Leaving Vagamon we traveled 150km (93 miles) in almost 6 hours. Yeah, that’s right. Kerala’s road system can be described only as twisty. I don’t think we ever hit any kind of straightaway. It was a two part journey. Part one in a car to Munnar. We traveled through endlessly lush terrain and plantations for miles. Part two in a jeep to the middle of nowhere beyond Munnar. The last hour in the jeep nearly broke me. Ironic since I thought my Kenyan overlanding days had toughened me up. Apparently not. It might have been the incessant squealing horn that was my undoing.
Still driving. I’m glad we’re doing a “small” loop in Kerala!!! Plenty to see here.
We’re here for a few days getting back to our traveling ways and living life on the road. Some exercising, walking, hiking, reading, schooling, writing, resting, doing laundry and catching up on blogging and travel logistics. That had been squeezed into the seams of adventures and volunteering last month. It’s funny to think that most of our India trip was booked on a bumpy bus ride to Tanzania with intermittent internet. It’s liberating to think about not having to apply for any more visas. It’s surreal to be talking about the next few legs, all the way to the end. Though “end” doesn’t resonate with me at all. Life is an endless series of chapters. There’s always another leg in the journey.
The location is sublime. Sitting in the garden in the afternoon is also sublime. So many flowers and grand views. The food is otherworldly, again. The hosts are so kind. We’re so high in the hills now that it’s less hot here, and downright cool in the evening. Cold weather gear has emerged from deep in our luggage. It’s a big log cabin. The owner built it himself with some help from YouTube and online log home groups. Took a decade. They opened it eight years ago. The bedding is wonderfully cozy but the place isn’t cozy. It’s simple and rough, which I usually love. Will says it lacks life. It did not pass the Hazel test. And while this is far from “bad”, I definitely think a few less ideal experiences along the way are good for everyone. We stayed in a hotel in Nairobi that was so bad that I think we will laugh about it for years. The hard and the tough and the I-don’t-like-this of travel gives perspective. My brothers and I still laugh about a hilariously bad hotel our family stayed at in London. Cherry Court. That rough night provided 40 years of laughs and still going strong. Imagine. Priceless.
Scenes below from a family walk. The guesthouse dog Charlie joined us. A few jeeps drove by us. One of them apparently was a logging jeep. I did not know that was a thing.
Justin and I went for a great long hike. It felt so deep in Kerala. We walked by some food stands on the road, a tiny village, and through forests and farmland, even some active construction sites and logging. If there is a beaten path in Kerala we left it a long time ago. We stopped to buy some passion fruit. I thought we were getting charged a wildly high price (230 rupees for one fruit) until the guy (photo below) handed me a bag with almost 20 passion fruit!! The perfect trail food.
So much terraced agriculture. Echoes to Spain, Andorra, France, Morocco and more. So much farming happens on hillside ledges around the world.
Manual labor in India is a marvel. It always involve a lot of men, almost no automated equipment, and an impressive command of the laws of physics to move heavy things. The guys moving heavy logs were even doing coordinated heavy grunting in moments of intense effort. It was actually more of a sing-song than grunting to be honest. Trucks and buses in India have the funniest sayings on them, often macho in angry, stark fonts. Nothing like the gentle people here. The Timber Express Gift of God truck was a good chuckle. “Hard work Never fails”.
We saw more beautiful flowers. Plants and flowers have changed from the lower elevations. It’s less of the tropical lush vibe we experienced in Vagamon, and more of a mountain hill vibe. The cool air is lovely. It is such a different India than my experiences in Rajasthan thirty years ago, and yet at the same time it is so, so India. Both can be true. India is a huge country, with so many varied regions, that spans from the Himalaya to the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal.
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