Our penultimate day's driving!
A late start with briefing at 9.30, but unfortunately little time to look around the town.
Again, bad news. Another landslide meant another diversion, again missing out much of the detail in the map. Again, we were given the names of the principal towns, and the locations of important junctions, which would hopefully be marked. In all, an easier day, 175km.
After descending the hairpins, not nearly so scary in the daylight and the dry, we stopped for chai after 55km (taking almost an hour and three quarters). From there on it was a pleasant drive through the towns and countryside, stopping to look around. In one town, were again invited to take photographs of people, and one lady with a baby invited us into her home, where there were a number of other adults (one covered in feathers and stuffing a mattress), as well as a young girl. The house was small, cramped and dark, with hardly any furniture, but clean and pleasant: leaning against the wall was a new looking mattress: our hostess proudly pointed to it and said "this is my bed". She made it clear that we could stay for food if we wanted, but we thanked her and left.
Finally we turned towards our destination, Munnar, again ascending through a large number of hairpins: at times, the road had decayed at the edge (landslides) and was being worked upon by an army of road repair men and women, but with the most primitive tools possible.
At the summit we dropped a little into a valley and through vast numbers of tea plantations, the ordered bushes standing out along the hillsides, and into Munnar and the hotel by 6pm, at an elevation of 6500 feet above sea level.
Tomorrow is our last days drive!
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