We walked through a 'semi-tribal' area near to the hotel: kids were playing with kites made of paper and old twine or cassette-tape. I stopped to fix one for a young child and got some appreciative laughs from nearby adults and one of the best smiles I've ever received. Most houses here are cement but there's a few traditional ones. However, this area's more organised or fortunate than the one we visited yesterday: the apparently well-made sewers and water supply are quite recent and should last a decent time and some of the children have been to school for, ooh, 8 years! There's also a big resort and a large house owned by a European woman: I'm told that inside it's plush and has all mod cons: outside it looks like a traditional tribal structure apart from having two stories.
We stopped again at a jaggery 'factory' and chatted with the family who work there. They gave me a big ball of their produce - agai, utterly delicious!
On the way back we stopped at Eravikulam National Park to try to get a glimpse of Nilgiri Tahirs - a very endangered species of deer that lives only here. It was pissing down so all we saw were the insides of umbrellas and sodden hillsides. Not much for Rs300 but they did warn us that seeing the deer was far from guaranteed.
We spent most of the rest of the journey listening to a female singer who makes devotional songs well-worth hearing.
About 10km from Nedumkandam we stopped at the house where Sindhu (the woman who Ajeesh took me to visit in hospital. Her mother and Ajeesh's mother are sisters.) She invited us to stay the night and fed us tapioca, chapattis, chatni and fried bitter gourd: yum.
We watched Tamil TV and played with her children: a great way to relax. It rained hard from 6pm this evening until 6.30 the following morning and hasn't actually stopped. I woke many times in the night due to my own eructations and flatus: Bhindu told me I sounded like a rifle-range! I also had a weird dream involving a bloke who's interned at L&L several times and I being in school together (I was older and a prefect!). His mac was away for repairs so he'd constructed one entirely from modelling-clay and got it to run a screen-saver!
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006