We pass through Mahe, Kozhikode, Palissery, Thrissur onwards to Angamalai.
From Kannur, we have our fare share of “close encounters of their own kind” with the well-known buses and bus drivers of Kerala. I mean, suddenly on that day, I developed immense respect for bus drivers of the Pune Municipal Transport. Till that day I felt that those were the worst drivers I had seen on earth but these drivers from Kerala are a different breed altogether.
This is how Rohit(my partner) puts it when he has a couple under the belt:
Imagine, I am a rider on the Thunderbird, like I am the king of the road and I am supposed to be the one commanding respect. I am the one supposed to be overtaking and maneuvering through the maze of heavy Kerala traffic. I am going “DHDHDHDHRRRRRRRRRRRRR” and there’s an oncoming bus. Imagine 10,000 Kgs of steel hurling down towards you in all its glory at speeds in excess of 100 Kmph and you are the one trying to dodge it so that he may not nick you. That bloody guy is overtaking a bus of similar size and you are right before him and he cares a damn about who is there. That’s attitude man.
We could experience this attitude even with guys riding triple seat on a Hero Honda Passion. Our Thunderbirds be damned and our egos are crushed like egg shells. We make steady progress and such roads but its too tiring man. Too tiring dodging buses whole day.
There was a lot of road widening work going on between Thrissur to Angamalai and we had to make our way through some nasty traffic jams. We reached Angamalai and were expecting that we had another 60 Kms to go to Munnar. What??? Upon enquiry, we found that it was 96 Kms. All uphill through “tick” forest, winding roads, heavy traffic and cold weather. We started our ascend at around 6.00 PM. We covered near about 50 Kms and decided to halt at Adimali. Still another 40 odd Kms to go. We decided to munch on some “Lays” and had ourselves a nice shot of “Redbull” and a couple of cigarettes each. This was just to warm us up to the task. The shop owner was very helpful and helped us with making phone calls to hotels in Munnar and got us a booking at “Tea Garden” hotel. We were to reach the hotel in 2 hours. We started the onward journey and with each passing turn, it was becoming difficult maintaining our speed because of darkness and wet roads. My bike battery was dying on me because the fog lights were draining it. So I had to turn them off since the engine started dying at low RPMs. That’s strange. But I thought, better to travel slow rather than being stalled in the middle of nowhere due to battery failure. We covered the remaing 40 odd Kms in an hour, reached the Munnar bus stand and gave the hotel a call for directions. He said, there’s no room available. The one that was blocked was given to someone else. Now we are shattered. How could he do this? Blasphemy!!! Our hands frozen, we can’t even light our cigarettes or operate our cell phones. We came across a group of guys asking whether we wanted a room. We said “Yes”, one of them said “3500” for the night. That’s robbery in broad streetlight. But what the heck. Any room is better than no room. One guy from the group named “VG” volunteers to take us to the cottage. The road to the cottage was narrow and with acute twists and turns. It was difficult with hands and legs frozen. We dumped our luggage and asked whether we could get some liquor. He said he will guide us. He took us to a nearby hotel since all shops were closed. The guard brought us our “half” of “XXX Rum” from his kitchen. Nice setting running your own business from the hotel’s supplies. We promptly went to the room and finished the bottle before we knew what we drank. There was no point having a bath since there was no hot water and we slept with our jeans and jackets on since the room didn’t have a heater.
The home stay at Kannur:
2 bikes parked in the yard outside the homestay:
Patti chaay – Specialty of Kerala:
Halt at Adimali with the much needed redbull:
The cottage (green coloured with the blue tarpaulin) for which we paid 3500/-:
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