Coonoor - tea country

Washing ladies
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We arrived bright and early to the train station in Cochin, raring to catch our first Indian train of this journey.  Not surprisingly, the train was running 3 hours late, so we settled ourselves on the platform for a spot of people watching.

Who would have thought that waiting for a train for 3 hours could be so entertaining.  Waves and waves of humanity poured on and off trains, pilgrims making their way to far off temples with their offerings strapped carefully to their heads, the poor (no shoes), the well off (flip flops), the beggars, the sellers touting their snacks and drinks, the ladies down on the tracks sweeping rubbish and burning big piles of the stuff, the not-so ladies coughing up and spitting big lumps of who knows what onto the tracks, all packed into one tiny space for our viewing pleasure.

The afternoon mist rolling in over Coonoor
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I also had the pleasure of visiting the worst 'toilet' of the trip so far.  A tiled room with a bath type holeplug in one corner and a tap and bucket.  From the state of the floor everyone just went straight onto the floor and if they could be bothered watered the floor down afterwards.  Very stinky, very slippery and so bad it was just plain funny.

The train arrived eventually and we scrambled on and met quite a few of the locals in our carriage who all dispensed advice (including 'don't use the toilets at train stations') and 5 hours later (for a 200km trip...the trains go pretty slow...) we arrived in a city called 'Coimbatore'.  From the guidebook review of the place, and the fumes that hit us as soon as we stepped off the train, this wasn't a place to spend a night unless you absolutely had to, so we jumped into a tuktuk, squeezed in between our packs and zoomed off to the local bus station.

Sunset - view from the deck over the hills & Coonoor
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Chaos!  We eventually found someone who looked like they might know what they were doing and asked them about buses to Coonoor.  All he said was 'Stand here' (even though we could see the queue just 20 metres away), but in the absence of knowing what we were doing we dutifully stood there.  10 mins later, our man and a mate called the bus over to us early and held the baying crowds back while telling us to get on 'Quick quick!  Hurry miss!  Please hurry!'.  Don't know what the locals thought of our preferential treatment, but after they had fought their way on, and the bus ticket man made us put our packs in the aisle, some of the locals spent the next 2 1/2 hours keeping our bags upright and moving them for people that wanted to get past.  The kindness and patience of strangers hasn't stopped amazing us on this trip.

Hanging out at the train station
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2 1/2 hours of hair-raisng corners and maniacal overtaking we arrived in Coonoor and took yet another tuktuk to our hotel.  We probably should have realised when we had to request a bucket of hot water to bathe when we arrived that this place may not be the best but we bravely soldiered on.  After the second night, Simon woke to me sitting on the edge of the bed (because I couldn't stand to be in it anymore) saying that we just had to leave that stinking, damp, cold hell hole (Hotel Vivek in Coonoor - never stay there).

Valleys around Coonoor
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In fact, the only good thing about Hotel Vivek was the slightly mad Indian guy who hung around reception (I don't know if he worked there or not), who told us that all of the Indian tourists who came to Coonoor only came to see the Bollywood film sets dotted around the nearby countryside, didn't have very high IQs and were 'just bloody Indians!'.  Mad as cheese.

Luckily for us, we were in Coonoor to hook up with friends from London - Neha and Kiran.  Kiran's Mum had a house on a tea estate just out of Coonoor and we spent a very happy few days staying there, and eating curry curry and more curry.  The cooks at the house were incredible, and every meal we were presented with a huge array of South Indian dishes (so many different types of breads, rice flour 'noodles', sambars, curries).  The Indian restaurants at home are so so limited compared to the variety that you get in the country itself.

Drinks on the deck (Tracey & Kiran's Mum)
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Neha and Kiran also taught us how to eat with our hands, so that by the end of the 4 days we could eat without completely embarrasing ourselves and without spraying the table and neighbours with our food.  A few important rules:

-  Right hand only...easy you might say, until you have to rip bread apart with one hand

-  Try not to get food on the palm of your hand (the equivalent of shovelling food into your mouth with your fork)

-  Try not to lick your fingers clean at the end of the meal (the equivalent of licking your knife and plate clean)

More drinks on the deck (Santos, Kiran and Neha)
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While in Coonoor we hired cars for a day and headed up to Ooty, which is the more famous village in the area.  The drive passed through valleys and over hills covered in tea, a beautiful sight.  We also passed by small farming towns where the ladies were busy pounding their clothes to pieces in the rivers, families were lathering up and bathing, and men were working out in the fields.  Both Ooty and Coonoor still have a very colonial feel about them, including exclusive members clubs, small bungalows and 'english' gardens.  The churchyard in Coonoor had a number of gravestones with very English names on them dating all the way back to the 1800's.

Goats...makes a change from bored teenagers hanging out on street corners
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Eventually, we had to leave the sheltered life of being told what to eat, what we were eating, where to sleep and what to do and headed back down to Cochin with Neha, Kiran and family for New Years.