The first of many driving tales…

Today’s been a day of driving as we’ve made our way to Kodaikanal, a hill station in the Western Ghats. 12 of us piled into a minibus sized van this morning which meant the 9 hour drive was going to be loud and more than a little crazy. A couple of hours outside Cochin, you begin to feel the elevation shift and soon after you’re careening through winding steep roads in the foothills of the Western Ghats.

Driving in India is usually an adventure but today’s drive had me questioning how long I had to live with every bump and turn. They say that you can approximate a person’s lifespan using demographic factors like country of birth, fitness, smoking habits etc. They forgot a box to check off whether you’ve been driving in India. I should give credit to our driver; dodging a car by inches is normally dumb-luck, but that can’t be the case when you do it every 5 minutes. His ability didn’t change the fact that traffic ranging from bikes to large busses were all competing to traverse these roads with rapidly changing steep elevation that were about 1.5 lanes wide at best. To improve matters, I sat in the front seat, which wasn’t anchored down and could fold over to let people into the minibus. It was always reassuring to see the driver put on his belt during particularly precarious moments, as I would reach over and be reminded I had no belt. Auto rickshaws are usually the craziest driving but they’ve officially been dethroned by the wild, mountain climbing minibus.

All the perils of the road were more than made up for by the view during our journey. The Western Ghats aren’t a tall mountain range, so from foot to peak they remain in an elevation range that can still sustain lush vegetation. Even as we achieved a few kilometers of elevation, dense greenery covered the slopes which spanned as far as the eye could see. Clouds rolling through blanketed entire hillsides with fog affording only an almost impressionist style blurred, smoky view of the mountains. Occasionally one would pass and you’d have a clear if brief glimpse at a river, thin waterfall or occasional cottage.

As we approached Munnar, the forestry was replaced by thin lines of tea bushes forming a horizontal grid over miles of slopes. Their ranks were spotted with occasional workers plucking the tea leaves. From time to time we would drive by a group of workers harvesting leaves and it was a wonder they could remain standing let alone working with their massive back-sacks of leaves on the steep ground. I’d like to go back and visit Munnar and its tea covered slopes again someday.

We had a few other mini-adventures during the drive. Apparently we passed through the home region of Veerappan, the Al Capone of Southern India. He was an infamous businessman who surrounded himself with men who “took care of business” and used violence to wield influence from the safety of the mountains. We stopped for two kinds of mangos along the way, and they were amazing (we’re not even in Andhra Pradesh yet). Hunting for food our temperamental American stomachs can handle is always fun. I’m finally starting to pick up some Malayalam.