India - Part I

Oh my god, I'm so slack - nothing since January. Apologies. Here is some news:

Munnar.

Munnar is tea country. It is where Sarah and I started our (overdue) honeymoon in Kerala, India. The town is high up in the mountains, about 3,000m above sea level, and the climate is cool despite the tropical latitude.

And there is tea: beautiful tea plantation on slopes of about 60°; a tea museum with working tea factory; whole leaf tea; dust tea; black, green, white and masala tea. We even stayed in a place called the Tea Country Hotel. Now, what type of tea do you reckon they served?

Tetleys.

(Tetleys, in fact, was served all over Kerala, and while way better than gut-rot Liptons, the standard hotel tea in Dubai, it is still really bad.)

Our time in Munnar also took in a trip to a dam which our driver, reluctant to carry on further, perhaps, or maybe eager to get back to hanging out with the other drivers, assured us was the same as Top Station. Now, I suspect that Top Station might have been near or at the top of the mountain and would have a killer view. The dam was picturesque, but the vista from a valley just isn't the same.

Kumarakom.

Four long hours after leaving Munnar we arrived at Kumarakom, just 175km away. We stayed at Coconut Lagoon, a very chilled resort on the backwaters where we could relax, get off Indian food for a bit (turns out Sarah doesn't like it) and get massaged.

Aruyvedic massage is a bit different to what I'm used to. For starters, the guy makes you strip, ties a cord around your waist, then tucks in a bit of material front and back for modesty, which he then takes off once you're face down on the table. The hard wooden table. With no hole for your face. Anyway, after some rubbing, he takes a small sack of herbs, heated to near the temperature of the sun, and tries to transfer the healing properties of thyme directly to your muscles by hitting you with the sack as hard and as often as he can. You basically come out of it smelling like a roast.

But it's good stuff: I had two in Coconut Lagoon, just focussing on my messed up, stressed out shoulders and back where the guy tried to squeeze the muscle knots into another dimension. God it hurt... But as I say, good stuff.

Back to Kumarakom, though, and Coconut Lagoon. This place rocks and would be perfect for a week long party. Anyone interested in a cheap holiday with a good crew: I want to recruit enough people to fill 50 rooms in around a year from now. There's a pool, you get there on a little boat, there's a great massage centre and free yoga every morning! Let me know.

Backwaters.

Coconut Lagoon is on the backwaters, a series of lakes and canals just back from the coast. Now, I didn't mean to rough it, I really didn't. I only wanted to spend an afternoon cruising the backwaters before heading back to the resort, but the agent suggested a houseboat, my friend Anand told me I should "rock the boat", it being our honeymooon and all, and there is something romantic about cruising around in a private boat being waited on hand and foot for a day and a night. But the truth is, after a couple of hours there's nothing new to see, and once it gets dark you realise that an afternoon cruise was certainly the best option.

Of course, I should have guessed that the water on the boat would not be from a tank of pristine, or even semi-clean water when I stepped aboard. And I was foolish not to twig when we washed our hands and they dried sticky. But it was only when I gave into the accumulated grime, sweat, suncream and mosquito repellent and stepped into the shower that I realised the taps drew directly from the fetid river that smelt of sewage (due, no doubt, to the high levels of sewage in the water).