A cool place : Kodaikanal

After saying farewell to the Bay of Bengal, we headed off to a cooler refuge.  The heat was doing us in. On a semi-sleeper bus (bus with super-reclining chairs), we headed off on an overnight journey.  How many overnights is that in India?  Jeez !  I thought we were done with overnight bus rides in Turkey!

It was all worth it.  We had found a diamond in the the Western Indian mountains, way up  known as the Western Ghats.  The weather was cool, the town was small, the trekking opportunities, endless.  I've said it before, a place can make or break an experience.  Our place made it.  It was the most beautiful (yet basic) cabin perched on a cliff looking over an enormous valley, with hundreds of little towns and community below.  This place is up there in the most beautiful views we've seen on our journey.  Kodaikanal was a very special place however, the best view laid right outside our door.  After a lot of trekking, we decided that the view we had right outside our door was the best one.  We would wake up at sunrise and be surrounded by the most beautiful pinks and oranges, coloring the clouds and lighting up the sky.

The perfect  view of the Western Ghats.  This is on our balcony !

Communities on the hills

Low clouds...waiting for climax, sunrise

And there it is.  Every morning, we woke up to this. 

An interesting fact that I learned about India was that of 75 % of India's population which is about 1.21 billion people by the way) live in villages and rural areas.  That's a lot of people, that's a lot of villages.

See that valley over there.  Looks empty but it's dotted with little communities everywhere.

From where we were, we couldn't see many villages.  It felt like we were isolated and in the middle of nowhere.  But once night-time fell and we could see all the small lights that lit up the valley below, we quickly realized that no, we were not isolated.  We couldn't see all these viallges during the day but at night they lit up the valley, imitating (and outnumbering) the stars above.  You couldn't tell where one village started and where one ended.  It looked like a sprawled-out city.  I was thinking about Canada's population.  In mountainous landscape like this, there would be no city, no villages.  The valley would be empty.  Here, it was full.  If there are that many villages in a valley, nestled between forested mountains, then I can just imagine how many villages there are in India, and how many people live in them.  75% of 1.21 billion to be exact !

Trekking opportunities were a plenty out here.

Enjoying nature

You might think you're alone but you're not.  People pop out of nowhere.  Here, we thought we were isolated but nope, a lady nearby was doing the wash.

Okay Chris, so it's not Niagara Falls but look happy !

Mmmm....some fresh air ! 

And clean water?

We came by a Jain temple. Jainism is an Indian religion, promoting pacifism and non-violance towards all living beings.  As a matter of fact, hardcore vegans.  They will sweep the floor in front of them to avoid accidentally stepping on bugs and they will also cover their mouths with a handkerchief to avoid accidental inhalation of insects.  They also follow a very strict diet (no root vegetables, its harvesting means endeing a life-cycle).  You cannot go into a temple wearing ANY animal products (take off those wool socks or silk scarf and that leather belt...forget it). Temples are always white.

I heart Hindu temples.

If there was an award for trekking irresponsibly, Chris and I would be the winners.   We had met this really friendly Spanish guy called Edwardo.  Edwardo had heard of a really good 9 km hike down to the valley and we planned to trek it us three. together  Unfortunately, things didn't pan out, Edwardo couldn't make it as his bus was leaving in the early afternoon, so he left us the trek "directions" gave us his e-mail and told us that if we did do the hike, e-mail him to let him know how it was.   Lesson #1:  Never attempt to trek a trail that someone has "heard of".  Only trek what has been done (and talk directly to those who have done it).  So, we headed off with 2 liters of water and a good spirit.  Our directions were:  Go to Dolphin nose, which is 2 kms away, than to the Villpatti, which is 5 kms away, than to Perioculam, which is 2 kms more. Than, take a bus back to Kodaikanal.  "Okay, so that's a 4-5 hour hike" we thought.  We got to Dolphin Nose at 11 am or so and thought we still had plenty of time to get through the forest, than the jungle, to Perioculam.  The "directions" were off.  From Dolphin nose to Villpatti was 8 kms, not 2.  We got to Villpatti and thought "phew, only 2 kms more".  Villpatti was a really nice mountain village.  No road access, no english (yay for charades).  Then we headed out to Perioculam, which was supposed to be 2 kms away from Villpatti.  It wasn't. It was 12 kms away.  Chris and I were not ready for that and got our doseful of desperation, as we were not prepared to hike that long in the jungle.  After Villpatti, we were heading down into humid and dense jungle terrain.  Palm trees, monkeys and vines were coming up everywhere.  No village in sight.  We had no idea how far away it was and sunset was coming.  What to do.  We were out of water.  Forks were everywhere on the trail. We hadn't seen anyone for at least 5 kms. The sun was starting to set. We were running out of time.  We hadn't told anyone where we were going. We were not looking good.  I was getting nervous.  Yet panic is death waiting on your shoulder and thank goodness we stayed calm.  Without wanting to mention it, we were thinking about where would be a good place to call it a night amidst this unknown jungle terrain.  I was looking for a cave of some sort, Chris was looking for fallen palms.  It was not nice as I kept thinking about what nocturnal animals prowled around the jungle at night.  Do panthers hunt during the day? I decided not to think about it too much.  We were vulnerable, tired and dehydrated.  Still no village in sight.

Starting the hike, all happy and optimistic

Wow, I could do this all day !

Oh crap, it's starting to look like jungle...and no sign of a village

Here I am pissed off and secretly panicking a little....

The neverending trail....hopefully it's the right one !

Then, bliss.  The trail turned into a road.  Things were looking up.  We kept walking on this road and noticed that we had walked right into a mango orchard (although the mangoes were not ripe).  Like some kind of Simpsons episode, we were hungry, dehydrated and surrounded by unripe mangoes.  Then, we passed by THREE drinking water packaging factories, all closed and locked up.  Still, we were happy that we had come upon civilization and out of the jungle.  Workers and farmers were biking by, looking at us, waving, smiling, probably wondering what the hell we were doing there.  Then, one man drove by on his motorcycle, stopped and said "lift?"  We took it and he brought us to the small village, would you know it, called Perioculam. That was our final destination.  With hand gestures and a small Tamil dictionary, we got directions to the bus station and took a bus back to Kodaikanal, which took us another 2.5 hours. Initially, I thought we'd be back home at 5pm.  Then, desperately trekking, I thought we were going to sleep in the jungle or at someone's house in one of the villages (buses only run until a certain time).  But by 9:30 pm, we we're back in Kodaikanal.  And by 10pm, we were sitting on our balcony, watching the villages lite up below, laughing at ourselves and trying to figure out what way we had trekked and which village we had reached down below.  Many lesson were learnt that day.  Lessons of responsible trekking. We wrote to Edwardo and told him his trek was a monster. 


But we did get to see a lot of wildlife while we were trekking !

Bison.  These things do not look like the bison from the plains at all !  They're enormous!  We'd be sitting in front of our room at night and then we'd hear rustling in the bushes. Out would come this dinosaur sized bison.  They didn't bother us and we didn't bother them. We just did a lot of staring. I bow down to the horns.

Big fella wanna belly rub?

And then there's these guys.  I guess you could call them wild, yet they are a common sight in the streets of India.  Some of them are owned by someone.  Others are just free roamers.  (The branding breaks my heart)

Thank goodness they're friendly ! They LOOOOVE banana peels.

After spending a good week in Kodaikanal, we decided to go on a two day hike to Munnar, a tea plantation town 90 kms away. Then, we found out that our monstrous hike was actually the first day's worth of hiking to Munnar ! Cheesh !  Not wanting to do it again, we met the team. And guess where? Perioculam of course!  From there we did the second day's hike to Munnar.  It was a wonderful hike uphill, which was a relief because the other one we did was downhill and only downhill.  My big toe had had enough !

Our hiking team, a small, yet in-shape team

Hiking away from the ghats.  This was our last view of the mountains before heading into tea-plantation land.  Notice the small villages.  No road access.  

For those who like the isolated life.

Mountain village.  This makes me think: Jungle Book

Caption shot.  Kate and I. One of the coolest chicas I've met on our trip.