A nice cup of tea....
We have had the best nights sleep ever. Desperately quiet and very comfortable. Hot water. What a luxury. The thing you miss the most when travelling are usually the most basic. Hot water for showering being number one on the list. Here we have a three minute supply with is ridiculously exuberant. Its only three minutes as you have a small water heater that takes around ten minutes to supply three minutes hot water. The lap of luxury. All of the previous lodgings have had solar power water heating and as its been mostly cloudy the water has been Luke warm at best.
The weather here should be glorious now but a cyclone hit Tamil Nadu last week and we are suffering the after effects. The pattern thus far has been beautiful sunny skies in the morning. Pouring down from twelve till three. The a pleasant afternoon. Can't complain really. At least its cool here in the mountains.
In retrospect this hotel has been an amazing choice. Although a bit isolated and thus more expensive to get anywhere, the views are spectacular.
I'm sat on the balcony watching eagles sore over the jungle canopy and the sun is trying to break through the clouds.
Crispy loves it, she says she could live here.
Before we set off on our adventuring this morning, Crispy did a little washing.
We hung our washing on a fence to chance our arm. Thankfully when we got back the manager had moved the now dry clothes before it rained. What a nice guy. Don't know what he thought of my star wars knickers.....
Today was all about tea. The countryside around here is amazing. Miles and miles of tea plantation surrounded by incredible mountains.
The tea plantations look like neatly trimmed privet hedges, row after neat row extending up the steep valleys as far as the eye can see. We have been lucky enough to see some of the worlds most amazing natural sights but this place must rank as the most beautiful.
We came across some ladies picking tea not far from our hill station and they let us join in. I offered them Crispy for the day but they said they had enough staff and there was no temp. Work available. She was very disappointed but she will get over it.
The ladies work as part of a gang. The number in the gang depends on how big their plot is and how steep the angle of the valley. Some of these slopes are near vertical, and as such take longer to pick. The rule of thumb is that it will take the gang fifteen days to complete. After fifteen days you return to the beginning of the plot and start again. The reason for this is that it takes fifteen days for the new shoots to grow to a point that they are ready for picking again. It the plants were not picked they would grow into full blown trees. This single plantation is nine hundred square miles. That's a lot of tea trees.
The ladies are paid 250 rupees a day and work eight hours a day for five days a week. They get free tea, wow, but no lunch. The average tea picker has to finish by the age of forty five as they have repetitive strain injuries to their elbows. There is no social security and they do not get a pension. They do however get free health care and their children get free education.
I hope you all appreciate just how educational this blob is.
I can wax lyrical on how amazingly beautiful it is here but that's just going to get boring.
We went to the Munnar tea museum. A small old disused tea factory that demonstrates the tea production methods. The highlight of the visit was an old guy that had worked in the industry for forty years. He loved tea. His only reason for existing was tea. He started with a small microphone attached to an ear piece and when the battery died seamlessly switched to an old megaphone. He talked about tea and the health advantages it possesses. How tea makes you strong and reduces gas upwards and downwards. If you are getting downwards gas then you are not drinking enough tea. He was perfectly clear that Chinese people never get downwards gas because they drink lots of tea.
I must admit in all my years i have never heard a chinaman fart.
His greatest asset though was the way he commanded his audience. If someone talked then they were rapidly admonished.
"Do you know about tea?. No you know nothing. If you know nothing why do come a long way to be told about tea and then not listen. If you do not listen then you will not know about tea and you will die with downwards gas". He was brilliant. I would have paid to listen to him. There was also a very interesting short video presentation on there early pioneers and history of the plantations. In one scene it described a young English bride who came to Munnar to be with her husband. On the day she arrived she fell in love with the place so much that she told her husband "when I die I want to be buried here". Two days later she died of Cholera. Be careful what you wish for. For some reason this story tickled me and I got the giggles. Crispy had to tell me off as the Indians in the audience were not impressed.
Then onto the huge hydroelectric dam built by the British plantation owners in 1904. It still works as well today. In 1904 we built power stations in the most inaccessible places on the planet. Now were getting the Chinese, who don't fart by the way, to build our own power stations in the UK. Oh how the wheel turns.
Back at the hill station and chilling with a kingfisher. We made another stop at the naughty boy shop in Munnar and picked up a couple of kingfishers. Hot shower, yippee, and then dinner. Indian buffet tonight. I must admit were hitting the Marsala wall now and craving egg and chips, a ploughmans. Indeed anything that doesn't contain curry. Oh and a pint of real ale would definitely hit the spot.
Moving off again in the morning back to the coast and our next port of call. Alleppey. We have really enjoyed our short trip to the mountains.
Bare and Crispy signing off, a hill station, nowhere near Munnar, Kerala, India
We have had the best nights sleep ever. Desperately quiet and very comfortable. Hot water. What a luxury. The thing you miss the most when travelling are usually the most basic. Hot water for showering being number one on the list. Here we have a three minute supply with is ridiculously exuberant. Its only three minutes as you have a small water heater that takes around ten minutes to supply three minutes hot water. The lap of luxury. All of the previous lodgings have had solar power water heating and as its been mostly cloudy the water has been Luke warm at best.
The weather here should be glorious now but a cyclone hit Tamil Nadu last week and we are suffering the after effects. The pattern thus far has been beautiful sunny skies in the morning. Pouring down from twelve till three. The a pleasant afternoon. Can't complain really. At least its cool here in the mountains.
In retrospect this hotel has been an amazing choice. Although a bit isolated and thus more expensive to get anywhere, the views are spectacular.
I'm sat on the balcony watching eagles sore over the jungle canopy and the sun is trying to break through the clouds.
Crispy loves it, she says she could live here.
Before we set off on our adventuring this morning, Crispy did a little washing.
We hung our washing on a fence to chance our arm. Thankfully when we got back the manager had moved the now dry clothes before it rained. What a nice guy. Don't know what he thought of my star wars knickers.....
Today was all about tea. The countryside around here is amazing. Miles and miles of tea plantation surrounded by incredible mountains.
The tea plantations look like neatly trimmed privet hedges, row after neat row extending up the steep valleys as far as the eye can see. We have been lucky enough to see some of the worlds most amazing natural sights but this place must rank as the most beautiful.
We came across some ladies picking tea not far from our hill station and they let us join in. I offered them Crispy for the day but they said they had enough staff and there was no temp. Work available. She was very disappointed but she will get over it.
The ladies work as part of a gang. The number in the gang depends on how big their plot is and how steep the angle of the valley. Some of these slopes are near vertical, and as such take longer to pick. The rule of thumb is that it will take the gang fifteen days to complete. After fifteen days you return to the beginning of the plot and start again. The reason for this is that it takes fifteen days for the new shoots to grow to a point that they are ready for picking again. It the plants were not picked they would grow into full blown trees. This single plantation is nine hundred square miles. That's a lot of tea trees.
The ladies are paid 250 rupees a day and work eight hours a day for five days a week. They get free tea, wow, but no lunch. The average tea picker has to finish by the age of forty five as they have repetitive strain injuries to their elbows. There is no social security and they do not get a pension. They do however get free health care and their children get free education.
I hope you all appreciate just how educational this blob is.
I can wax lyrical on how amazingly beautiful it is here but that's just going to get boring.
We went to the Munnar tea museum. A small old disused tea factory that demonstrates the tea production methods. The highlight of the visit was an old guy that had worked in the industry for forty years. He loved tea. His only reason for existing was tea. He started with a small microphone attached to an ear piece and when the battery died seamlessly switched to an old megaphone. He talked about tea and the health advantages it possesses. How tea makes you strong and reduces gas upwards and downwards. If you are getting downwards gas then you are not drinking enough tea. He was perfectly clear that Chinese people never get downwards gas because they drink lots of tea.
I must admit in all my years i have never heard a chinaman fart.
His greatest asset though was the way he commanded his audience. If someone talked then they were rapidly admonished.
"Do you know about tea?. No you know nothing. If you know nothing why do come a long way to be told about tea and then not listen. If you do not listen then you will not know about tea and you will die with downwards gas". He was brilliant. I would have paid to listen to him. There was also a very interesting short video presentation on there early pioneers and history of the plantations. In one scene it described a young English bride who came to Munnar to be with her husband. On the day she arrived she fell in love with the place so much that she told her husband "when I die I want to be buried here". Two days later she died of Cholera. Be careful what you wish for. For some reason this story tickled me and I got the giggles. Crispy had to tell me off as the Indians in the audience were not impressed.
Then onto the huge hydroelectric dam built by the British plantation owners in 1904. It still works as well today. In 1904 we built power stations in the most inaccessible places on the planet. Now were getting the Chinese, who don't fart by the way, to build our own power stations in the UK. Oh how the wheel turns.
Back at the hill station and chilling with a kingfisher. We made another stop at the naughty boy shop in Munnar and picked up a couple of kingfishers. Hot shower, yippee, and then dinner. Indian buffet tonight. I must admit were hitting the Marsala wall now and craving egg and chips, a ploughmans. Indeed anything that doesn't contain curry. Oh and a pint of real ale would definitely hit the spot.
Moving off again in the morning back to the coast and our next port of call. Alleppey. We have really enjoyed our short trip to the mountains.
Bare and Crispy signing off, a hill station, nowhere near Munnar, Kerala, India
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