Munnar

One of our favourite activities here in Cochin is spending time with our Yoga teacher Sajee and his family.  On weekends, we go on little excursions to places nearby.  This weekend we were more adventurous.  Sajee’s wife Ajee took a half-day “leave” from her work, and we picked her up in Ernakulum in the Tata car with Vinaya, their 14 year-old daughter.  Then we headed out to Munnar, a four-hour journey through the Western Ghats (mountains).  The travel was a little tortuous – the roads are quite atrocious once you get away from the big towns like Ernakulum.  Potholes, narrowed stretches, and even the areas that are not damaged are so narrow we have to pull over to let a bus pass.  And this is the main road to Munnar, a very popular tourist hill station.

Travels with Sajee and family

We stopped along the way, for lunch, to stretch, to see some of the nice scenic views in the hills.  Once we had travelled for about an hour, the mountains begin, the road twists and turns, and for once, there is space between towns, forests, open spaces, and lots of green everywhere.  It starts to get cooler as we go to higher elevations – ahhh – we’ve been hot for a month, this is such a pleasant change.

We finally arrive in Munnar at around 6 pm, and there are no rooms available.  We travel back 8 kms to the previous town called Pallivassar, found a very expensive little hotel (2000 rupees a night = $40!).  Sajee, Ajee and Vinaya took the larger room in the hotel building, so they could bring an extra mattress, and we took a room on stilts, elaborately decorated like a tree house!  It was very small, cute, and when we walked, the room shook!  There was a TV in the room, so we stayed and relaxed for an hour, watching Animal Planet on one of the few English stations.  We learned about the life of rhinoceroses – very interesting.

Tree House

We went for dinner in the larger hotel next door, and as we ate, we heard recorded music playing outside in the back.  A group of about 25 Indian women were celebrating a birthday.  They lit a campfire, and were dancing happily in a circle around the fire.  When one of them came through the restaurant, she invited Amy to come and dance with them.   Vinaya and Ajee joined.  Then they invited me to dance!  I was surrounded by 25 beautiful Indian women, who took turns dancing with me.  Wow!

 

After, we went back to our room to sleep in the nice cool room.  I awoke in the middle of the night to a new sensation – silence!  Fort Cochin, though a small town, is always noisy.  The fans are always going to combat the heat, there is A/C next door, there are dogs barking, horns honking – cars, tuk tuks and “2 wheelers” -  people’s voices very early in the morning, loud crows and other birds.  Usually I wear earplugs.  Here, it was so nice and quiet – peace.  At least until 6:15 when the church up the road starting blasting morning devotional music in Malayalam!  Wake up!!

We went back to Munnar for breakfast, then we went “trekking” in the tea plantations.  We walked up the hillside for at least an hour, till there were no people, only birds and trees and tea bushes everywhere.  Sajee went for a stroll and saw a cobra.  We walked, we talked, we sat, it was wonderful!  Talks with Sajee are often Satsang.  He speaks about what is real life – freeing ourselves from the “golden veil” of  pleasure and illusion, liberating ourselves to find the true unity of Self with Cosmos.  I say: “I understand that as a goal, but it’s not even my goal in life, at least not at this time.  I want to be here, to experience the pain and pleasures, to live fully on this earth, hopefully with little moments of realization of the true Self. “  He said: “Those moments are for those who have experienced cosmic conscious(ness).  You know what is Truth, and when it is time, you will be ready to be liberated.” 

 As we descended back towards town, Ajee stopped to talk to a local villager, and she invited us to her home for tea.  We learned that she works for the tea plantation owners, they provide the house for 13 years for their workers.  She earns 150 rupees per eight hour day ($3), her husband is away, she has three children, must pay for school, medicine and all.  We gave her some rupees (she didn’t want to take them, but we convinced her it was a gift, not payment for tea and hospitality), and we went on our way.

On our way home, we again made several stops to break up the long journey.  Our last stop was a bird sanctuary.  By the time we got there, it was almost closing time, so we decided to just walk around the sanctuary – the birds would also fly outside the sanctuary, wouldn’t they?  We did see some very nice water birds, egrets, colourful kingfishers, ducks, as well as some land animals, some that looked like reindeer, water buffalos, and so on.  Again we stopped to talk to some locals at a “Toddy” shop.  Toddy is an alcoholic drink made from coconut flowers, and so we sampled it, a couple of sips anyway, then took the rest home in a bottle.  As we were leaving, the proprietors shouted and pointed up the hill, and there was a wild elephant strolling through the woods – yet was another highlight of our trip – our first wild elephant sighting!

Time spent with Sajee and his family is precious, soon our time will be up in Cochin, and we will have these many special moments as memories.