We had this crazy rickshaw driver/personal paparazzi who took us all around Munnar, which is a really really cool (literally, the air was cool here. we needed blankets at night.) place in the Western Ghats of Kerala.
Munnar is owned by Tata, the biggest company in India. They have 15,000 people working in the 3 or 4 tea plantations in Munnar over like... 5 mountains.
It was probably my favorite place, although the food was much better in other places we stayed.
It reminded me of home - mountains, trees, clean air.
We took a stifling, terrifying, hysterical bus ride in the dark up and around the mountains to get here.
We had one of those moments where we hit one bump and we just couldn't stop laughing - everyone in the bus was staring at the 2 white females who were howling in the back of the bus.
It was a pretty good moment.
The first thing I did was pitch a fit my two mothers (real Mom, and then Su-mama) would be proud of, when we entered our hotel room and found it positively swarming with malaria filled mosquitoes. They tried to tell us that mosquitoes don't bite, really, and here are all the tactics to get rid of them.
I threatened to leave, and actually booked another hotel for the next night, but eventually got us upgraded to a top level room with not as many bugs.
Our rickshaw driver took us everywhere and it was pretty cool to have someone else document our day out for us, in pretty clever ways. Now we have evidence - see! we really did go to India and we can prove it with our pictures!
Ground tea leaves
There were lots of carrots here too... Riane bought some and ates dem str8t.
hahah he wanted us to jump off this rock in front a honey bee tree. I love Riane in this photo.
We rode an elephant!! Jungle Safari Allyn and Riane.
Then I found home! Mountains! Lakes! Boats!
We learned how to drive rickshaws!
and we scaled mountain faces
and hugged tall trees
And then we ended up in Switzerland??
We never thought India would look like this.
Really, Munnar was beautiful and we were walking through a farmish place where there were homes and children playing with sprinklers and moms picking cabbage and men herding cow and sheep and a stream and mountains and it was all gorgeous and happy and we loved it there.
ahahaha how hysterical/creepy is this?
He literally picked us up and put us on top of tea plants. and then had a fashion model shoot.
Werk it, gurl.
Anywho, great place for a photo shoot.
The day ended shortly after that and we me a couple of Indian guys and used them for a free ride down the mountain, even though I was so sleepy/carsick the whole time - they were entertaining. From Delhi, Bihar and Nepal, one of them owns a Nepal goods store in South Wales and was on vacay. They bought us lunch and because they were travel agents, so they got us a hotel and massages, both for half off.
They also got us lost and in trouble in a tiger reserve, which Riane and I found the way out of. Then they got in trouble for giving us a ride and such by the car owner, so we snubbed 'em and hopped on a bus for 7 hours to the coast to Varkala - European beach heaven.
My bag broke about this time and I had to buy a new one - which I locked, and promptly lost the key to the lock and had to rip it open anyways. This only truly became an issue once we got back to the airport on the way home.
