15/02/2012

Today was big travel day as we were leaving Wild Haven for Kochi. I woke up at 6:40 but stayed in bed with Claire until after 8:00. Our initial efforts to have a shower failed as there was no water and instead we went down for breakfast and got them to fix the water in the meantime.

After a plain but nice breakfast, my stomach is still causing hassle, we had our showers and packed. We then checked out and said our goodbyes to John and staff-and as it turned out, joined Shaiza and went to the other White Haven to say goodbye to her and her parents after talking to them for about 30 min. We bonded really well with them and were a bit sad to leave.
Then our driver took us to Ooty where spent 3 hours at the station, minus a 15 min shopping trip by me for essentials, where we met a group of 13 people plus Indian guide, 2 of which we spoke to for a bit before the train arrived. They were probably in the 70s and good craic, as Claire would say, one from Dublin and the other from Sussex.
When our train finally arrived Claire and I had a bit of a mishap as we got into the wrong carriage with some people from Bristol but our social interactions quickly came to an end as we were moved by the staff to first class.
From then on we had a literal/lateral cliffhanger of a journey as we were decending nearly 2km down to Mettupalayam on a 46km track for 3 1/2 hours in a toy train along cliff ledges and countless adhoc bridges - where there was no ledge. Scary and thrilling at the same time, while the big steam engine was puffing along and throwing up soot, some of which even ended up on my pants despite us being in closed carriages - the air we breathed certainly couldn't have been healthy... ;-)
We arrived in Mettupalayam on time at around 17:30 and after unloading took our next risky step - it turned out that there were no restaurants in sight around the station other than on the station itself where they had a vegetarian restaurant with a limited menu and not the cleanest of places. But we needed to eat and it was about time that we dipped in to the real India, rather than all these touristy/fancy restaurants. So we ended up ordering Ipply and Dosas (of the latter they had none, but they found something similar that I never caught the name of, which looked like thick mini-naans or chapatti's) with a curry sauce on the side, 2 bottles of water and a coffee - all in all it came to Rs.69,- - which is just over €1, which had our jaws drop. The food turned out to be really nice and the portion sizes were just right, not too big and not too small - served on metal plates without cutlery, but thankfully I had two sets of hiking metal cutlery with me from Ireland that we could use.
Afterwards we sat down and waited for the sleeper train to Coimbatore, which arrived on time at 19:30 and departed on time too at 19:45. However, I hadn't paid attention as the sun was setting at the station and given my affinity to mosquitos quickly got "rewarded" by 3 mosquito bites in minutes before wisening up and applying the 100% deet spray on top of the 15% I had been carrying for a few hours until then - bloody thirsty bastards! I wonder why they love me so much while they never go near Claire?! I suppose one theory is ease of entry to my veins on my feet, which are quite prominent...
We were only 45 minutes on the train before reaching our destination and got off without incident, while texting Jacob the travel desk guy to make sure that we had a driver waiting for us in Coimbatore.
And this is where the fun started... The driver didn't understand one bit of English - no sentences, just a few very select words. So it took nearly 15 minutes before he found us on the station. Afterwards we got to the car and loaded our gear and were on our way but it quickly became apparent that our driver, despite having made it to Coimbatore from Kochi, hadn't a clue where he was going - I repeat: not an inkling! So after 30 minutes of him trying to get out of town and onto the right road while asking random strangers and petrol stations I finally took over, connected my phone to the rechargable USB port on my laptop for power as it was nearly drained - and booted up Google maps + GPS - and then guided him out of town and onto the right road towards Kochi, which ended up being NH47 (National Highway 47).
Things went reasonably well for about an hour of scary traffic and potholed roads that could swallow a super truck for the unwary, while I guided him - but then his behaviour started turning rather eratic. Despite the roads getting considerably better and the fact that they even became dual carriage ways, he would slow down the car to 40km an hour for no reason whatsoever; he also stayed mostly in the outside lane or between lanes (swerving a bit), which rewarded him with lots of beeping and "cutting off" from the inside lane in front of him from other cars; he would also scratch himself, sigh and fiddle a lot, as well as rub his eyes and beep at nothing at all when the roads were empty in front off us - and I asked him if he was OK on a couple of occassions to which he was quite positive, but didn't look it. To top it off he didn't go to buy water and didn't have anything to eat, so we fed him banana and water while wondering whether he was quite sane, on drugs etc. My theory is that he had bad night vision, but this is something I would rather not know about really - we did take the pragmatic attitude of helping him as much as we could during this 5 hour ordeal on 220km of roads (as opposed to throwing our arms up and screaming and yelling) - stepping out of the car in the middle of nowhere at 1:00 in the morning simply wasn't an option, nor was calling for another driver really given the distance/time involved.
Anyway, as we got to Kochi he finally seemed to settle and drove much more confidently as well as a fair bit faster through town - and we could finally start to relax... AND breathe a major sigh of relief and thank whatever gods were listening that we were alive, as we finally found the hotel at 1:40 in the morning. Easily the scariest bit of our India journey so far!
At the hotel the front gate was closed but after a couple of heart sinking minutes while listening to a dog barking insistently for a couple of minutes, someone finally got to the gate and let us in. After then we quickly got our room allocated, knackered as both we and the night attendant was, and we were quickly off to bed while reflecting on our scary journey...

So - notes to self for the future:
- Make sure to ask the cab companies for an English speaking driver with plenty of night driving experience
- Make sure that you have a Google phone with Satnav/GPS
- Make sure that that same phone has Internet connectivity at all times, your life and sanity may depend on it! We have found that Vodafone has excellent coverage mostly everywhere even if it's not 3g most of the time - the GPRS/Edge connections work really well too with Google Maps
- Do not be afraid to intervene if you feel that your driver doesn't know where (s)he is going

Our toy train from Ooty to Mettupalayam

A close-up of the train

Some of the surroundings that awaited us on the way down