai is probably our least favourite place, it is just a big, noisy, polluted city with really not much at all. Thus we are grateful that we decide to only stay for one night and make arrangements to travel to Mammalapuram the next day. Unfortunately Gavin is really sick the following day and our plans change to go to Pondicherry instead which has better medical care should we need it. Turns out Pondi is wicked beyond all expectations. We end up staying there for over a week. Gav will update with the Pondi blog anon...

Later aligators