Kumily - Part 1

After our pleasant stay in Fort Cochin, Jess and I began making our way up to the mountains.  Early on I decided if we only had 2 weeks together that we should try to see a variety of places but not get too excited and spend most of our time on the road.  And I have to say that was a smart move *pats himself on the back*

So our first mission was to get out of Fort Cochin which is easier said than done.  The main city is Ernakulam which is across the river from Fort Cochin.  I guess the presence of a big city nearby spares Cochin of a lot of the hassles of other Indian cities.  Sadly it also means that you need to go to Ernakulam for any buses and trains that are leaving.  And since we were headed into the mountains that meant taking a bus from Ernakulam to Kumily, a trip lonely planet promised would only take us 5 hours.  Lying bastards.

These are Indian buses.  They're a bit old but not so bad.  It's just the amount of people that get stuffed into the buses that make them absolute horrors to ride in for long periods of time.  And the fact that I have the world's smallest bladder and that the buses make few if any stops doesn't help matters.

Notice the line of people standing up back there?  Yeah, some people never got a seat for hours of the ride.  It's first come first serve and they'll take as many people as can squeeze into the thing.  The poor nun behind me in the photo was at first sitting next to me.  She started to speak to me in English but I couldn't understand a word she was saying except "Do you speak English?  English no?".  I think she ended up thinking I was some retarded German and changed seats when she could.

The blessing and curse of riding the bus is that you get a much better feel for Indian streets that the train just can't allow.  The blessing part is when you get stuck in a traffic jam as some festival thing rolls down the road with real elephants and lots of pageantry.  The curse part is having to watch the traffic and know that your driver doesn't have any relief from the onslaught of cars and trucks passing each other.

The five hour ride turned out to actually be about 8 hours and we didn't get into Kumily until after dark.  Some passengers actually got into a heated argument with the driver over his speeding in the mountains.  Or at least I assume that's what they were talking about, everyone was shouting in Malayalam while I just tried to keep from laughing at the ridiculousness of it.  Jess was a trooper here, she's a much better traveler than I thought and held up through the bus ride just fine.  Her preferences for accommodation, however, are a little more exacting than mine.

So when we arrived it was after dark.  The rickshaw driver we got drove by my first and second choice of home stays but both had closed up reception for the night.  He offered to drive us to another place and, thinking nothing of it, I agreed just to see a place that was still open.  It was a brand new homestay with large, clean rooms and a balcony overlooking an empty field that we were promised offered lots of wildlife spotting opportunities.  The quickly agreed to the rate since it was comparable to other places in the guidebook and decided I just wanted to get settled in as soon as possible.  Little did I know that this would lead to Jess and I's one big fight of the trip.  Apparently she had heard never to trust a rickshaw driver and I can't disagree completely, you need to be on your guard.  So she thought I was the biggest idiot in the world for accepting his advice and that I needed some kind of mental help.  I countered that I only agreed to see the place and after seeing it was fine accepted, and that these guidebooks are far from the best resource.  Since we're both stubborn people this led to quite a bit of tension that evening.

Thankfully the tension was removed as we woke up the next morning and Jess started to agree that the place wasn't so bad after all.  Spotting some wildlife in the field out back helped matters too.  Throughout the course of our stay we saw monkeys, wild boars, cows and tons of birds out in the field.  The boars were really cute, one mother and one piglet.

Walking around Kumily as also a lot of fun.  Being a smaller town whose main attraction is the nearby tiger preserve it has a horrible, busy main drag but many quiet streets and alleys right off of it.  I've said to a few people that one of the best parts about India is the diversity of sights you can see and how daily life is just different.  Whether it's someone using a charcoal heated iron to iron clothes in the streets or spices drying on the ground, it all reminds you that you're someplace special.

Later in the day we were at a loss of what to do so met up with the rickshaw driver from before.  He took us to some tea plantations and gave us a walking tour for about an hour.  It was Sunday so the workers had off, and I think that only added to the serene beauty of the place.

If you notice the trees scattered throughout the area near the tea plants, those are all for water collection.  And on vines growing up the trees it's all pepper plants.  On our tour we also saw some coffee, ginger and other spices growing in this area.

So our first day in the mountains was one of our best.  Really relaxing and refreshing to get away from the heat of the coast where it was around 30 degrees Celsius (about 86 Fahrenheit but it felt a lot worse in the sun).  Sadly this is the night where I started to get sick so the next few days weren't so pleasant.