Sunday night – Munnar – end of the earth

Folks sorry for the late post.. there’s no internet up here in the mountains.. I’m going to post this from an internet cafe when I find one..

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

It’s about midnight and we’re at the Tall Trees resort somewhere near Munnar Kerala near the peaks of the western Ghatts. We’re in a private cottage deep in a cloud forest. It’s a surreal and stunningly beautiful place. Unlike anywhere else I’ve ever seen. Everything is shrouded in mists and it’s amazingly lush. Our cottage is in the middle of a grove of cardamom plants. The Air smells like spices. We’ve had an amazing day.. We started in Cochin this morning at about 10 then made the 120 KM drive in about 5 hours.. The roads are narrow, , full of holes and spectacularly beautiful most of the time. They’re also packed with people cars, busses, trucks, motorcycles, rickshaws, cows, goats, dogs, oxen and even monkeys.. In the interest of time I’m going to try and tell the story of the day from the pictures.. rather than doing a bunch of text. I’ll need to go down the hill to find some internet connection sometime later tonight so I need to keep it relatively brief.. So here goes..

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

We began the day at the wonderful Old Harbor Inn in Cochin. It was a wonderful oasis in pretty but rough and tumble Fort Cochin. We grabbed a quick breakfast downstairs in the small dining area. The place was filled with fresh flowers .

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

These guys came buy on a motorcycle. They were dressed warmly because it was relatively cool this morning.. by that I mean it was barely 80 degrees J .

After breakfast we went upstairs, woke Gabe and packed up. It was hard leaving the room.. it was so nice

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

Our last act before leaving was to place a SamStone out near the pond in the hotel’s courtyard. We’d been thinking and talking a lot about Sam the last few days.. we feel him here.. and miss him here so deeply.

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

We found Manooj and said goodbye to the folks in the hotel and took off…

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

First stop was the Church of St/ Francis that dates back to 1505 !.. It was founded by early Portugese settlers. The explorere Vaso de Gama ded and was buried here for 14 years until his son came and fetched back his remains. IThere was a mass going on in Malyalam the local language (and also a palindrome !).. It was cool to here..

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

We had just left the church when Manooj’s phone rang.. it was for me !.. The guys in the hotel had found my Blackberry !.. I’m such a space cadet. Luckily we were just around the corner.. I ran back in and picked it up.. and gave them some maple syrup for saving me .

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

Next stop was the Old Synagogue in Jew Town again.. it was open today.. so I wanted to take a peek. I managed to take one picture inside.. It was very cool.. The building dated from the 16^th century. It had beautiful Dutch floor tiles and great colored glass everywhere. They had the ‘Shema’ cut in Hebrew in the wall tiles. It was cool seeing that

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

We then hiked out through Jewtown as folks tried to lure us into their stores. There is some funky stuff for sale there .

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

From there we headed out of town.. I took a picture of the old bridge as we crossed back from Fort Cochin island into Erakulum . I think it was built by my friend Vasant’s dad back in the 40’s . I’ll show him when I get back to the states.

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

We made a brif stop at the trvel agent inorder to pay the balance of our bill then headed out on the road to Munnar

Every second of the ride up to the mountains was amazing.. I can’t begin to describe the sights.. We passed through soem pretty rough cities, small towns, beautiful jungles and everything in between . Here’s some of the stuff we saw.. Here’s a famous Hindu temple

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

II loved looking at all the political signs.. These candidates are endorsed by Jesus evidently.

We saw lots of animals.. mostly cows, goats and dogs in the road.. but also some Water buffalo.. like this guy

..t1407/Oct014059.jpg”>

Manooj took us to an Elephan training facility on the way up.. The place trains elephants for work in the forest. They had quite a few of the big guys there..

..r319/johncohn/oct1407/Oct014061.jpg”>

The place was also crawling with huge millipedes !

These guys are BIG !

The place also had a little zoo attached.. Lots of animals in small cages.. Kinda sad.. but the animals were cute.

This little guy could climb in and out of his cage as he wished.. He kept begging for food.

Manooj told us that this guy grabbed one of his former clients cell phones the other day and smashed it on the ground and jumped on it !

We are trying to sample some of the things that are different here.. ‘Mint Mischief’ potato chips for example… how were they. ? . uh… don’t ask

We passed through so many agricultural areas and saw some exotic crops.> here are pineapples.

Here’s a rubber plantation

This is a rice field.

This is tapioca growing.

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

At one point we stopped for a great Indian lunch.. Diane had Alo Gobi, I had a chili cauliflower curry. Gabe had a chicken sandwich and Manooj had spicy fish curry. It was great. We all sat and watched the never ending India/Australia cricket match on TV as we ate. The whole country is at a standstill while this match is being played.. It’s on everyone’s TV. I wish I understood the rules.. It’s certainly hard to follow if you don’t know what’s going on .

The restaurant had a small patch of Vanilla growing. They actually cook with the pods. It’s delicious.

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

We took this for Chai-baby.. Who’s 4^th birthday was yesterday. Happy Birthday Dear Doggy ! It’s also our friend Will’s birthday. Happy birthday Will !

The scenery from that point started gtting more mountainous.. and the temperature started dropping as we went up.

At one point we were surprised and happy to see some monkeys on the side of the road. We gave them a bit of food.. They seemed pretty happy about that. They were cute and fun to watch

<br>

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

We stopped at several amazing waterfalls along the road. Natural beauty was everywhere.

Unfortunately .. trash was everywhere too. They haven’t quite figured out not littering and recycling.

We kept seeing these Tata Motors Ambassadors on the road.. they are the national car of India.. Evidently they last forever !

All the way up we sw Christian churches, Hindu temples and Islamic mosques.. the communities seemed to be very well mixed together.

–>if !supportEmptyParas–> –>endif–>

As we got near Munnar, we started to see tea plantations. The steep hills were covered with terraced rows of tea.. Tomorrow we’re going to visit one of the plantations.

We eventually turned off on a very narrow bridge over a gorge to get to the hotel

We stopped at a small tea stand and got some cardamom tea.. it was delicious. As we stopped we had a bunch of people come over and talk to us.. they all wanted to take our picture and get our pictures with them> Folks here are SOOOO friendly.. Several of them asked about my Sam button. They were sad to hear about his passing.. they wanted to hear more about him. It was really touching. As we left, Diane pointed out that the same level of friendliness from strangers in the US might have been cause for suspicion. Not here.. Everyone we’ve met here has been truly warm and interested in strangers. It made us think for a while about ow jaded we’d become.

..om/albums/r319/johncohn/oct1407/Oct014198.jpg”>

It was only a few Km from teh tea shop to our hotel.. right before we got here we noticed a eiki master’s sign on the road. You’d have to see the road to know just how strange that woas. The road is barely a driveway.. rutted and winding.. with absolutely nothing on it..

As we turned into the Tall Trees hotel, Manooj pointed out the Cardamom plantation it abutted.

Tall Trees is really an indescribably place. It’s in a dens forest which has been full of misty clouds since we got here. It’s full of moss and plants I’v enever seen.. there are very cool and different brd and insect sounds. We hiked to our cottage. Here’s the view from our balcony and a view of the cottage itself