Day 5 - Kochi to Coonoor

Up early this morning at 6:00am for breakfast and a 7:00am departure from Kochi. Our Tour Leader had organised the tuk-tuk convoy, the hotel staff loaded them with out bags and we were off to the Kochi railway station at Ernakulam. We were about to experience our first train ride on the almost legendary Indian railway network. At about 8:15am our train pulled into the station – boy, was it loooonnngg! Through luck (but probably because of good planning on our Tour Guide's part) our assigned carriage stopped right where the group was standing. We received our seat assignments, boarded the train with all our luggage and we were off. Traveling in style, we were in an air-conditioned carriage! Kerry and I were assigned seats in non-adjacent compartments. Not a drama at all as we'd begun to establish good relationships with everyone in the small group so it was good to have the opportunity to develop them.

Each carriage has about six or so distinct, but open, compartments. Each compartment has two, roomy and comfortable three-person bench seats facing each other. The compartment seating can be converted into a sleeper compartment with a little adjustment of the bench seats. Some of the group took advantage of that and took a nap during the journey, including Kerry.

Our journey was to last five hours, taking us to the town of Coimbatore. The train slowly trundled along the track, stopping at stations here and there. I took advantage of this and spent some time hanging out the carriage door to get some photos and to get away from the super-efficient air-conditioning!

We were met at the station in Coimbatore by Clement and his 15-seat bus. From there we headed to a local restaurant for a quick lunch. Kerry and I had a bread that was blown up like a balloon and served with a chutney and something else, sort of a white, grainy paste. Don't know what any of it was called but it was delicious. Along with two bottles of water and two cold lime sodas we parted with 282 rupees or about AUD$5.60. The traffic and the noise and the ever-present population were no different in this town. We're quickly learning that Kochi was just the norm in this Country. 

Clement skillfully wound his way through the traffic and before long we reached the edge of town and headed for the Western Ghats and Coonoor. During the course of the day we would rise from sea-level up to 1600m with most of it happening in the last two hours of travel. A quick pit stop was made just before the climb started for a comfort stop and a chance to replace our shop-bought disposable plastic bottle with reusable ones. Disposable plastic is banned from the environmentally fragile and significant area we were about to enter – experience showed further down the road that this is a nice sentiment, but that's all. Up the steep and winding mountain road went our little bus, through the never ending traffic and road side stalls. We were now being accompanied by monkeys all the way along our journey, there numbers increasing the higher we went. Saw plenty of near misses between cars and trucks and buses on the way up. If a driver sees half a chance to get past the vehicle in front he will take that chance. Sometimes he runs out of runway much sooner that expected, usually because a huge truck has appeared from around the blind corner! Clement was as guilty of this as the next driver.

After a long drive we finally made it to the hill-top town of Coonoor. This is at the centre of the tea industry in the Nilgris mountains of the Western Ghats – a range that runs down much of the western coast of India. Coonoor and neighboring Ootacamund are the towns that sprung up when the British East India Company decided to break the monopoly that China had on tea growing and stat growing there own – but more about that tomorrow. 

Just as the day was ending we arrived at our destination – the Tiger Hill Cottage. Our room has a balcony with sweeping views of the endless tea gardens below with little tea plantation settlements dotted across the hillsides. Tomorrow we'll get a closer look at the tea industry and all that it means tio this community.