Hi,

In Sanskrit, Ghatta are the steps descending to water where people usually bathe. The Western Ghats, stretching from Mumbay (Bombay) to the southern tip of India, are a series of mountains that extend over four states and really do descend to the sea like steps leading to the waters. Ruben, an old friend of mine and current chat buddy on the net, had travelled to India many times and I relied on him to point out the gems I shouldn’t miss. In the Ghats, a visit to Munnar is a must.

Munnar is on a mountain peak and it took a four-hour bus ride meandering through various villages to reach it. As we drove up, there were no more tall palm trees or eucalyptus but a vast terrain of what seemed to be dwarf trees. It turns out that the tiny town of Munnar is the commercial centre of some of the world's best tea-growing estates. In the plantations the trees are kept an average height of four feet. There are paths around each bush that make the plantations look like a maze. The paths are wide enough for the workers to hand-pluck the leaves and in fact, more than 600,000 people work in the plantations of Munnar. It is mainly the women who do the picking, and scattered in the fields they look like flowers in a gigantic garden in their colourful saris.

Piercing through the silence of the surroundings we made it to the bustling centre, hired a rickshaw and somehow managed to see the entire tea making process. After the leaves are plucked they are taken to the tea factory and placed manually on a conveyor belt hundreds of metres long. The leaves are washed, shredded and then crushed into a thick paste. They are transferred to another metal conveyor belt, which in turn transports them to a huge heat chamber. The hot air turns them into a kind of dry mud that is sifted and sorted out in different compartments according to quality. The finest dust is what we get in our tea bags. The coarser granules are ground and produce an inferior quality tea. Sacks of tea eventually emerge from the factory to be shipped to leading brands, which pack them into fancy boxes for us to buy!

But tea is not the only Munnar attraction. Spice cultivation is very popular in the Western Ghats, and we had the treat of a Spice Tour (without the Spice Girls!). The king of spice, the pepper, grows on ivy trees. They plant it under high trees for it to climb up their trunks. The queen of spices is the cardamom, which grows on the ground in the shadows of its own leaves. We saw cinnamon trees, curry plants, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, turmeric and so on.

Later we proceeded to a big dam, the source of power and water in the area and then to this “echo point” where the sound bounces over the hills and rocks that surround the lake and produces four different echoes. Somehow the whole idea took me back to my childhood and I shouted to hear my echoes until I was almost hoarse! Still lost in my childhood, I started to bounce flat pebbles off the water. As I looked for what must have been the 30th flat stone, I noticed that a crowd of more than 50 people had gathered around me. The performer in me emerged with flying colours and I managed an impressive 13-bounce throw to a warm round of applause from the amazed spectators.

With my long curly hair and a full beard, which I have never bothered to shave since I got to India, I kind of felt like Jesus performing miracles! I was defeating the laws of gravity! I even taught some of my disciples how to perform the “miracle” and within minutes the lake was swarming with bouncing stones!

Having run of out tricks, I decided to walk back to the rickshaw. Driving back through the green maze of tea tree bushes Diana and I said goodbye to the village of tea, knowing that our perception of a cup of tea would never be the same again!

Take care

Dery Xxx