Ok, as you can see from this picture, my arrival in the Munnar, tea-growing, mountainous, eco-friendly, zero-emission, ultra-sustainability, oooh, put an extra one in the pot for me, Marge, region, has seen me go totally native. I’ve gone the ‘full namaste’ as it is known. Just because some babe from Kerala in a sari stuck a wodge of face paint on my forehead, it has completely realigned all my chakras to such a degree that I am now not just a Hindu, but a Hindu God. Well, why not, there are thousands of them, what’s another one?? Je suis Mahatma Gandhi, kind’a deal. Though, I appreciate, he was a Prime Minister, rather than a God and ever since Boris resigned we’ve been able to tell the difference once more.

The mountains are stunningly beautiful. And blanketed in tea. Like, plants. (Who knew tea grew like that? I thought it came in bags, like, from heaven? Or just, like, in cups?) Which makes everything green. Which is fab.

To get here (Munnar) from Kochi, would take, I reckon, about 45 minutes. Then you have to make a minor allowance for Indian travel conditions and traffic (travelling in seven different directions at once, all overtaking everyone else) and that adds about 4 hours. We’ll never get that time back. But the really odd thing is that if you asked me at which point Kochi gave way to ‘not Kochi’ which then became ‘Munnar’, I have no idea. The shops just go on and on and on. And its interesting; very interesting indeed…

Because I reckon that England, where I used to live before my awakening this afternoon, has a complete demographic from the super-rich, through an immense middle-class range, and working class, to unemployed at the bottom. Whereas here, in my new homeland, India again has its super-rich, but then a smaller middle class and a working class going from ok-getting-by to super-poor. So India’s ‘range’ of lifestyles is much bigger than YOU English bastards’. Hence some rows of shops are fairly ‘normal’, what you’d expect, kind’a deal. Nice clothes, pharmacies, food, boutiques, lovely lovely lovely. You first know you’re in a very poor area by the number of cement stores available. I don’t know if poor Indians eat cement, but fuck me they certainly have a lot of stores selling it. Almost only exceeded by the number of motor cycle/scooter/moped sales/servicing/spares outlets. And an hour on any road leads you to no concern as to where those vehicles go.

Whilst the cement remains more of a puzzle.

Have a fab everything,

A xxxx