Day 19: Tea and gin
Trip Start
Mar 01, 2008
1
19
32
Trip End
Ongoing
Munnar, India
Monday, March 31, 2008
Clearly the mental energy expended in listening to Rob's explanations was too much, and Cameron fell asleep for the drive to Echo Point - a bizarrely popular tourist attraction where people stand on a piece of land by a lake and shout
Cameron and his tea leaf
. At the right volume and pitch there is an impressive echo. Shouting is normally one of Cameron's strong points, so it was a shame it took him the whole time we were there to wake up. Of course, this meant lots more (mostly Indian) fellow tourists asked to take pictures of the cute wee sleeping boy. A lovely thing about this trip is that unlike in, say, Sri Lanka, Western tourists are frequently outnumbered by Indian, tourists, many of whom seem keen to pinch Cameron's cheek. He takes it very well ... A short distance from Echo Point we passed a sinister looking gate that led to the grandly named Indo-Swiss Project. This, SK informed us, was trying to create a new species of cow. Apparently the project used to encourage visitors but they closed the gates a couple of years ago. We saw a some of their cows in a field and they looked just like the cows we see in the UK - a quite different shape from Indian cows but hard to tell if they were a different species. We decided it was probably just a cross-breeding programme but, having watched a recent episode of Torchwood, we couldn't fully rule out mad scientists using alien technology.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped to wander around the market at Munnar. Given the lack of price inflation on seeing tourists, we assumed this excursion wasn't on most tour parties must do lists
Asleep at Echo Point
. The local language, Malayalam, has more than a passing resemblance to Tamil and Vernee was very excited when she thought she understood one market trader offer two bunches of plastic flowers for ten rupees. Cameron, with perfect timing, decided they were exactly what he had been looking for all trip and so we sent him off with a ten rupee note. He came back with two bunches and they didn't come running after him so we are assuming Vernee was correct. The afternoon showers are now classified as regular unseasonal afternoon rain and so we had to cancel the walk through the plantation again. Fortunately, the hotel has a hut dedicated to serving afternoon tea (and cake) so we got to enjoy the produce without the foraging.
The hotel's owner, Doctor Simon, also manages five GP surgeries in Kochi and confessed, slightly embarrassed that 'everyone is very ambitious here'. He can only devote part of his time to the Windermere so we were fortunate to be there for one of his pre-dinner drinks parties in the library. The drink consisted of either a large measure of gin with fresh lemon juice and water or a soft drink. Rob was delighted and made up for Vernee's on-going inability to drink gin while Cameron took himself off to the corner where he appeared to teach himself the rudiments of chess. Or at least that's what it looked like through the gin ...
We found ourselves chatting to an Australian economist who works for the World Bank focusing on India and China. There was a heated debate about whether Kerala's communist government was a bad thing for discouraging industrialisation or a good thing because the low level of industrialisation was good for the megabucks tourist industry
Echo!
. Like all the best essay questions, the answer is of course, both. It probably isn't a economic model that can be exported all over the world as it seems to be based on sending hordes of people to other countries (mostly Dubai and the UK) and remitting chunks of the their pay packet back to Kerala. We saw some seriously fancy houses on the road up to Munnar and SK tells us that there is a stretch of the coast known as Little Dubai because it's been built with money sent back from the Gulf states. It appears that here in Kerala, a chief export, to rival spices and rubber, is people - often doctors and nurses. Our new economics chum (who doesn't know Warren - Rob asked) said that the Keralan economy is studied by students worldwide. A most enjoyable half hour and remarkably free of the usual small-talk. It is amazing how a few drinks can encourage people to chat and at breakfast the next morning everyone was cheerfully greeting each other like old friends. 
