Had a lovely surprise this morning when I walked into the living room... We had left the outside light on and a light on in the living room and these ugly looking moths got into the room underneath the gap in the door, I'm not kidding about 500 of then everywhere! The white floor was black so before the tuk tuk came me and Scott were scooping them into piles with two small mats and a little brush and standing on them to kill them and them scooping them and throwing them out the window, only problem was that they were all outside as well!
What a way to start the day!
It was cold out and got even colder as we went higher il the road to Munnar, there was an incredible sunrise as we drove into Munnar, we were climbing higher than the clouds!
Got the base hotel and had black tea which is really nice by the way..
We headed off up through the tea plantations, got told some cool facts about it all.
The tea plantations were first built in 1880s by the British. In the mid 1947 when India became independent from the British the TaTa company which is a huge company in India and produces everything from tea to mobile phones and cars to bedding and water; they bought 55,000 acres of tea plantations and have 14,400 people working for them. Only the women work out in the tea plantations picking the tea leaves, they work 8-5 Monday to Friday and half day on Saturday, they have to pick 21kilos of tea each per day to earn 210 rupees, if they pick less they earn less or if they pick more try earn more.
The men work in the factories, drying the tea and using the chemicals to preserve it. TaTa industry own 70-80% of the tea plantations in Munnar.
Munnar is made up of three religions, 60% Hindu 30% Christian and 10% Muslims. Named Munnar because 'mun' means river and 'nar' means three in some language. So the three rivers that connect and there are three main mountains which each have a church for one of three religions all connect together which gives it that name!
The highest mountain in South India is there which is home to the mountain goats, one in two aces in the world they have them and the other place is Austria. We sat and had breakfast (pineapple, bananas, boiled eggs and jane and bread) on top of the mountain, the most was coming over us which was really cool! We were 2500metres above sea level!
But then the decline down, which involved leeches on the trainers and a few slides down some slippery rocks from last nights rainfall! You could smell the tea and spices amongst you! We thought it was one walk back down, oh no! It involved another mountain which was 1550 metres above sea level. We seen so many fruit and spice plants!
We did have a put stop for some black tea and watermelon which had black pepper sprinkled on it, surprisingly good! I did think it was dirt at first though, ha!
Our tour guide bumped into a friend who was 78 years young, looking good for his age and rocking the skirt! He offered us some beetle nuts, the stuff that makes you go 'funny' we all had a little bit of beetle nut in a leaf.. I spat mine out near enough straight away it was like chewing on aftershave or something of that sort. Scott was given a huge bit of nut haha! He did chew it longer than me but eventually spar it out, it turns your saliva red, it is horrible! Haha. But at least we can say we have tried it! We were absolutely exhausted after nearly 8 hours walking, although didn't entirely hit me until I sat in the jeep. Scott felt light headed near to the end of the walk (lack of food in his belly) we were given food at the cottage we are last night which was lovely and the best tasting pompadoms and cabbage I've ever eaten! Even better than sharwoods and that says a lot for me! I think Scott had about 3 plate fulls, safe to say he was starving!
I had a lift to the top of the road with the guys that were going back to the hotel and got some toothpaste and a dairy milk fix, had a jog back down which was so much easier than walking because of the huge steep hill!
HBO movie night with Richie rich and Hansel and Gretel tonight until we get fed again and an early night as we are absolutely exhausted. Lack of exercise and way too many curries and naan breads in two weeks has knocked us for six!