Ponmudi

Yesterday we went off to ponmudi. Its only about 65km from us here but as the roads leading up there are shocking, it takes two hours to get there by car. The drive up there was interesting though. We were out of the city and going through village to village felt different - lots of colourful people, cows, goats, chickens and an elephant!

So rather than explain myself what and where ponmudi is, I'm just going to blatently copy and paste the next paragraph from neils blog - thanks mate in advance:

"Ponmudi is a hill station at an altitude of 1000m above sea level on the Western Ghats mountain range. Surrounded by tea plantations its name (apparently) means Golden Crown in Malayalam - i'm not sure why i expected it to have a yellow peak.....because it didn't."

The views were stunning. No matter how many pics you take its one of those places that you just have to see it with your eyes to get the full effect. After checking in to our really expensive hut (3 quid each), flashing our passports (bureaucracy), and dropping our gear off we headed up the hill/mountain. We met many happy smiling people on the way up who either wanted us to take their pictures or just wanted to say hi. The most random of encounters at the summit - a bunch of nuns showed up, and a good laugh they were too. They loved having their picture taken and they asked me what I was going to do with the pictures that I had taken. I told them I was going to print them out and put them on my wall due to the fact that they were all so gorgeous. This was met with raptuous laughter from the randy old sisters! Even funnier was later when we were on our way back down. We heard a bus approaching behind us with music blaring out and as it zoomed past us it was only the nuns bus! They were all hanging out the windows and waving/screaming/laughing - I really dont think that is a sight I will ever have the pleasure of viewing ever again.

Although beautiful, ponmudi had been 'done' in 3 hours. As we had only paid a few quid to stay the night we thought we may as well just head home and get an early start for tommorrow. We went to find our driver to no avail, although his/our car was there. Interesting. Through confusion, sign language, head bobbing and broken english, we established from a few of the lads hanging around that our driver had gone to hospital, on the bus, because he had hurt his leg. He would be back at 10..(am or pm?) - I asked why the hell hadnt he taken his car. My question was given the answer - "Yes. Bus." I asked if he had hurt his leg, how was he going to drive us home. My question was given the answer - "Yes." We gave up, looked like we were staying in our hut after all. And what fun that turned out to be. It can be summed up thusly:

"Cockraoches/bacardi/coke/mozzies/ipod/poker/bacardi/powerout/worrying scuttling sound in every corner of room/hide under covers fully clothed to prevent being eaten alive"

Dont ask me how, but I managed to stay in that room despite the fact that it was home to approximately 95% of india's entire population of insect life. There was a sign on the wall which read:

"NO ROOM SERVICE PLEASE"

Were they asking us or telling?

Anyway, we awoke early, saw the sun rise, took plenty of pics and began our trek in the car down the 22 hairpins (each one signposted) that lead to the main "road" home. A lovely place but if you ever go, just do the day trip and dont stay the night.

I learnt alot more about my camera again on this trip so am just going to post the pick of the bunch. High 5 to neil for taking the ones of me (performing the trademark allsworth 'point' of course). As ever, clicked for enlarged.