Day 05: We Hit The Road to Adimali

Day 05

We decided to head for the mountainous tea-growing area near Munnar. Little did we know just how difficult the driving was going to be getting up to and over the mountains.

The roads up are often barely 1-car width, leaving you with mountain on one side and a long drop on the other. These roads are used by every sort of vehicle, including rickshaw smashable buses and semi-trucks. These roads were sheer terror and left us worrying that we would be facing the same for the whole trip.

Frustratingly the new rickshaws shouldn't be taken above 30km/hour on their first 150 kilometers. The engine has to be broken in. There were scant few times when we could have gone that fast, but we would have liked to as we were already a day later in leaving then everyone else. We were hoping to make it someone nice for New Year's Eve.

We stopped for lunch in the small town of Vernalenlam and met Shakkir Jameel. He asked if we wanted to see his mosque and jumped at the chance. Following him around the corner, we parked our autorickshaws into a small alley full of scooters and bikes.

He told us the rickshaws and gear would be safe and asked us to follow him. This was the one and only time we have left the equipment unattended but we were sure they would be fine here.

Going around the side of the mosque you could hear the passionate, rhythmic preaching of the speaker at the podium at the front of the mosque. It turns out he is quite famous in India. The sides were all open and we could see wall to wall, hundreds of men and boys kneeling and facing the speaker. We were led down a narrow path along side of the mosque and instructed to put our shoes and socks along with everyone else's scattered about. The sidewalk was on fire for our westernized pampered feet. We went into the back of the mosque into a big room where everyone was washing their feet. There was a large, square, tiled fountain in the middle of the room that you drew a pitcher of water from. Standing on the grating that surrounded the fountain, we watched our feet. There were taps along the wall that you could wash your face and hands from.

After our cleansing, we were led to the front of the room which had all the over flow from the main chamber in it. We knelt and faced the open doorway and the speaker. He spoke from what was about 40 minutes in a non-stop, intense manner. His statements appeared to rhyme in a sing-song whay that is typical of some other preaching styles.

When he concluded, we were asked to sit on the stairs on the side and everyone else got into rows. There was a series of prayers with much bowing, kneeling and placing the hands and forehead on the ground.

Our host then took us to his house nearby for lunch with his friend Vady Salam.

His home was occupied by 8 of his family members and roughly resembled something you might see in the desert south west. It was an adobe like structure with open widows and high, wood beamed ceilings. It was very simple, but pretty large.

Our host was a little embarassed it seemed because they weren't going to eat with us as it was a day of fasting.

We had some difficulty explaining why we couldn't drink their water if it wasn't boiled. We were urged that the well was "clean" although a glance in it caused Adam's face to lose most of it color. Our host's brother knew a bit more English and we were able to convince them that even clean water is different from what our bodies were used to and that our doctors told us we couldn't drink non-boiled water.

They settled on making us tea and we waited for the lunch preparation in their living room. There was much discussion about Islam and the United States. They were really curious if we thought all Islamic people were terrorists and why we would vote for George Bush. We explained at great length thatjust because we live in a democratic nation that votes for it's president, not everyone in the US voted for him. Their own country operates the same way so they understood, but were wondering what sort of person would vote for him. They were adamant that something should be done and that it was the responsibility of the people in the US to protest and vote the bad people out of office.

Lunch was rice, also called "meals", beef curry, spicy plaintains and vegetables, and fresh yogurt. They also brought us some fruit, but we politely declined since we didn't peel it ourselves. The whole microbe thing can be combursome.

After a long good by full of urges to visit again when we have more time and photos taken with every member of the family, we headed on and begin the roadway up to tea country.

Driving all the remainder of our daylight, we made it to just 20 kilometers shy of Munnar and decided to stop in Adimali.

The hotel options were scant and got a room in a truck stop hotel. It was pretty rustic, with large roaches in our bathroom, but it was the best of all the ones we looked at. It had 3 beds and an overhead fan. We were satisfied.

We had some refreshments in the bar downstairs and made some calls home.

After we went for a little walk and ended up coming upon a huge New Year's festival. There was a ferris wheel and rows of food vendors in a large field between buildings. A hugh stage was set up that had comedic theaterical performances going on. The action was broadcast on various screens about the area. The performance was was I can only imagine vaudvile was like in its heyday. It was amazing to behold. The Adimali Festival was full of thousands of people milling in every direction. We decided to go back to the room and get all the gear.

We set up for a shot just off to the side of the stage. The appearance of the light and camera drew a massive crowd. It was our first experience trying to photograph around lots of people. It turned out amazingly well altough we learned that once the test polaroid appears, people go insane clamoring for their own photo. We had a hard time explaining that we only had a limited amount of polaroids and the photos we were taking otherwise were digital. The biggest mistake was giving the test photo away. We won't do that again.

Returning to the room, triumphant from our shoot, we found the whole place gated and closed up. This looked really, really bad. We had nothing but thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of photography equipment and were on a dark, deserted road, late into the evening with no place to go. Even our rickshaws were in a locked court yard.

Rattling the gate luckily brought out a angry, half naked worker who sleeps out back of the courtyard. He was able to wake someone else to let us in.

Crisis averted.


Anthony //