We are in Kodai for another couple of days!!!

No, this is not Hotel California, we will leave eventually :) We woke up this morning and the place was totally socked in - you could not see 50 feet down the street and the roads were wet from the condensation. We thought it wise not to tackle the 40 kms of curvy roads that would drop us 2000 meters to the valley floor - you have to honk as you go into every corner as it's fairly likely there is some vehicle in the middle of the road, more than likely a bus - hey, we're no dummies!!!

As we were walking down PT Road we spotted the woman that we had met and shared a cab with on our arrival in Delhi. How cool is that? Two chance meetings in a week? There must be some sort of weird vortex on this hill :) Anyway, we knew that she was working for a charity and working in an art gallery, we just couldn't find it - our trekking guide didn't know about it when we asked him and it wasn't in either the Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide - and we thought we were going to miss hooking up. As it turns out, it is looking like tomorrow we will get to go on a visit to some of the creches that they have set up in some of the local villages - we worth the delay in our journey.

Here is the story on the creches. Under 5's are at the greatest risk of not surviving (all sorts of reasons, none of them nice). The mother will either take the kid to do whatever work she needs to do (farming, gathering firewood, etc.) or leave the kid at home, alone. They have set up some creches near the villages for the mothers to drop their kids at during the day - it's good for the mothers and great for the kids - a whole group of playmates and someone to watchover them and keep them out of trouble (sounds like what I need :). We are looking forward to it and we will let you know how it goes. Here is the link to their website:
http://www.help-kids-india.org

One thought and then I will take you back to Alleppey :)

One of the things that is very cool for us (or for me anyway :) is that we are also very much into our motorcycling - sometimes it's all about the ride :) The ride from Munnar to Kodai was very much like that, as was the road to Top Station above Munnar (more about these later). Fabulous curvy roads matched to beautiful scenery - it just doesn't get any better than this, really. Yes, the Pulsars are a bit gutless, but they are still WAY better, in more ways than one, than taking the bus :) And if I had a more powerful bike...the roads are just not up to the task, so it would be wasted.

OK, way back to Alleppey (this is BEFORE we met Kate and Carl, when I lost that post). Early the first morning we left the motorbikes at the guesthouse and had a day of alternate transport. We needed to be at the ferry terminal for the 7:30 ferry so we hopped a rickshaw. That was fun - we flagged down an autorickshaw, but he already had a fare...but hey, we are foreigners! so the guy pulled over and his local customer had to get out (silly, isn't it?). We told him we wanted to go to the ferry jetty and asked how much, he said 50 rupees - now that is not a huge sum anywhere except here - that is HIGHWAY ROBBERY! I said 20 rupees, which is still a lot to pay for what should have been a 10 rupee journey, but it was early, we were in a bit of a rush and I didn't see any other rickshaws. The driver laughed and said "ok". The local guy hopped into the front seat with the driver and continued his journey with is for another 500 meters or so, too :)

We made it to the jetty with a couple minutes to spare and got a premium front seat! This is definitely a local type service - we only paid 10 rupees each for a 2.5 hour journey along 30 kms of canals. Alleppey (also known as Allapuzha) is known as the Venice of India, an inland waterway system that is the center of the "Kerala Backwater Experience". What a coincidence - A and I spent last Christmas in Venice and this was very much reminding us of the ferry that we took from the airport to Venice proper almost exactly a year previous! Well...it was a lot warmer in India :)

The boat departed, quite full of local people and a few tourists. It zigzagged its way back along the channel, picking up and discharging passengers at small jettys on both sides of the canal. It was peaceful the first half of the journey - a wide canal, lots of birds, rice paddies, coconut trees and people washing themselves, their laundry and their dishes :) The canal is lined with stone walls planted with coconut trees to strengthen the walls. Behind that is narrow strips of land, some of it reclaimed, for the houses and beyond are the rice paddies.

About halfway (timewise) we entered a much narrower canal, maybe 10 meters. We started picking up school children dressed neatly in their school uniforms - the older kids were in red plaid shirts with red shorts and the little kids were in a blue variation. It started to get very loud with chatter...and the honking of the boat captain so that someone would open the drawbridge for us :) We arrived at the school and discharged the horde :)

We saw lots of bird life - cormorants, egrets, and others that I have no clue who they were :) We also saw a temple washing the dishes - they had a rack of plates that was more suited to an industrial dishwasher right on the edge of the canal, and some huge cooking pots :)

We arived in Kottayam, found some breakfast and then tried to find the bus. We asked some very nice guys and they led us to the bus station and helped us find our bus (on the way was the A's pickpocket attempt). The bus back was great - not the scary experience that we expected at all! It took 1.5 hours for the 45 km journey and it cost us 28 rupees each. It was nice to be on the bus - we are rarely able to focus on the side of the road while on the bikes and we could also talk to each other about what we were seeing. It was a great day off the bikes :)

Next time I will tell you about our adventures in the Western Ghats!

Later!!!!