13th Feb - Kumily - Munnar

So today we needed to ish to munnar. bus to go in the afternoon so after breaky we did a wander and did some interneting...not very exciting. bus trip was another nice easy one, the seats are SOOO small tho, a seat clearly made for 2 people really would only seat 1.5 people...no wonder those big americans hire taxis all the time..
Esay to find the bus this time, the ticket collecter (there is always the bus driver who you never see and tciket collector who has a real knack for remembering who is new on the bus and hasn't paid...plus he doesn't get bus sick!) seemed to be finding any whitey's and pointing them in direction of his munnar bus. brought some snacks and braved the local bus stop toilet...which are never QUITE as bad i expect, you pay 2 rupees, and they are all “squatters” but soemhow that makes it much cleaner and i'm quite grateful for no western toilets in public places. found some LOVELY cupcake for about 20p for 6, YUM. like opa cake but in a lil cupcake. went down a treat. Bus usually starts off with all seats taken but after driving for about 40 mins we had passed several local bus stops and school was out so it got completely JAM packed. like sardines. den had a good conversation with a couple of kids and got their addresses so we can send them some stamps. they're so polite and lovely but still ask such personal questions about salary and stuff! which is kinda funny for a child to think about that sort of thing anyways. well we think it is. he was 14 and the school they went to was obvisouly quite good. mum was a teacher and they had a bit of land and dad worked in mumbai. They only saw him about once every 1 or 2 months, which i thought was quite sad. He played cricket of course and basketball, table tennis and football. And of coruse he wanted to be a software engineer, he said he would like to work in germany one day which was interesting! one of his friends was a bit appalled that dennis couldn't speak any other language at all – he could speak malayam (kerala's language), english, some hindu and spanish... DOES make you feel a bit stupid! but they were lovely kids, so polite and confident.
Apparently girls play handball!
the ride was a long one and by the ime we arriveed in tea country the sun was setting and we only got a very short look at the tea fields, SO beautiful and much much more than kumily. was prolly just as well that the sun set as the bus driver was a MANIAC round the corners and probably it was better that i couldn't see wtf he was doing! so we arrived in munnar somewhat a bit dishevilled but found our accommodation ok which seems a good choice for 2 nights. the owner had a great hand drawn map for us which was pretty good. had some eats at a food court type thing...another example of massive over-employment which i always find weird, but really good (surprisingly good!) fried rice and mushroom masala! found a movie channel and watched some american tele, great stuff!