Empire of Tea

We arrive under cover of night after 6 hours of bumpy bus riding and grinding through mountain roads, into the Western Ghats of Kerala. It is painful and hard. We're not sure it was worth it, since it's totally dark, colder, and it looks like another small Indian town. I tell everyone that in the morning that we will find out whether this place was worth it or not, once we can see our new digs: Munnar. Munnar sounds like Moon + Lunar. Everytime we see a cow Yotam says "Moo-nar".



It's only 9 or so, and the only food available, really, is the food stall for drivers. We dive in.

Above, you can see men using the four food groups -- flour, ghee, water, and heat -- to make delicious Paratha, Dosas, and Chapati. We eat beans and eggs with these breads. Quite a scene, and we're basically the only foreigners eating here, which is either foolish, adventurous, or both.



We wake up and see this. We are startled.

Our accommodation, Devonshire Hills Club, is totally surreal. I feel that we've stepped into some kind of Chronicles of Narnia like place, but with the usual Indian Masala mix of chaos, dust, and roughness. Two gardeners work every morning for hours, but the carpets in the room look every day of their twenty years, without a moment's cleaning or upkeep. It's a kind of run down YMCA facility, with a staff of at least five people doting over us. We are basically the only guests, as far as we can tell. They practically plead with us to play Billiards, Ping Pong, and eat their food. Everyone wants us to play and have a good time. Breakfast is brought to our rooms, and our cook is super eager to make us breakfast and dinner. He is always disappointed when we tell him we're not eating in his Cantina. Turns out it's a sort of country club for mid level staff of the tea plantations, accountants and so on. The managers have their own club which was the British club many years ago. We're told the tea pickers have their own club, too, though I'm doubtful, since they seem to live in long houses roofed in corrugated iron.

A huge area around Munnar is covered in tea plantations. Even Tata, the Gibson-esque, Zorastrian family owned, Indian mega corportation with holdings in everything from steel, cell phones, satellite tv, cars, has a tea plantation here. We decide to trek through some emerald green hills of tea. They go on forever. Mountains and mountains of tea. Never in our lives did we imagine we would find ourselves in a place where tea occupied a good 80% of our field of view in all directions. I suppose you could put your head into a large tea leaf filled box, and achieve a higher visual density of tea, but we think our experience might be more pleasant.



So much space, so carefully manicured -- It feels like we are in a Japanese garden, but we've been shrunk down, so we are but ants crawling through the moss of tea.



If you look at this picture above, it's a great example of Japanese garden rock placement -- the rock looks like a mountain in the distance, but it is simply a boulder in the middle ground. And you can see the real mountains in the background (which Japanese gardens don't often have), and how they aren't visually too far off from the rock in the middle ground.



Japanese gardens (see picture above) telescope this sort of space-object relationship, using even smaller rocks in the background of gardens as visual metaphors for large mountains, like this rock is doing here.

It all looks like a kind of video game level -- I want to soar through it, or roll a monkey ball down the paths. It's an extreme example of human cultivation integrating with and building upon natural beauty. The path patterns in the tea look like leaf veins -- pathways of multiple interlocking scales. My inner algorithmist perks up. The smallest pathways seem to emerge from people walking among the bushes while trying to minimize distance to all neighboring tea bush centers, and total length of paths.



We climb up to a mountaintop, hill after hill, to see the next awesome view. Intermittently, in highly remote locations, we find lonely shrines. It's so lovely, Yotam considers withdrawing his PhD candidacy after gaining what he, and some readers have referred to as "perspective". He pens a faux letter to his department:

Dear New York University,

I have decided to withdraw my PhD candidacy.
Lying here on a tea-covered hill in Munnar
has given me a certain perspective unavailable
in New York. I apologize for any difficulty
my non-return may cause.

Sincerely,
Yotam Gingold
February 12th, 2007

Above, a picture of the kind of place the tea pickers live in. If you click into flickr, you can see more detail. Many of the people we meet in Munnar are the children of tea pickers. To the right, some children of tea pickers, returning from school, we think. The girls are standing farther back, a little bit shyer than the boys.



This is a popular resort town with Indians. Lots of newlyweds come here. We overhear, echoing through the mountains, a kind of party from a neighboring resort complete with audience singing, games, and contests. Yotam jokes that it might be a kind of ice breaker/mixer for arranged marriages: "Hello, my name is Sandeep and I love sandcastles. My name is Ranjit and I love long distance running."

We end up, tired after many hours of hiking, at a lovely British looking house with a lovely garden, the same one visible from our room window in the morning, way up in the mountains. (See first picture in this post). A woman informs us this is the manager's bungalow, and she is his wife. Alright then. We must have hiked all afternoon to get here, she tells us. Indeed. We hike another km or so down to the main road, and catch a rick back to town.



The next day we book a jeep to the (reputed) highest tea plantation in the world. It is Mr. Toad's Wild Tea Ride -- it is bumpy, and we climb dizzying heights. Some switch back turns are multi-point turns. Our driver can even talk on his cell phone while managing this. Indian drivers are truly incredible.



We stop at this ridiculous point at the peak of the climb. It feels like we are wandering through the tip top of a cloud scraped Chinese landscape painting.



The photo below really looks like one. Click through for more pictures of this crazy castle in the sky.



Giant clouds that would normally be sailing far overhead just roll up into our feet, and float through us, and being their slow tumble down the other side of the mountain.



We arrive at one of the highest altitude tea plantations in the world, and one which still uses traditional processing techniques. They have no computers, either, just typewriters. Why bother? This is tea we're talking about.



Above, a tea picker, and some machinery they use to sort tea, at one of the final stages of tea preparation. Your writer is too tired of tea and so on to narrate all 11 hundred stages of the tea processing process procedure. Rest assured that tea traditionally undergoes many stages of processing through a series of picturesque machinery before it reaches you. Click through into flickr to browse the machinery. Pretty, no?



Above, Alex and Yotam, members of the tea drinking association here. Alex is wearing his usual American cowboy hat. Just as Canadian backpackers have maple leaf flags on all their stuff, American travelers should always have a cowboy hat at hand, or on head.

At the end of the day, we are exhausted, and I can't figure out why, since mostly we rode around in a jeep. I think because this was basically like riding a horse for five hours -- bumpy, and lots of core strength to balance required.

The next day we decide to see some wildlife and do a trek. Like everything on our trip, it is carefully planned in excruciating detail, at the last minute, over a late, lazy breakfast. We call ahead and are assured that we can do whatever trek we want -- just show up. Ok. After three hours of a distressingly uncomfortably and bumpy bus ride through desperately beautiful scenery, we arrive. We are tired. We see monkeys, which never ever get old. We are told that it is not, in fact, possible, that all the guides are gone, and we're about 20km from anywhere we want to be. And we just missed the last bus back in the opposite direction by 5 minutes. The next will be in three hours. Fine, we'll trek out alone! Oh no, sir, it is dangerous and not allowed. Guides are required. There are leopards, elephants, monkeys, and so on around. Fine, fine.

So, we hitchhike back with a middle aged Indian couple from Tamil Nadu, and head back up the mountain to another trekking outpost, perhaps where we should have stopped. We pass it, believing our driver had proper instructions, and not realizing that we should stop. 4km later: "Where do you want to be dropped off?" Some discussion ensues, and we get out, realize we've overshot by 4km, and we start trekking back. It is getting late, and we are hot, hungry, and tired. All of a sudden a giant open transport truck comes rushing towards us. Thinking fast, we flag it down, and hop onto the back, and hold on for our lives.



Pictured Above: Alex casually holds on to a giant truck so that he doesn't meet death or serious injury. At this point I realize: every trip should have a wild ride in an open air earth shaking multi-ton cargo truck. I mean, really. In Cambodia a few years ago, we biked from Siem Reap to Bantay Srei, which was really friggin far, and then hitchhiked, bikes and all, in a similar truck all the way home, since we were too pooped to do anything but breathe. Once the adrenalin goes, though, you have the energy to hold on, since your comfort, if not your life, seems to be at stake. This part of our trek made up for the other bad bits, and proved our adventuresome souls to all concerned.



The trek afterwards was quite nice, though not as adventurous as getting to the trek. The lesson in all this is that the real trek is getting to where you want and executing plans. Actually following someone else's program -- easy.

We see footprints of leopards, guar, and so on. Some days elephants block the road for hours. Other days, like ours, we see very little. But the views are lovely, and the people are really sweet.



Sadly, we say goodbye to Yotam at this point. His journey with us has come to an end, and he must, in fact, go back to NYU to complete his PhD. All of here at Phases Crossed, and our readers, too, we think, will miss you. Have a great trip back!

God's Own Country

I self-assemble my waking self up in the trees. Birds do their morning chatter. Calling and responding. "Koi-fee, koi-fyee!" Other strange, almost English sounding birdsong prop me up, out of sleep. It's not comfortable sleeping up here, in trees and darkness. Light? The breeze is strong, and cool. My body isn't quite comfortable, since you kind of have to curl up oddly up here. Alex and Yotam are sleeping nearby.



Oh, wait, hold on. We've just woken up in normal sleeper class after a long train ride south from Goa. Right. Those birds are food vendors, and it's dark and windy because it is dark, and the mechanical fans are going strong. Normal sleeper has no AC or sheets or pillows. Whatever. We're hard core, and have places to be.



We have traveled to God's Own Country. That's what Kerala, the name of India's south-west most state, means. It is nice. Pretty nice. Pretty really realy nice.



This is a socialist wonderland! People here are more educated and wealthier, judging by the advertisements around. Look at this poster! It makes me happy in many many ways. Marx, Lenin, the hammer and sickle -- they are all common icons here. I am most pleased knowing that somewhere in the world this graphic design style is still employed without irony. Awesome. Kerala is in fact officially a democratic socialist state. Later we meet a Keralan family. The dad tells us that they have the highest literacy of any Indian state. When he was 15 (20 years ago), through a government organized program, he taught older people how to read and write, which was very hard.



We stop first in Fort Cochin, an ancient trading port. Finding a place to stay was easy. If the neighbor is a nice German lady with cute puppies -- it's a done deal.



You can see here some ancient Kochi Chinese fishing net contraptions. One day, we were minding our own business, and admiring these nets alongside a field trip of young Keralan school children, when all of a sudden the fisherman beckoned to us. Who us? Yes, indeed. They needed our strength!



Not wanting to let these young children down, or our working comrades, for that matter, we naturally joined in and lent our muscle. We of course contributed what we could to the work, and were paid what we needed, which turned out to be a negative quantity of Rupees.

Cochin still has the same problems with trash that all of India seems to have. It is hard to explain the enormity of Trash here, so big, it is capitalized. It is everywhere. Cochin has these open gutters that don't contain sewage as much as this Grey Goo filled with trash. To touch it means certain death preceded by extreme pain and excommunication. Amputation is an option. Also, Cochin has so many mosquitoes. I was almost eaten alive while using the internet one night, leading to a shorter, less sophisticated, Phases Crossed of two issues ago... Luckily we have survived to tell the tale.



Cochin has a picturesque Synagogue that's a few hundred years old. The Cochin Jews, thank you very much. We smuggled out some photographs, although photography is forbidden. Inside, a series of paintings explains the history of the synagogue in comic book form, telling how Jews arrived after being expelled from ancient Israel by the Romans. We're not sure if this is exactly true, but you can read the Wikipedia article linked to above for yourself and find out the truth. This synagogue doesn't seem to be used anymore, but is closed for the holidays. It's lovely, no? The floor tiles are all hand painted pieces from China. You must cover your legs, and dress modestly to enter. Curiously, head covering is not required, but shoes must come off, like all holy Indian places, Hindu or Muslim.



We hear about 13 Jews live here now, but it was clearly once a thriving Jewish community. They have a Jewish cemetery, and the place is named Jew Town. The shops here are clearly catering to a more moneyed kind of traveler than simple backpackers, and they have many nice things from all over India in them, but few topical Jewish items.



We see a Kathakali performance. And some fighting. And other stuff. Wild wild wild. This form of dance performance / story telling goes on for 8 hours at a stretch. Luckily they do it for only 20 minutes or so for tourists, which is certainly long enough for us. It's really interesting -- like Chinese brush painting, there's an entire iconic language of eye and body movement and sound effects that communicate specific emotions and actions.



We take the Lonely Planet recommended cooking class, Cook & Eat. We have a great time. You want to be my friend, no? I make you Kerala food. Show you tasty time.



See this pan? It's derived from the Chinese Wok many years ago, and has been adopted into Keralan culture on its own terms. The class is 500 instead of the book's quoted 400 Rupees. While we aren't promised hands on cooking, after re-reading the print, we were expecting it, especially after having such a good time at Ban Thai in Chiang-Mai, Thailand, which felt like you were on a well oiled cooking show. Sushi chefs apparently watch master chefs make Sushi for years before touching any materials, and then they are magically experts. So primates learn, apparently. True for me and cooking, I know. I love to watch people who are better cooks than me work. I learn so much. Apparently, though, our guest house would have gladly let us watch them make dinner, for much cheaper, presumably, so perhaps this was not optimal, but it was fun. We also met some nice Brits.



It's not uncommon to find yourself in the thick of friendly Indian mobs. These things happen if you are a foreigner quite often. If you have a camera, and are willing to use it, you can achieve near rockstar status in under twenty seconds.



Kerala is famous for its backwaters, a huge network of freshwater waterways, populated with entire villages, fisherman, churches, temples, schools, etc... A tourist highlight is hiring a converted rice barge / houseboat for a day and night.



We travel down to Allepy, pictured above, to enter the Venice of India. A houseboat is expensive -- 4500-6500 Rupees and up, if you want multiple rooms, decks, bar, etc... That's a boat load of money for India, so everybody is involved in this business. Every man, rickshaw driver, hotel operator, dog, child, and cow in Allepy has a boat they want to book you on. The problem here is getting what you want. The Lonely Planet has some advice that is basically useless, if not harmful, in value. They tell you to see the boat beforehand, since they vary in quality. Where? How? They are all gone for 22 hours, cruising around... All booking seems to happen downtown, where there are no boats. Get an eco friendly boat. Get a manually punted boat. They don't exist, as far as we can tell. And nobody comes to Allepy, the center of houseboat action, to do anything else, so all tourists split as soon as they finish their cruise. So there's no good gossip or tips anywhere. The majority of the tourists, by the way, are Indians from India. Everybody will tell you what you want to hear in order to get the commission, too, from the first moment you discuss a boat, to the final moment you board. Basically, the tourists have no leverage here.

Perhaps we can share what little information we had. What we can tell you, is that we had a good time, and booked a one room boat through the DTPC downtown, paid 500 in advance, 2000 on boarding, and 2000 when finishing, and got it in writing. Forget about getting an eco boat, or a punted boat. We don't know how to do it, and went crazy trying. There is a main jetty downtown with about 60 boats in it between 9:30 and 11 am, so perhaps if you get into town early enough, you can shop the boats, and book for the next day. We heard about the Jetty, but never found it ourselves. We did definitely see a ton of boats from behind when boating from Allepy to Kottayam, so it does exist. Also, it is possible to split your payment like we did with the DTPC, but you need to get it in writing.



So, we board our boat, and the scene that we see before us is unreal. We feel as if we've stepped into a Miyazaki film, or a Star Wars movie. If a giant land walking octopus, piloted by a man in a loincloth with a spear, pursuing a Wumpus, crashed through the scene in front of us, nobody would have blinked. After reorienting ourselves to this alternate reality we had booked ourself into, this friendly but curt gangster boss feeling dude gets in the boat, and asks us to complete payment. We insist we agreed to pay half up front. He says no. We show him the receipt from the DTPC and he agrees. He promises us Appam, which we love, for breakfast, as do the DTPC, but the cook, who we love, along with the crew, explain they aren't equipped for it. No matter.



Our crew is lovely. We have our own cook (above, caught during a break), pilot/captain, and motor operator/cook's assistant (also above, at right).





We have a great time. This whole world appears to be cobbled together from a collection of 2d spaces, like a platform game -- long strips of land separating waterways and rice fields. An entire alternate dimension within the parallel universe of India, filled with waterways, goats, villages, churches, people, canoes, fisherman, draw bridges...





This is a magic. Who thought such a place could exist.



The barge boats are fascinating in design. Here is a quick sketch from Alex Rosmarin. The shapes remind me of soap bubble like shapes -- materials searching for their optimal physical form under the pressure of outside forces.



It'd be fun to push and pull, interactively, on these materials and see what kinds of shape you'd get with optimizing bamboo forms.



At lunch, Yotam and I get in a smaller boat for a manually powered spin, muscled by a local man.



We dock for the night, and see a man tapping a palm tree for a liquid that he will later turn in Toddy -- palm beer -- a Keralan speciality. We are still trying to acquire some.



More magic.



Despite the aggravation of arranging the boat, we had a super time, and highly recommend the trip. Above you can see just how happy Alex is with his breakfast. Perhaps it will be easier to book from Qullum, which is farther south, and less busy. The backwaters are huge, and there are many entry points.



Finally, we take the water bus, or ferry, from Aleppy to Kotayyam, to head into the mountains, where things are guaranteed to be a bit less sticky, more cool, and certainly more tea-ful & mountainous. Stay tuned for an even more other wordly adventures.

We wish to alert our visually curious readers to Yotam's photos, which are now all online. This is a slight temporal irresponsibility on our part, since at this point in our adventure, as narrated, he is still with us. In real-time NYC, though, he dropped his and my pix onto the internets. Our readers must, by this point, be skilled in untangling the various temporal threads of our blog, so no matter. He has, in careful consideration of everyone's time, thoughtfully put his favorite ones here. For the idle or retired, every single one of his 900 some photos can be viewed here, at your leirure. Perhaps our next issue will be illustrated, in part, with Yotam's pictures. For some reason flickr, even when I'm logged in, won't let me grab the embedding URL's for his pix. So maybe who knows who is doing what wrong maybe. Or something like an English sentence.