Waiting in Allepey

The three most interesting things to happen to me during my 48hour stay in Allepey, the town I was supposed to be meeting Matt in, were:
1) Matt did not turn up.
2) All my credit cards got canceled.
3) I was slapped.
None of these events were in any way related, and as the first two are fairly self explanatory, I'll brush swiftly over them before explaining in more detail point 3.

The Elusive Mr Tinsley
I actually don't know what else to add. He didn't turn up.
In the last conversation we'd had, a week earlier outside the Spice of Life pub in Soho, i distinctly remember him saying "See you on Sunday in Allepey for beers."
Sunday came and went and I checked my emails. Nothing.
I trawled through backdated emails and discovered that our arrangement had, in fact, been a lot more vague. We were to meet in either Allepey or Kochi, on either Sunday or Monday.
There was very little i could do if he did not respond to my emails, and as I had already been to Kochi and was already growing tired of Allepey's busy, brown canals and dirty beaches (it is flatteringly described in the Lonely Planet as the Venice of Kerala - an unfair comparison, as from what i hear, Venice is not full of cows, people washing in effluent and huge piles of green bananas), i figured i'd head up to Goa and see if maybe Matt and I would catch up at a later point - perhaps on the plane back to London.
I would later find out that Matt had in fact texted me a number of times, but I had failed to turn my phone on since my arrival in this country and had consequently missed all the messages.

Natwest (whose corporate logo reads: Another Way)
The fuckers! The absolute idiots must have cancelled both my credit and debit cards upon my arrival into Mumbai. Having withrawn a large lump sum at the airport (you are not allowed Indian currency outside India), a week later, I discovered that no machine would allow me access to my account. My money.
I rang them and they quickly explained that some "suspicious activity" had been detected on my cards. Evidently someone had tried to withdraw the equivalent of a few hundred pounds from a cash-machine in Mumbai airport!
I told them that i was not in the habit of asking my bank's permission before going on holiday and that surely it was in their interests to ensure their customers were not stranded in the middle of nowhere with no access to cash. That couldn't be a good business model.
I also stressed that i had in fact bought my ticket to Mumbai on one of the canceled cards, so surely, whoever it was that crosschecks this "suspicious activity" in their Suspicious Activity Centre in Glasgow would maybe have been able to deduce that it was in fact me in Mumbai trying to get my money out of the machine. That, combined with the fact that no further transactions had taken place on my account in the UK and I had, for a week, not called them to ask why i had been blocked, must have been a reasonable enough amount of information for them to deduce i was actually on holiday here.
They said monotonously that the system was automated and that that kind of cross-referencing of information was currently unavailable to them.
I suggested that they call next time before canceling someone's cards to make sure they wouldn't be inconvenienced or even have their safety jeopardised.
They said that they had called and left a message on my answer machine.
I said that as I was on holiday, my mobile phone was switched off, but that if someone had called, they would have heard my greeting saying that i was on holiday in India and that if anyone needed to contact me they should email.
This, I said, surely must have lit up a light on a board somewhere in their Suspicious Activity Centre that would suggest that indeed i was on holiday in India, and that canceling my cards would be an unnecessary and potentially dangerous action to take.
There was a pause.
Apparently the call made to my phone was in fact automated too.
I was getting angry now, so decided to lay my cards on the table.
"I am a freelance journalist currently writing a piece for the Guardian Travel Section on budget holidays in times of financial crisis. Natwest's treatment of me will not go unmentioned, as it appears that rather than protecting the interests of your customers, who are in any case insured for any fraudulent activity on their accounts, you are protecting your own interests at our expense."
I ranted a little longer, threatening to leave Natwest and transfer to Barclays where, even as far back as the mid-Nineties, Rowan Atkinson had been able to use his Barclaycard in such bizarre and remote locations as Marrakech markets without having to call Scotland to ask permission.
My account was reactivated within 8 minutes and i was immediately given the direct phone number to Jackie, the manager at Natwest's Suspicious Activity Centre.
It is +441313997609, for those of you who might need it, and she's very nice. Kind and motherly in a way that only middle-aged Scottish women can be.
I said that i would mention that in my article too.

Pat, The Paranoid Schitzophrenic in my Homestay
I'd like to stress firstly, that it didn't hurt. It was just a shock, as I haven't been slapped properly since my teenage clubbing days in Oxford.
I was staying at the Dreamnest Homestay on Allepey's Cullen Street. Homestays here are a common and often cheap alternative to staying in a Hostel. You are usually provided with a bedroom with ensuite facilities, but all the living areas are communal and shared not only by the tourist guests but by the family running the place. If you get up on time, you can sit down and have breakfast with them, and if you are there in the evening, they will offer you beer and cigarettes to smoke with them in the garden. They have all the amenities of a hostel (bike rental, laundry, internet, phone, food etc.) but with a less austere, more relaxed atmosphere.
The Dreamnest was run, from what i could tell, by a family of teenage boys, as the whole time i was there, i never set eyes on anyone over the age of 17 or18. On paper, this sounds like it would have been chaos, but they worked diligently and responsibly, as efficient as they were friendly; One of them did all the cooking, one cleaned, one ran errands on a motorbike and one, the eldest, seemed to manage them all.
I had arrived 24hours later than intended from Kottayam (apparently there was some sort of bus-strike in Kumily), and had selected this particular place to stay because the mysterious and elusive Sakeer, whom i had still not actually met but who had arranged my jungle trek, had left a note recommending it to me. It was run by one of his friends and would be very cheap.
Of course.
In the absence of any real plan and at this stage, any response from Matt, I decided to go.

There were two other guests staying there when i arrived.
Jo, and early-30s art graduate from Clapham who was on her way from Nepal to meet her boyfriend in the South (if they have a boyfriend, they usually mention it within the first 5 minutes of conversation - even the ugly ones that you're not interested in), and Pat, a 50-60 year-old woman from Southampton who spent one year in every 4 traveling the world.
Jo seemed pretty cool and i swapped a book i had read for her spare UK power adaptor, as I had failed to bring one and had been unable to find one here. Pat initially seemed alright, if a little boisterous and noisy, so I unwisely put aside my inherent suspicions of people that age traveling alone and chatted to them both over coffee on the veranda.

The next morning, without me really knowing how it had happened, myself, Jo and Pat ended up taking a boat tour together of the Keralan backwaters that surround Allepey.
Jo had mentioned it, I had said that it sounded fascinating but i was more interested in hiring a motorbike, and before any of it was in anyway discussed, Pat had enthusiastically commandeered a rickshaw and was haggling with one of the boatmen at the dock over the price of a trip.
Jo cringed and apologised to me. She had been stuck on a train with Pat for the whole of the previous day, and since then had been trying to shake her off. She confided that she also suspected Pat had also followed her to the Dreamnest homestay from the train station.
She said that she should have warned me about her and that perhaps this boatride would not be as serene or relaxing as either of us had hoped.
After a heated argument, Pat finally decided that the asking price was right and that our boatman was trustworthy. She had been haggling over the difference between 3pounds and 3pounds-fifty for the best part of twenty minutes. I said that split bewteen 3, the difference really was negligible and that we should just go. Jo agreed and said she'd much rather her holiday wasn't spent in a constant struggle and would quite like to just get on the boat and chill.
Pat said that you couldn't be too careful and that the Indians were an untrustworthy people, always trying to screw you over. I said that they were only screwing you over if you were unaware of it, and that if you just accepted that as a tourist - not entirely unfairly - you were going to pay slightly more than the going local rate, you were no longer being screwed, simply accepting to go along with their system. If you were complicit in the screwing process, it became a less stressful arrangement and you could spend the rest of your time in much more relaxed, less combative mode. Pat grunted and, telling me to be quiet, pointed her camcorder at a passing heron.
She talked constantly about utter nonsense, and although sometimes she was quite funny and entertaining, it was a little relentless and not exactly what i had had in mind for my scenic trip to the backwaters. Jo and I would chat, but be routinely hushed by Pat so that she could video something we were passing.
"I want all the ambient noise unspoiled." she said, before immediately contradicting herself with "...when i get home, i like to cut these all together and put music over the top."

The moment that i felt, for me at least, that she crossed the line from being slightly odd and eccentric to a full blown mentalist, was towards the end of the journey as we were returning to the dock.
She had finished telling us about some diuretic pills she had taken in Egypt as a Slimfast-cheat that had resulted in her collapsing and being rushed to hospital with a heart murmur and a pacemaker fitting scheduled (she even showed me her NHS documentation, which she had on her).
She had finished telling us that she had just recently drunk cocktails with Princesses Euginie and Beatrice down South and that surprisingly enough, she found them to be very spoilt and aloof. She had finished telling us about an Australian scuba diving holiday she went on with Kiki Dee, where everybody drowned except them ("Faulty tanks, they reckoned. Me and Kiki's was fine.")
She was now telling us about her pet ferret, Frankie, and his recent passing.
He had been scheduled to appear on GMTV's Pet Idol with Keith Chegwin, and Frankie was due to perform his two most popular tricks: stealing a mobile phone and simulating sex with a Barbie doll. He'd been on You've Been Framed a number of times, apparently, and was used to the attention, being a bit of as minor celebrity in her home town and a regular favorite at her local pub.
Just as cameras were about to start rolling, suddenly Frankie went missing. Usually, she said, if he went missing at home, he could be found at the local Co-op in the cold meats section. However, the film studio was new territory for him and he could theoretically be anywhere. They're inquisitive animals and like to explore.
Tragically the show went ahead without him, and a rabbit that could somersault won the competition. Even more tragic was it when Frankie's burnt body was found in an electrical cupboard. He'd chewed through a cable and been electrocuted.
She'd given him a good send off though, "As he'd have wanted", she said.
I wondered exactly what sort of funeral a Barbie-shagging kleptomaniac rodent would really have wanted, but by this stage my head was hurting too much from being subjected to the kaleadoscopic range of Pat's bullshit that i couldn't think straight.
There was a pause, and Jo and I locked eyes. Pat was no doubt amusing at times, but there was a flash of fear that i saw in Jo that i translated as meaning we were simply Pat's captive audience.
"I do apologise for talking so much, you guys must be bored of having to hear me ramble on and on," Pat rambled on.
"I get a little hyperactive when i've not slept properly, and I didn't sleep very well last night because Van Morrison called me up for a chat."

(I'll pause here to let that last comment sink in properly).

I laughed nervously. Jo looked like she was ready to jump into the water and swim for the bank.
"Yeah, you see," she continued, "he often calls me for a little catch-up, only he didn't know i was in India, so didn't know about the time difference. I didn't tell him he'd woken me up, as it sounded like he really needed to get something off his chest."
I didn't want to know what it was that Van Morrison could be so traumatised about that he would possibly consider calling Pat as an option. Luckily, in the ensuing and very uncomfortable silence, Pat was distracted by a Kingfisher bird and whipped out her camcorder, telling us to be quiet again.

We disembarked the boat and Jo and I split in different directions, leaving Pat on the dock to haggle her way back to the homestay.
That evening, after a visit to the rather unimpressive beach, i returned to find that Jo had checked out and been replaced by a Dutch couple. They were smoking in the living room and I wandered in to check my emails. The guy was chilling on the sofa playing the guitar and the woman was reading her guide book.
It was all rather peaceful, then Pat arrived.
She immediately castigated them for smoking, saying that they should have more consideration as she had just quit and was about to have heart surgery. She hadn't quit, i'd seen her steal plenty of Jo's cigarettes on the boat, but i said nothing as the Dutch couple got up politely and retreated to the veranda.
It was just me and her, and the previously chilled and relaxed atmosphere was now cold and awkward.
"I mean, if people aren't smoking," she continued, oblivious, "others shouldn't just wander up and light up without asking should they? It's rude." I thought she was missing the point and that the fact that the Dutch couple had already been smoking before her arrival must have counted for something, but i didn't mention it. She had, however, been irritating me all day and i felt compelled to say something.
"The same could be said about noise too."
She looked at me, slightly bemused. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that," I continued with growing unease and increased regret, "if it's nice and quiet in a room and people are enjoying that, perhaps one shouldn't go barging in making loads of noise."
She scowled and came up very close. I was sitting at a computer and she was standing over me ominously.
"If you've got something to say, i think you should say it to my face."
I've never understood that kind of comment.
It's that What did you say? I dare you to say that again! bullshit you get in macho gangster films. It makes no sense. Did they really not hear? Why do i need to repeat myself?
"I thought i just did." I said, actually, and it would seem rightly, feeling increasingly uneasy by the potential response i may have provoked.
She smiled and turned as if to go. However, instead, she swung round and hit me in the face, the cheek, and not hard, with the palm of her hand.
It was loud, and I'm sure the Dutch people would have heard it from outside, but being Dutch, they remained impassive.
"You little cunt!" she shouted.
It's very rare i hear that word come from a woman's mouth, least of all one my mother's age.
"You made it pretty obvious you were an arsehole all morning!"
On the contrary, i thought, under the circumstances i'd done a great job covering it up.
"Why don't you just fuck off, you... you..."
- and here comes my favorite new insult -
"...little shit-bubble!"
I smiled. There was no denying that despite the antagonistic and violent nature this conversation had taken, there were definite elements of it that had to be smiled at, specifically shit-bubble.
"Thanks, Pat. Have a lovely evening."
She retreated to the doorway.
"You have no idea who I am, do you."
I didn't.
"No, and honestly, i'm fine with that."
She stormed off to her room, undoubtedly to chainsmoke in secret.
For a second, I wandered if actually she was someone of some significance, but i doubted it.
I carried on typing.
Matt would be here soon, and if not, I had decided that maybe i should leave Allepey tomorrow anyway and head up to Goa.
Pat suddenly reappeared at the door, and as if nothing had happened, friendly as ever, she asked me if i needed to borrow her power adaptor. I was pleased to be able to tell her i had one of Jo's, as it meant that i would be in no way indebted to her. She smiled sweetly and said that if i changed my mind, she had one i could use. She smiled again, turned and skipped back to her room.
She was totally mad. Officially of her head. She must be one of those people that has to leave themselves a note at night that says in plain, bold letters Do not worry. You are mad, so that when they wake up and read it in the morning, they're not too disoriented by how crazily they percieve the rest of the world.

The next day i got up early and went to the train station to enquire about tickets to Goa. There was one leaving after lunch, and although i couldn't be guaranteed a bed, i should be able to get a seat. Most importantly, it was leaving almost immediately.
As i was paying the man at the counter, there was a tap on my shoulder. It was Pat.
"I just wanted to apologise for shouting at you last night." She said. Evidently she was not sorry that she had also hit me.
"Oh, don't worry." I said. You, fucking fruitcake!
It suddenly occurred that she might have actually followed me all the way to the train station to accost me like this. This was getting scarier. I scanned the room for an exit and contemplated the damage i would do to body if i flung myself from a second-storey window wearing flip-flops.
"Are you going somewhere?" she enquired.
"Yes," I lied, "Kochi."
"Did you not already go there?" she asked suspiciously.
"Yeah, but i have to go and find my friend, remember?"
"Hmmm... Well, I was going to go to Mangalore, but maybe i'll check out Kochi on the way if it's as nice as you say." I had never said anything, positive or negative, about Kochi to her.
She bought her ticket and came over to me.
"Looks like we're probably getting on the same train." She smiled. "This afternoon at 5:30? Did you get one with a bed too?"
I looked down at mine, pretending to examine it.
"Oh my. They've given me the wrong one. This is for Goa!"
"Really?" She pulled it out from my hand. "Well you'd better go and change it, quickly."
I looked as karmic as possible.
"Well, maybe i'll just go to Goa instead. Perhaps it's destiny or fate or something. Maybe I'm just not meant to go back to Kochi." I shrugged.
"Well, I've always fancied Goa, maybe i should..."
Crazy, but persistent.
"...There were no beds, Pat, and it's an 18hour train ride. I don't know if you'd like it. He said i might not even get a proper seat."
She looked sad, in the way that someone locked in a padded cell and who has smeared themselves and their walls with faeces, might look sad, when they finally realise that the result of their rebellious and destructive act is that ultimately they have to go to sleep covered in and smelling of their own shit.
"Enjoy Mangalore." I said, and strolled out to catch a rickshaw back to the hostel.
I was in such a hurry to get away from her that i totally forgot to go to the bookings office and make sure i could get a bed, or at the very least a seat for my train journey.
That would be a mistake.

The Jungle Trek - Part 2

Two people were emerging from the trees about 10 metres away.The one at the front was a European guy in his twenties, the one behind, his stick-bearing local Indian guide. The tourist and I locked eyes in a look that simultaneously said "Hey, check us out! We're off road!" and "Where the fuck are we, what are we doing here, and where are these guys taking us?"
The two guides exchanged a number of furtive syllables and with their sticks waving threateningly, gestured for us to continue. I turned and followed Rajesh deeper into the trees. We were sandwiched between them, surrounded by our two guides and god-knows how many others watching us from the foliage. I could hear monkeys whooping excitedly from the treetops. The faint smell of bananas permeated the thick, moist air.
They had us trapped and were marching us to our doom.

"Shit weather, huh?"
The other tourist had sidled up behind me. He was English and expensively educated.
"Yup," I said grimly, pausing to look up and shade my eyes in a worldy manner for dramatic effect. "Looks like it's gonna get a hell of a lot worse too."
I stared at him as forbodingly as i could, imploring him with my eyes to recognise the gravity of our predicament, but he was also looking upwards, straining to find the source of the whooping in the treetops.
"Yah. It's certainly getting heavier, the rain." He continued. "Pretty annoying really. This is my last pair of clean clothes."
Laughing, he looked down at himself. He was wearing a solid pair of hiking boots and combat trousers with a dark Berghaus waterproof jacket over a woolen sweater.
This guy obviously had no idea what was going on and was totally unprepared for the reality of the situation we were in.
I bent down and pulled a leech from my muddy pyjama bottoms and wiped my hand on my hoodie, which was soaked through.
"Nasty little fuckers, eh?" He said. "Here, try this."
He reached into his all-terrain Invicta rucksack and pulled out a small pack of brown powder, bending down to sprinkle it liberally on my legs and ankles.
"It's tobacco powder. Snuff. They hate it. Burns them, you see? Give me a shout if it washes off and i'll chuck some more on."
"Thanks." I said, genuinely touched by his naive generosity.
That Ray Mears shit might save you now, but it'll be no help later when we're being stalked through torrential rain by hordes of simian-serving psychopaths!
He stood up to face me.
"Did you say something?"
"Er... No."
He smiled. "Well, shall we carry on then? I'm Keith, by the way." He held out his hand.
"I'm Adam."
We shook on it. He had a strong grip and i felt a glimmer of hope. He was a big lad, 6-foot something with a stocky rugby-player build. But he had soft hands and i sensed that he didn't have much fight in him. On the pitch he'd be fine, but here in the jungle he probably wouldn't have it in him to kill a man if that's what it came to. At this stage, he was still a patsy, oblivious to the dangers that surrounded us and blissfully ignorant of the murderous, and doubtless perverted, intentions of our guides.
The whooping from the trees quietened and i turned to follow Rajesh again, deeper into the forest, the others a few metres behind me.

The rain got heavier and, although it wasn't as hot as it had been earlier, and although the air was slowly cooling, it was still fairly stifling. I'd put on my glasses in order to see more clearly, but they were constantly steaming up and i had to keep pausing to wipe the condensation off.
It was all part of the plan though. I figured they would make me look a lot less threatening and hardcore. Less Brendon Fraser and more John Hannah. I could be the bumbling English intellectual, no problem. Keith could be the slightly dumb, but brawny, action hero. That's exactly what they'd be expecting and therefore the last thing they'd anticipate!

As we walked, Keith and I chatted amiably.
He was from Wallingford, near Oxford, and lived in Tulse Hill, South London. He'd been in India for a few weeks, this was his second visit, and he would be here for another two. I told him about Munnar and the tea plantations, as he was intending to head in that direction, and he sounded enthused. As i was turning round to state some incredibly witty and interesting observation on the vaguely communist infrastructure of tea plantation life, and the fact that it seemed a lot like a kibbutz, only less cruel and sadistic, Keith grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back.
"Watch out, man. You nearly walked into that web."
I looked up and and saw a huge spider web stretched accross the path infront of me, a mere inch or so from my face. On it was was an enormous, evil-looking, spider the size of my hand, with legs like knitting needles. Somewhere in the treetops there was a rustling noise and some agitated whooping.

"Blimey, that could have been nasty." Continued Keith. "Horrible thing. I wonder if it's poisonous. Hey, Hamid." He gestured over his guide. "What's this then?" Hamid approached.

"Tiger spider."
"Is it poisonous?" I asked, surveying its lethal-looking mandibles.
"Yes, yes." Nodded Hamid, excitedly. "Very. But it never attack."
"Never attack?" Derek scoffed. "Bloody would have attacked you if you'd walked straight into it!" He punched me butchly on my shoulder. "I wonder why your man didn't point it out."
"Yeah weird." I said "He must have somehow stepped around without seeing it."

At that moment, Rajesh re-emerged from the bushes infront of us, and evidently annoyed that i was still standing and not writhing in agony on the floor and clawing at my face, shook his head and gestured for us to keep up and keep close.

I stopped to take a photo of the spider, hoping that if the worst came to the worst, someone might find my camera and be able to retrace our steps to find out what happened to us. They'd probably be pretty impressed that we'd survived this far, what with all these terrifying booby-traps set up to maim us.
We ducked under the web and followed, continuing our meaningless chitchat.

He worked in marketing but was bored and uninspired and had decided it was time to switch jobs when the credit-crunch happened. He figured it wasn’t a good time to be unemployed, but it was a good opportunity to have a holiday, so that’s what he was doing. The conversation worked its way through the financial crisis and mortgage rates to environmental-global-armaggedon, when suddenly I realized I had no idea where we were.

Up until then, I’d been keeping a mental map of our progress through the network of tracks, past bushes, trees and rocks that I felt I would remember.
Up until then, I reckoned I could have gotten us home pretty easily.
Now, I was totally lost.
Damn real-life and the distracting yet comforting trappings of a consumerist, capitalist existence!
I told Keith that I had no idea where we were.
“Yah. Me neither.” He laughed. “For all we know, these guys could have been leading us round in circles for the last few hours.”
Round in circles, eh? I thought. Indeed…
“Perhaps they don’t know where they’re going either.” Keith continued, joking.
“It’s always possible.” I said, stroking the area where my beard used to be.
I looked over towards Rajesh who was thrashing at a bush with his stick. Although everything I had on was soaked through, i still felt relatively comfortable. He was only wearing a t-shirt and was evidently quite cold.
“I don’t suppose they were expecting it to rain today," I mused. "Perhaps the heavy rain and the low visibility has forced them to take shelter down here and take an alternative route. We may be way off course.”

“Let’s call it a day,” said Keith. “I’m soaked and could definitely do some breakfast. Ask him if he wants to head back.”
I approached Rajesh whose thrashing had become more laboured.
He turned round, weary and bedraggled.
“Hey, dude,” I said, attempting to filter from my voice all the loathing and resentment that had been building for the past few hours and replace it with a more sympathetic tone and a friendly smile. “Shall we head back? It’s shit weather, and we’re not gonna see much wildlife like this.”
He nodded and smiled and looked back at Hamid to see what he thought.

We stood for a moment in silence.

The detour had indeed taken too long and by now the monkey high-priest would doubtfully have enough time to perform the sacrificial ceremony by midday. He’d probably been waiting for our arrival before he even started with his head-dress and crazy make-up, so now he’d be way behind schedule. Perhaps Keith and I had sufficiently distracted the guides with our mind-numbingly dull chat about US foreign policy, global warming and why some parts of East London just weren’t as adequately serviced by public transport as others, and the guides had become so disorientated and confused in their attempts to keep up, that they’d taken a wrong turn and gotten lost.

The sudden sound of a cockerel crowing broke the eerie silence and we all jumped. It wasn't the most immediate thing that you'd think might surprise you in a jungle, but you don't really expect to see, let alone hear, chickens in this type of environment. As it was, it wasn't an actual cockerel, but Hamid's mobile phone ringing.
We all turned as he fumbled to get it out, answering and speaking in hushed tones as Rajesh gestured to him across us. Rajesh was shaking his head forlornly, and Hamid, starting off relatively animated, was quickly reduced to sounding rather apologetic and remorseful.

Their monkey-overlords were obviously giving him a bit of a grilling.

Due to a combination of our cunning survivalist skills and their ineptitude, they had failed to deliver us to their JungleBook-style temple in time for the sacrifice, and the monkey-gods could now not be appeased.
It would surely be another month before the moon would be in its correct banana-phase again. Their inability to get us there could well have jeopardised this entire quarter's fruit-n-nut harvest and the Tyres-Hanging-From-Ropes-In-Trees Festival, one of the highlights of the simian callendar, would probably have to be canceled too!

There would surely be some questions for Rajesh and Hamid to answer when they got home. Their monkey-wives would doubtless be furious.
For a moment i felt sorry for them. They looked tired and defeated.
Then the full realisation of their murderous intentions returned, and i saw them for what they really were. However misguided, or perhaps even brainwashed, they were still cold-blooded killers, even if they were enslaved to a primitive race of hairy, singled-minded fruit fiends,.

"I wonder if anywhere round here in will do bacon and eggs," said Keith, and we followed Rajesh back towards Kumily.
The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful There were no near-death experiences or animal sightings, and even the sound of monkeys angrily whooping seemed to fade behind us as we got closer in to civilisation.

It was nice to be able to drop my guard a little. I was exhausted, and now that the imminent threat of spontaeous abduction or unprovoked bludgeoning was gone, i felt i could relax a little and really enjoy my jungle experience.

It was shitting down with rain, which it had been for hours, i was cold and soaked through, and as i looked down, i saw that the exposed area of flesh between my shirt and beltline was covered in blood-sucking leeches.

Fuck this for a laugh. Monkeys or not, I'm done. Get me out of here!

We treked back to the outskirts of Kumily and said our goodbyes to Rajesh and Hamid. I was eager to maintain the facade of a satisfied tourist, and in order to ensure that there was no doubt in their minds that i hadn't been onto them, I paid and even gave Rajesh a good tip. We returned to them our leech-socks and said our goodbyes. They slunk off reluctantly, undoubtedly to be reprimanded by some high-ranking monkey-official in a treehouse somewhere.

The murderous air that had hung about them earlier was gone.
They no longer looked like occultish assasins any more, just a pair of tired, bedraggled Indian chaps who wanted to go home and have some tea, having been paid pittance by a couple of exploitative westerners for a pointless trek through the jungle in the rain.

I looked down at my navel. It was bleeding heavily from the leeches i'd been pulling off.

"So," said Keith. "What are you up to now? Do you fancy grabbing some breakfast? I'm starving."

"Sure," I replied.

"Great. Well there's a really nice little cafe down by the bus station. Let's meet there in an hour. I'm going to grab a shower."

"Sounds perfect," I said. "But i'll have to be relatively quick. I want to catch a bus to Allepey pretty soon."

Keith frowned.

"Oh, you won't get a bus today. There's some kind of strike. A political thing, i don't know what. The next bus will be tomorrow morning."

I heard leaves rustle and the sound of whooping filled my ears. I noticed a number of monkeys in a tree behind Keith watching us and stopped examining my leech-wound, standing up to face him.
Blood dripped onto the ground from my hand.
He stared back nervously and smiled.

Oh, Keith. Not you too...

He turned and walked down the alleyway, calling over his shoulder.

"See you in a bit!"

I stood and watched for a minute, then wandered slowly back to my hostel.

What a strange morning. I thought.

I climbed the stairs of the Rainbow cottage up to the balcony where the door to my room was.

There was a monkey on a nearby rooftop eating a piece of fruit. It saw me and whooped one solitary defiant whoop, and as I turned the key to my room and entered, out of the corner of my eye, i was sure could see it shaking it's fist at me.

The Jungle Trek - Part1

I woke at 5, dressed and went downstairs.
It was still dark and there was a man with a big stick waiting under the gate.
"Are you Sakeer?" I asked.
"No." Said the shadowy figure as he stepped into the light. "I am Rajesh."
We shook hands and he looked me up and down, tsking disapprovingly at my jungle-treking attire: shorts, shirt, hoodie and trainers.
"Wear trousers." He said and tapped my leg with his stick, a little hard, i thought. "Put these on."
He handed me two stockings made of thick, brown linen. I noticed that he was wearing a pair over the top of his trousers, having tied them up just under his knee.
"Okay, sure. What are they?" I asked
"Leech-socks." He said, matter-of-factly, in a tone that suggested I should have known the answer. I headed back to my room and changed almost everything i was wearing. I pictured myself upto my chest in a murky river, holding my bag above my head, cursing myself for wearing my most expensive pair of jeans and bringing my mobile phone, while muddy slithering creatures wrapped round my ankles and untied the laces to my favorite Hush Puppies.
I ditched a load of stuff from my bag too, restricting myself to a bottle of water, my glasses, wallet and camera, carefully placing the last two objects at the top of the bag which i assumed would get wet last. I returned to Rajesh, who was now inspecting the blunt end of his stick under a streetlight. He looked me up and down and nodded. I was basically wearing the leech-socks over a pair of my pyjama bottoms, dirty socks, pants, a t-shirt and my hoodie.
We were off. I'd have to stick pretty close. Apparently round here, the jungle is massive!

I followed him through a network of dark, musty, urine-smelling alleyways until we came to an opening in the forest. He turned and raised his finger at me.
"Shhh... Park ranger hut. Quiet."
Great! I thought. Another illegal trek. My second time trespassing in two days. No wonder this tour was so much cheaper!
We entered the forest and stealthily made our way through the trees to a rough path. It was raining slightly and was already very hot, with humidity levels rising steadily the further in we went. I followed him silently as invisible damp things that hung from trees brushed against my head and face. It was pitch black under the canopy of leaves and i could just about make out the white stripes on Rajesh's shirt floating a few metres infront of me.
Occasionally something would squawk or whoop somewhere above us and he would stop and point with his stick at some mass of branches.
"Hornbill. Very big." or "Black monkey. Awake now."
We carried on, he doing everything you would want from a jungle guide; tapping with his stick to draw my attention to branches to that i might walk into or bushes that might catch my clothing. He pointed at holes and said things like "Snake home," and "Bear, dig," and gestured at patches of flattened grass and said "Buffalo sleep. 2 days," generally keeping me informed of everything that we were squelching past.
As we walked, he would swing his stick like a cartwheel at his side, forcing me to follow him at a disance of a few metres if i was avoid being hit. I thought about this for a bit. He was obviously keeping a gap between us so that if he stumbled or slipped, or were even attacked by a wild animal, I would either have that extra second or so to make my escape, or I'd be far back enough to get a better view, therefore ensuring that i'd have a much grittier anecdote to tell when i got home. I noticed his shirt was striped white, orange and brown and wandered whether he was using himseslf as a tiger lure to draw attention away from me. He told me that there hadn't been a tiger sighting here in 6 months, but perhaps baiting them out of the jungle with sexually alluring stripey tops was a good way of making these illegal treks more exciting and therefore proitable.
Dawn was softly breaking above the canopy and I was beginning to warm to Rajesh, so as he walked and i followed, i struck up a quiet conversation.
"It's beautiful round here. Are you from Kumily?"
"Yes. I born here."
"How marvellous. Are you married?"
It might sound like an odd or unwise question, considering we were both wearing stockings and i was following him into the undergrowth, but since i've been here, i've been subjected almost exclusively to these four questions by every local i have so far met:
1) What is your name?
2) Where are you from?
3) What is your job?
4) Are you married?
I figured that by now I had established the answer to the first 3.
"Yes. I married. My wife from Allepey."
Well there was a coincidence.
"Oh, Allepey? I hear it's lovely. I'm going there this afternoon."
He slowed a fraction.
"No bus today. Strike."
Something overhead whooped loudly.
Not you too, Raj... Is there anyone in this town that isn't trying to con me into staying an extra night in this town against my will?
I stopped and pretended to tie up my laces. He continued on, unaware. Suddenly, in the cold dawn light filtering through the leaves, the swinging of his stick took on a more sinister edge and I remembered him inspecting it outside the hostel before sizing me up.
Suddenly it hit me. (not the stick)
This is much bigger than the Rainbow Cottage, and this isn't just about me paying over the odds to go on a longer tour and stay the extra night. He's leading me into the jungle where he's going to bludgeon me to death and nick my stuff or sacrifice me to the monkey-gods, or something!
I considered for a second taking out my wallet and dropping a credit card on the ground so that somebody might find it and raise the alarm. After all, nobody knew i was here. I only had two cards though, and i'm sure he planned to walk me much further into the jungle. There'd be a better opportunity later on. There was also a chance of course, that when he attacked me, i'd overcome him and escape. In that situation, it would most inconvenient to have no access to my bank funds, especially if i had a stick-wielding tribe of monkey-worshiping maniacs after me.
I looked around and got up calmly.
Well. If you've gotta go, you may as well go out fighting... with a man dressed as a tiger in a dark, wet forest in the Indian jungle.
We continued up an incline and it got hotter and hotter and wetter and wetter. We were walking into the cloudcover and every breath became an effort. I could feel my heart pounding. The ground was very slippery and occasionally i would lose my footing and have to grab a branch or a patch of long grass to stop myself from falling. My hands were covered in tiny cuts and there were leaeches all over my legs. Rajesh seemed unconcerned. He didn't care that i seemed to be struggling behind him. However, whereas most people might be on the verge of passing out at this stage, not being used to this climate or doing this level of strenuous activity in such hot, muggy conditions, I was fine. I'd done bikram yoga. Twice!
I continued to play the part (quite effectively, i might add) of the exhausted, unfit westerner all the way to the top of the hill, where he lit a bidi and i made a big display of gasping for breath, clutching my chest and guzzling from my waterbottle feverishly.
Let him think you're weak. I thought
"Can we wait for a bit? I'm knackered."
He rolled his eyes and turned to survey the cloud-laden forest from which we'd emerged. I chuckled to myself and continued to pretend i was exhausted for at least another 5 minutes.
For the next hour or so, we followed a series of tracks along the top of the hill. More than once i felt that i was being watched, but when i looked round, all i saw was mist and trees. Although we were still up in the cloud, having broken the treeline the visibility was much better, and occasionally we would see a buffalo grazing in the mist before it would spot us and flee. There was a lot of elephant dung scattered around and Rajesh would stop every once in a while to talk about the plants we were passing and their medicinal qualities.
"This leaf good for snakebite," and "This tree like eucalyptus, but is not eucalyptus."
I got the impression he was continuing the facade and pretending everything was normal in order to lull me into a false sense of security
Sure, this was just your average, everyday, illegal jungle-trek.
I played along and pretended to relax but was careful to never take my eye off his stick.
We re-entered the trees after descending the other side of the hill and followed a path that Rajesh had told me was made by elephants. The sound of whooping in the trees got louder and the undergrowth got denser.
Suddenly the heavy thud of a footfall and the crack of a branch behind me alerted me to danger and I swung round...

To Be Continued In...
The Jungle Trek - Part 2

Stranded in Kumily?

I disembarked the bus in (surprise, surprise), a rundown, muddly little town.
The bus station, lit by neon and with no visible system in place whatsoever, was heaving.
Kumily exists for two reasons. It is a border town between the two states of Kerala and TamilNadu, and it is the entrance portal to the Peryar Wildlife Sanctury, an area of mountainous jungle of about 777kmsq.
Tourists come here to see elephants bathing in rivers, monkeys in trees, bison grazing and maybe even tigers, all in their wild habitat. Entrance to the reserve is strictly monitored and can be expensive if you're not in a big group. Tour operators generally charge for a day's excursion what you might normally pay for a week's accommodation, and a lot of the time you're sat in a jeep with a load of fat Germans and taken on a sterile, well-trodden route through the more accessible and "tame" areas of the park. You'd probably be more likely to spot a black albino than a black bear.

I looked around for Sakeer, Babu's friend, who was supposed to be collecting me from the bus-stop and taking me to the hostel. There were a lot of people about, but no-one who looked specifically like they were waiting for anyone. I had just decided to go to the hostel anyway - Babu had drawn me a rough map - when a young moustachioed man tugged at my sleeve.
"You come from Munnar?" He asked.
"Yeah. I just got off this bus."
"You going to Victoria Hostel?"
"Yeah, I am actually. Are you Sakeer?"
"No. Sakeer is on trek. I'm Amesh. I will take you."
I nodded and he went to grab my rucksack. I picked it up quickly.
"It's alright. I've got it." I said, not wanting to offend him, but also not wanting him to get his potentially filthy thieving hands on my stuff.
He did that funny Indian head-wiggling thing that i took to mean "Okay, cool", smiled and set off with me following.
"You want to go on tour?" He asked.
I told him I did and he explained that he would arrange for Sakeer to pick me up at 7:30am, then we'd drive to the reserve, wander round for a bit, have some lunch, check out the spice gardens and be back by 5pm.
"No," I said. "I need to get on a bus to Allepey tomorrow after lunch". I was going to try and find Matt. He smiled.
"Strike tomorrow. No buses."
That was strange. I'd told Babu what i was intending to do, and he hadn't mentioned it.
"What. No buses at all?" He shook his head.
"No. So, you want to go on all-day tour tomorrow?"
I considered it for a minute. It sounded like a bit of a scam. Con me into getting the more expensive all-day tour, and by the time I arrive back in the afternoon to discover the buses were running fine, It'd be too late to travel and I'd have to stay another night in his mate's hostel.
Very clever.
Well I wasn't going to fall for it.
"No, I think that sounds too expensive. I'd much rather do the morning trek instead."
He shrugged.
"Sure. Is much cheaper."
We carried on walking, and Amesh started calling someone on his phone, doubtless one of his accomplices: "The foreigner didn't fall for it. Let's move to Plan B!"
We approached the Victoria Hostel and I saw a guy on a mobile phone standing on the steps outside. As we got closer, he stopped talking and hung up, at just about the same time as Amesh finished his conversation. My suspicions were immediately roused, and as we got to the front door, the man on the step came forward.
"Sorry, we're full." He said, smiling politely.
Very clever. I thought. I see what you guys are doing.
"You can try up there." He continued. "The Rainbow Cottage has space."
Very fucking clever.
I shrugged, willing at this stage anyway, to go along with their little charade a while longer. I can play the clueless Englishman pretty easily.
"Oh, thanks. The Rainbow Cottage? That sounds delightful."
The two guys exchanged a look and the goon on the step gestured up a muddy track. We walked and Amesh carried on chatting.
"Is not far. Nice place, and very cheap." He reassured me.
Whatever. I thought.
It was starting to rain and at this point i was perfectly prepared to acknowledge i was being screwed and follow this man a little longer, even if it meant i'd have to pay over the odds for my room. I needed a shower and a bed soon and in the grand scheme of things, even the very expensive places weren't that expensive. Fuck the principal of the thing, i was knackered.

Suddenly, all the lights around us switched off and we were plunged into darkness, totally blind. Amesh continued unpeturbed, and called back to me.
"Power cut. 30 minutes every night. Same time."
I looked at my watch. It was 7:30 on the dot.
I suppose he could be telling the truth.
Here i was, walking down an incredibly dodgy track, unable to see what i was stepping in, indeed what i was supposed to be stepping in, following a total stranger somewhere I hadn't been before. I had no idea where i was, what i was doing or indeed what the Malayalam was for "Ouch. What was that?" or "Get off me, you bastard!"
I considered my options:
1) Run, or at least try to with this rucksack on.
2) Attack Amesh pre-emptively. I've never heard for that not to work.
3) Pretend to faint (i don't know whether that would have really helped, but i reckon i could have probably done it quite well).
4) Bang on the nearest door shouting "Mansillayilla!", the only Malayam word i have memorised meaning "I don't understand."
Suddenly the Rainbow Cottage loomed into view.
I say "loomed", but that suggests it slunk creepily out of the shadows. What actually happened was that we turned a corner and the place jumped out of the darkness the way you might expect if a fairground ride suddenly appeared at a really serious Catholic sermon. It was so bright in contrast to what had a second ago been pitch black, that i could barely focus properly. When i did finally get my vision back, however, it truly was marvel to behold.
If you'd given an imaginitive child a load of amphetamines and some radioactive icing-sugar, and asked them to decorate a cake to look like a really ostentatious gaybar, you might have gotten close to this. The Playboy Mansion having been put through Grand Designs by Liberace, perhaps. The walls were bright pink, orange, turquoise and green, with yellow pillars, ornate golden railings and elaborate little carvings everywhere. The place was amazing. It was like one of those tacky snowdomes of Lourdes brought to life by Jeff Koons. The whole thing glowed, and it was lit by hundreds of multicoloured halogens, adding to the already otherworldy, hallucinogenic effect.
A man was standing at the doorway and i approached with trepidation, feeling a little like Hansel and Gretel must have done approaching the gingerbread house.
I turned around and Amesh was gone, turned back to the house and the guy from the stairs was suddenly un-nervingly close.
"You want a room?" He boomed. I pictured a saccharine-tainted smile under a candy-floss moustache.
"Er... Yes please."
He turned and made for the door.
"Come. Follow."
I looked around at the pitch black that had enveloped the entire town and then up at the glowing edifice infront of me. Something was not quite right.
"You have electricity?" I asked.
"Yes, yes." He nodded without turning round. "We have a generator. Powercut same time every day. 30 minutes. You stay for 2 days?"
"Er... No. Just one, thanks. I have to go to Allepey tomorrow."
"Bus strike tomorrow. You stay for two days."
Hmmm... I thought. They've rung ahead again. They're very organised, these guys, and this con is gettnig incredibly elaborate. I figured i'd play along for a while longer to see where it went - i didn't want them to know i was onto them.
With that, I stepped over the threshold and into the pink, lurid meringue of the lobby.

The bedroom was indeed very comfortable with a bed that could have easily slept 4 and more light switches than i knew waht to do with (i counted 25 for 7 lights - 7 of them were in the bathroom).
I was knackered, and again had to be up at 5am, so I showered, doused myself in aftersun (the day in the tea plantation had been surprisingly punishing on my new skinhead) and hit the sack.
As i drifted off, i wondered how it was that at my last hostel, the constant noise of the generator had practically been a feature of my room, yet here, the entire building was totally silent.

The Road to Peryar

The bus ride from Munnar to Kumily in Peryar is famous for being a long and unpleasant, but stunningly beautiful, journey.
It descends through the tea estates from about 2200m to about 1400 over the course of 180km and, if you're lucky, will only take you 5 hours.
I got on the bus early to get a window seat (meaning a seat next to a big hole in the wall into which someone could fix a pane of glass if they so chose). I'd just finished reading Are You Experienced?, a novel by William Sutcliffe based on his gap year travels around India. He'd evidently had a pretty shit time and had hated most of the people he met on the way, so the book comes accross as a very funny, but very scathing indicment of the British middleclass traveller ideology. I recommend. Anyway, at one point, his main character is on a train watching the countryside whizz by and listening to Pink Floyd on his walkman. He decides that Comfortably Numb must have been written with the Indian landscape in mind as a visual metaphor.
I decided to check it out and for the first time since i got here, pulled out my Ipod. Cassettes are all very well and good, but here i had over 400 albums at my fingertips. I must be able to find something a little better and more appropriate than prog-rock.
I started off with The Wall, just as a refernce point, to try and understand what he was trying to say, but decided that rock just wasn't working for me.
Something more ambient and atmospheric perhaps...
Orbital's Insides album was great for about 15 minutes before it got a bit too hectic.
I tried some Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawney, as they seemed like obvious choices, and they did work, but i felt that that was maybe a little too easy and a bit of a cop-out.
The Orb were great, but a bit too weird a little too often.
I tried some Chopin, Mozart and even some Opera and they were all okay, but i could definitely feel myself tending towards electronica.
Kinobe was sunny and bouncy and seemed to work well with all the scenery whizzing past, but i decided to put it on shuffle and stop thinking about it. Something would come, and i'd keep my finger on the "next" button just in case any gansta rap or thrash metal cropped up. Both of which i could tell wouldn't work without even trying.
Depressingly enough, after several hours of this - and I am reluctant to admit this - the one name that reoccurred a number of times and without fail matched and complimented the landscape, speed of the vehicle, road type, cloud formation, and even the colour of saris worn by women at passing bus-stops, was Moby. Literally anything by him provoked the sensation of being in a highly choreographed, mega-budget ethno-conscious bank advert, or a joyous journey montage from a beautifully shot and emotionally rendered road movie. No wonder his stuff is played so much on TV and in Starbucks. As uplifting background music goes, it's damn near perfect. Like aural bubblegum with a series of slowly shifting flavours.
Disgusted with myself, I put my headphones away, not wanting any of the locals to overhear my evident lack of any kind of discernible taste.
It was starting to get dark anyway, and the view was diminishing.

The Tea Plantation

I was waiting outside the hostel at 5:15 drinking a coffee.
The guide and a couple of other guests would be here in a minute and I was watching the mountains and the sky as the sun attempted to rise.
The Greenview was situated on a muddy track on what could loosely be described as a residential area. There were a few bungalows, a number of parked tuk-tuks with their drivers asleep in them, and piles of stuff that looked like until recently it had been on fire. I yawned and looked at the chickens pecking at the ground near my feet.
Nearby a cockrell crowed.
Fuck it was early - I'd been awake before it.

As i waited, a little old lady emerged from one of the adjacent bungalows and, totally ignoring me, started flinging water from a bucket out into the road.
Now, let me explain; She wasn't pouring water into the street like you would if you were emptying a bucket after cleaning the floor, she was quite deliberately and methodically wetting the area of ground outside her home as if she was watering some unseen crop. I watched for a while, thinking that i'd really like a cigarette, when she retreated back in. Another lady, a few doors down from the first appeared, and repeated the same bizarre action. Lady #1 returned with a broomstick and started sweeping at the wet dirt, brushing it this way and that, shoving the small pebbles aside and moving the loose leaves and dirt away from her front door. She continued for a number of minutes, taking it all very seriously - attempting to remove any of the lumpy muddy mess from what was essentially, a lumpy, muddy messy track.
It reminded me of a task I'd been given on a character-building Jewish youth group visit to a kibbutz. At dawn we'd been woken, driven in an open-backed truck to a rocky field, and told to put all the rocks in the back of the truck. This field was going to be ploughed and cultivated, so it had to be clear of rocks. We spent all morning on it, 4 of us, and complained constantly.
The thing about this kind of kibbutz visit, is that it's basically slave labour masquerading as a communist utopia, which in an interesting capitalist twist, had to be paid for. When the truck was full, it drove off and we were left to survey our morning's handiwork.
6 hours of solid toil (and i think that this might actually be my first totally accurate use of that word), and the field looked exactly the same. The problem being that (a) it was a desert, so consequently, (b) there was nothing in the field but stones. Removing the stones did no good, as it simply revealed more stones underneath. Futile, but of course, character-building. Made me into the man i am today, etc.
I looked at these women, scrabbling and scrubbing in the dirt and wandered what the point was. What was the best possible outcome they were hoping for?
The other guests and Babu, the guide, appeared and we climbed into his jeep. I asked him what they had been doing. He told me that it was tradition in India to get up earlier than their husbands in the morning and clean the house, inside and out, so that when he woke, it would be nice and tidy. He said that they often cleaned the streets too, directly outside the house and even continued to do so after the husband had passed away as a form of respect.
The sensitive side of me thought that there was something really sweet about this, but also a little sad. The other side, the side that invariably wins the internal struggle, was thinking that in the unlikely event that i ever got invited to an Indian funeral, as a way of paying my respects, i'd bring the widow a Dyson and suggest that all the other mourners pay for her to get a patio.

We headed into the hills, myself, Babu, a Danish girl and an Italian guy. I didn't bother introducing myself to the others, as i didn't want them to get too attached. I was leaving that afternoon, and didn't really want to have to deal with the emotional hassle of a teary farewell.
As we climbed, Babu pointed out various things - mentioning the names of fauna, the heights of the surrounding mountains, and talking extensively about the history of the area. It was pretty steep and we climbed for a couple of hours, stopping every once in a while to rest and take photos of the spectacular view. Bizarrely, it reminded me of taking walks in Scotland. It was a lot hotter, but the terrain was similar and there was grass, heather-type-bushes and animal droppings everywhere. I mentioned this to Babu and he said that it was a common observation, and that perhaps that was the reason that it was a largely Scottish population that originally settled here from Britain.
We reached to top and Babu gave us each a bottle of water. It wasn't too hot, as it was so windy, but the sun was out in full force and there wasn't much in the way of cloud cover. We carried on walking down the other side and Babu said that he would take us down through one of the plantations. Strictly speaking, we weren't allowed in and we would be trespassing, but he said that these laws were designed for much larger tour groups and that because there were only 4 of us, it wouldn't be a problem. They wouldn't be harvesting this section for a week or so, so it was unlikely that we would bump into anyone who would challenge us. However, the idea that we were doing something wrong and possibly dangerous and illegal, excited me and made me feel like a character in an Alex Garland novel.
We continued down and stopped at the edge of a field for breakfast. Babu had brought hard-boiled eggs, readymade toast, jam and fruit, and while we ate, he told us about the local tea industry.

First, before i forget: All tea is Chinese. I didn't know that. Did you?
Oh... Well anyway:
There were over 10 estates in the area, each one employing and housing around 50 families. The women worked in the fields and the men in the tea-processing factories at the bottom of the valley. Only the topmost leaves were picked, and done so by hand or with scissors (depending on the grade), in each field on rotation every 2 weeks. The children were all educated in schools on the grounds.
A routine workday would start t 8am with 30mins teabreak at 11, lunch at 1:30, another teabreak at 3:30 and would finish at 5. He told us that most of Munnar was employed thus and that although a lot of the younger generation were no more interested in pursuing college and careers in the cities, enough of them, attracted by the easygoing, outdoor lifestyle, stayed to keep the industry run by local families. It didn't pay much, but each of the workers was provided a home and paid a pension of shares in the estate. This meant that although not one person individually owned a huge stake in the company, combined, 70% was owned by the working families. They were also able to supplement their incomes by growing vegetables in their gardens and selling them at local markets.
It sounded idyllic.

We finished eating and descended into the maze-like mosaics of the tea fields.
The tea plant needs a lot of water but cannot grow in waterlogged soil, so only really thrives on steep inclines where it rains a lot but the water can run off. As a consequence, I assume like rice in paddy fields, it has been impossible to industrialise, as there is no mechanised contraption that can simultaneously handle the terrain and harvest the plants.
Because of this, tea plantations are totally silent and peaceful. There is no sound of machinery, and the only thing that you can really hear, is the sound of the wind in the leaves, the wildlife, and the women singing and chatting in the fields. Strangely enough, walking through, it doesn't smell of anything. Only when it is chopped and dried does tea smell like tea.
Babu described life on the plantations as simple but happy and sociable. Everybody who worked there loved it and couldn't imagine wanting to do anything else, and as they all had an equal stake in the wellbeing of the estate, there was a very lively and enthusiastic community spirit.
I have to say, seeing and hearing all this as we walked down, if i had to work the earth somewhere in the world, it would be here. It was like agricultural heaven, a farmer's utopia. The place was stunningly beautiful, immaculately manicured and more peaceful and serene than i had ever imagined. If i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i don't know if i'd have believed it. Even now, i considered the possibility that it was some sort of anti-coffee propaganda and that the entire site was little more than an Indian Potemkin village.
We walked past some of the workers' houses and a school, and even they were pretty. It was like wandering through an Asian version of Hobbitton.
We reached the processing factory at the bottom of the valley, which, although it wasn't the prettiest building in

the world, could be forgiven its aesthetic shortcomings for pumping out the most amazing smell from its chimneys.

We drank sweet, frothy, milky tea at a stall and was easily the best i have ever tasted. Bizarre really, because this particular estate was one of the biggest suppliers to Tetleys, which in comparison, tastes like shit.
On the way back to Munnar, Babu told me of a friend of his in Kumily, my next destination, who could put me up in his hostel and take me on a trek through the jungle to see the local wildlife. He gave me the name of the hostel and told me he would ring ahead and have his friend pick me up from the bus-stop. Normally i am instantly suspicious of this kind of offer, but i was in such a good mood after such a great morning that i agreed. If his his trek up the mountain and through the tea estate was anything to go by, i would assume his mate's trek through the jungle would be equally beautiful and interesting.

Munnar Munnar

Munnar.
I arrived at about 10:30 and have decided that in future, perhaps i should consult the guide more closely.
The town is essentially a street upon which traders selling food, SIM cards, homemade chocolate, teas and STDs (?) bustle everywhere. The place is beyond chaos and although significantly smaller than Kochi, seems somehow busier. It's surrounded by tea plantations founded by Scottish colonialists in the middle of the mountains and it smells like cardomom and traffic.
On the bus ride on the way up, we'd stopped once in a dusty little village. The driver got off and trotted into a cafe to have breakfast. I didn't like the look of what he was eating - some sort of unidentifiable fried donut - so i bought some fruit from a nearby stall; a few bananas the size of my thumb, two green oranges (would you call them greens?) and a bunch of red grapes. The guy offered to wash the grapes for me, and he showed me that the water was clean by way of pouring a soapy substance into it, but i decided to just buy a bottle of water and wash them myself in the street outside. I regretted it on the bus, when i discovered that my clump of grapes was swarming with ants and they had taken it upon themselves to escape from the fruit and make a run for it accross the seat and towards me. I had actually eaten loads of the grapes and they did seem fine, but it was still pretty early for this kind of nonsense, so i hurled them out of the window and switched seats, watching with interest to see who would sit there. Alas, no-one did.
I wanted to stay at a hostel called the Greenview, recommended in the guide because of the treks they organised into the mountains and tea plantations. From what i could gather of Munnar, there was very little else to do there, so it seemed like a reasonable thing to do.
Upon exiting the bus, the usual melee of people with rickshaws and tuk-tuks greeted us, trying to get us back to their various hotels and hostels. I, however, had a plan. On the map, the Greenview was only 500m or so up the road, so i decided to walk rather than pay the equivilent of 20pence to get a lift. I was plagued incessantly by transport touts who all assured me that it actually was quite far and they'd be happy to drive me there for next to nothing.
Yeah, right. I thought. I've seen this before.
It was easily over a mile and by the time i got there, with my heavy rucksack, i was knackered and sweating, and one of the tuk-tuk drivers sat smiling at me from behind the desk.
There was to be a hike up into the mountains leaving at 5:30am the next day, so they suggested i freshen up, change and head into town to have a look round before catching a relatively early night. It sounded like a good idea, so i went up to my room to sort myself out.
It was a large one, on the roof, with windows on 3 of the 4 walls that gave me a great view of the lush, green surrounding mountains and the building site next-door. There was a diesel generator running out on my balcony that i could only assume was powering either the AC, the hot water, or in fact the entire building. Occasionally, i would get a waft of it through the airvent, but aside from that, the room was perfectly sound and very cheap.
I showered, and halfway through changing, suddenly felt very tired, so decided to have a quick nap. I had gotten up at 5am, after all. It was about 12:30 by now, so i reasoned i could have a quick one before lunch.
I woke up at 6:30 with a sore throat, a pounding headache and the oily taste of diesel in my mouth. That bloody generator had been slowly poisoning me! I dragged myself out of bed and, still clothed, stumbled out of the room. As soon as I breathed fresh air, i was fine and as the fog cleared from my vision, i started to feel hungry, so headed into town.
That night, i slept like a log. The combination of tiredness, lack of oxygen and excess carbon-monoxide probably helped, and when i woke up in the morning, i felt surprisingly good.
My immune system was evidently better at adapting to these adverse conditions i was constantly subjecting it to.
Next: breathing underwater.

Enduring Kochi

The next morning I wake feeling slightly nauseous and with a slight headache. Already.
I assume quickly that this is not because i have eaten anything dodgy (I ate only one non-airplane-related dish yesterday and it was entirely vegetarian). It's also not because I gargled with the tap-water after brushing my teeth (i didn't even swallow the stuff). It's simply because every time i inhale, eveything i come into contact with, all i touch, smell or taste, even everything that i see, is covered with bacteria that is entirely alien to my body. I picture them looking like microscopic angry spiders with stumpy legs floating about in the soupy air around me. I was not designed to be in this environment. My immune system is being bombarded from all sides. I'm being slowly poisoned via osmosis. I figure that after a few days, I'll build up a tolerance but also resign myself to the fact that this might just be the base-level sickness I am to expect and that rather than get better, i'll just get used to it.
Maybe i actually just shouldn't have gargled the tap-water.
I'll keep doing it anyway. Perhaps my body will build up its own antibody.

After a civilised breakfast of omlette, cinamon toast and watermelon washed down with strong locally-grown coffee and eaten to the strains of Edith Piaf, I decide to rent a motorbike and see what this town has to offer in the daytime. First though, a haircut.
I've decided to take it all off. A combination of it actually being quite long, me being very hot, the slight risk of lice, and the continued onset of baldness, has brought me to this. I find a suitably odd-looking beauty parlour, where a visibly stoned, moustachioed youth expertly takes a cut-throat razor to my head and face while a banghra version of Michael Jackson's Dangerous plays in the background. Bizarrely, the only bit of my skin that gets nicked is my nose. He washes my hair before and my head afterwards, and although in the past, I have been asked to lean backwards into the washsink, here the custom appears to uncomfortably put your head in face-first, not unlike what i understand the theory behind waterboarding is. The whole thing takes the best part of 45 mins and as i look at myself in the mirror, I have two thoughts:
(a) Actually that looks pretty cool! I just need to get the head the same colour as the face.
(b) Startled, shaven monkey. Have my ears always looked like that?
My fears were immediately put to rest upon exiting the barber shop, when a beggar sitting outside whistled and said "Hey, FightClub!"
I thnk that's what he said, anyway. Rather pleased at having been compared to Brad Pitt (or at least someone beaten up by him - hmmm, maybe Meatloaf!), i toss him the change left over from my haircut.

Driving a motorbike in India appears to be much the same as any other developing nation. The roads in Kerala are notoriously bad, so people tend to swerve around a lot to avoid potholes, loose bits of wood, other vehicles, piles of burning rubble, cows, cats and goats. Hitting any of these could be dangerous, but as they are considered to be holy animals here, hitting a cow could prove deadly if witnessed infront of a particularly religious mob.
I'm pretty sure they drive on the left here, but as ever, it's pretty difficult to tell, as most people aim for the middle.

As i tour Kochi, i detect through the smog, a familiar smell that i have not encountered for a very long time. It took me a long time to work it out, that strange, sweet, spicy burning smell.
I was transported back to a field in 1994. The Wonderstuff were playing their last gig and Iggy Pop was on next. I'd just seen Lee Evans do his Bohemian Rhapsody mime sketch and I was now lounging with my feet sticking out of a tent wondering whether to buy acid or not.
Bidi's! They were an odd concotion of illicit herbs and spices, wrapped in a brittle tobacco leaf and fastened with string to be smoked. I'd bought a load of them at the Phoenix Festival with my cousin Jascha, thinking that they contained hash. We spent the rest of the summer smoking them, imagining ourselves high. They were, and i'm sure still are, horrible, and all the men here seem to smoke them.
I decide not to buy any, even though through the haze of nostalgia, they appear quite appealing. I shall try not to smoke this holiday, quite a difficult task when you're travelling by yourself for a bit, as it's a good time-filler. I figure the quality of the air here means that i'm likely to be inhaling enough noxious fumes without voluntarily adding to them.

I continue along the road on my Enfield.
"It's brand new," the guy had said at the motorbike rental place.
I looked at the quite obviously ancient machine. It was army-green and I would have been amazed to discover it was less than 60years old. Post-war, I reckon, but only just. The fuel gauge and speedometer were broken and it required a pretty solid kick to get it started, but it looked bloody cool.

"How much for the day?"

He said it would be the equivilent of about 5 pounds so I said i'd take it. He said i'd have to wait 10 minutes for him to syphon all the petrol out.

You gotta love India.

On the way through Kochi to find the synagogue (the oldest in India and as far as i can tell, significant only because of it's location: India), I found myself behind an open-backed goods vehicle. I considered overtaking it, but with the amount of honking, swearing and waving going on and the number of cows, goats and dogs i had already nearly collided with, i decided to hang back. It was then that i noticed the goods being hauled.
I couldn't tell exactly what it was - sacks of something, possibly rice or lentils - but each was emblazoned with a series of swastikas. Now, I know that before being adopted by the Nazis, the swastika was an ancient buddhist symbol. I'd seen it in temples accross South East Asia. However, here, it just seemed a little odd.
I was driving a war-era motorbike through dusty foreign streets, in pursuit of a truck containing Nazi cargo. It was like a scene from Indiana Jones. I even had a skinhead! If only i had army fatigues and a monocle, i could have been the most perfect extra.

The synagogue was underwealming. The guy outside wouldn't let me in because i was wearing shorts, so i waited until he started berating a fat lady with a skirt on and slipped past. Not much to see, although very pretty tiles and an elaborate golden ark. The guy caught me on my way out and started shouting at me in some Indian dialect. I had no idea what he was saying, but i'm sure he was telling me off for being disrespectful. I offered him a note, 100rupees, which i think is just over a pound, and he took it greedily, smiling immediately and patting me on the back. Jews... They're the same the world over.
Outside I spotted a sign bearing the words "Sassoon Hall", an indication that some of my Jewish ancestors, The Sassoons had at some point had a hall named after them, i guess.

I decided it was time to leave Kochi. The place was pretty dull, not very attractive and i felt that i'd gotten everything out of it that i was likely to. I would leave for Munnar in the morning, a destination chosen almost at random because i liked the picture of the mountains in the guidebook.
I have to get up at 5am in order to catch the bus. That's the problem with these holidays, you actually never feel that rested because you always have to get up early. Despite Munnar only being 160km away, I am told the journey will take between 4 and 5 hours. When you see the state of the buses and the roads though, you can believe it.
I buy an alarm. It's a little plastic imitation cuckoo-clock, the only one i could find at the market and go back to the hotel to sort out my stuff.
Posing with my new haircut for a bit infront of the mirror, i decide that i actually could look pretty menacing if i pull the right face, like one of those nutters in the crowd at a Henry Rollins concert. I also consider the prospect that i might end up being the only person i know to have gone to India and come back fatter.
I know it's still early days, but maybe i should go out and buy some seafood from those guys on the front. Just to be safe.