Transmission 9 – Hills of Tea & Cardamom

Giving the bike a final look over and tightening the saddles, I tacked up for another 170km to the hills of Munnar. This time I had rolled the odometer over thrice, and was settling into a groove. Kerala was where I would lay my head tonight, between here and there were the plains of Palani and Udulampet, then rising in altitude through the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, Chinnar Wilderness and Eravikulam national park. I opted for this west by southwest route as the topography and satellite photos indicated a promising scenery and more tranquil snake bending roads. As my oversized dirt bike settled into a purr, so did I, and wove around the western ghats as if enclosing a parcel containing the state of Tamil Nadu. The tyres kept me grounded, and I even attempted filming on the bike using a special mount, but the vibrations and light differentiation as I carved the ridges of the mountain into shape, did not hone well to the overall video. At a few naked turns I idled the bike to imprint the topographical landscape into my minds eye. A man stopped on his bajaj bike and tried to sell me lungis, a kind of tamil mens dress that wraps around the waist like a towel and folds down. “Just one for Canada, please sir”, I reported that I already owned a lungi and wasn’t looking for another, especially not while I was driving a motorbike, merchants seem to literally come out of the woodwork at any time.

From the natural boundary of mountains between the east half of India and the west, I was drawing an invisible line connecting them together, one that symbolized the continuity of this trip through mothers village and my dis-attachment to linger in one place. To some I embodied the Indian drive to ride by two wheeler from the south to the north, for others I was just another backpacker with a fun dream, to me it was a blend of both and I found it easy to acquaint myself with the loftier ideas of grand dangerous journeys taken by man into foreign lands, but then again this had all been done before by much more daring and far flying men than myself. I thought about Jupiter crossing India without modern technology, just some Michelin maps and a hunch for the right places at the right time. I felt that I had acquired some of this perspicacity for being in the right places, the question still begged if I was missing out? And if so, what else was there? Of course there were lifetimes of parallel experiences happening all around me. In the thousands of peasant farmers I passed on the bike, the hundreds of merchants selling thrifty jewelry and postcards on every beach, every school child and chai baba, or hotel manager. What would it be like to be born here, and never leave, and reincarnate several times over, and then meet someone like me? A northern country boy from Canada, come biker and farmer, seeking the magical gifts of India.The descent into Palani forced me into the dusty bypasses while riding beside banana plantations, and small fields of water buffalo. Two of these beasts with huge black muscular bodies were treading laboriously across the pavement, as I slowed down to take a good look. Their rib cages looks like twin engines with their hips bones jutting prosperously from their rumps as to look almost erotic. Froth and spittle bubbled from their mouths and nostrils and their backs glistened with a sheen that looked like sweat through their ebony black fur. I don’t remember much of the plains, save for some beautiful white churches in elaborate grandeur, and other pure white mosques with domed ceilings that resembled woman’s breasts and lingams though of course the Muslims may not admit such a thing? Some of the highway department signs  on the way gave me a chuckle, one noted “After whisky, Drinking risky”, another I had seen in Pondicherry showed a stunt biker doing a wheelie, with the large warning “Drive, Don’t Fly!”. I had seen almost every type of Indian animal crossing boards, and nearly as many of them had actually shared the route of the rubber with me. There was an acute freedom about driving in India that I had experienced nowhere else, though soberly saying I have mostly been a passenger all my life. The laws and regulations existed in a kind of liminal possibility. Police guards stood sentinel at every checkpoint and would spontaneously manifest from out of tea shacks, backroutes, and in the tourist traps, so I knew they existed, yet the actually micromanaging of so many thousands of people going and coming did not seem on their priority list. There was a lot here I could get away with, that wouldn’t fly in Canada. The un-signaled lane changes,  standing up on back roads, with my hair in the wind, and a bike fully loaded to obscure my plates, two riders on pillion, and the park anywhere and everywhere style that Indians adopted that I started to like, because I could hatch my bike almost wherever I pleased, but I knew what I could get away with and where, and my limits were closely guarded. I only participated in these fleeting indulgences when I felt safe to do so. I guess this was a healthy exercise in temporary power, and I felt okay with that.

The Himalayan showed its horsepower when the Anamalai Tiger Reserve road brought me back into altitude and I found myself on one of the most beautiful roads of India. Over time I had noticed the kinks and temperament of the bike, the way it responded to cool air, heat, dust, range riding, or the plains. It had burned a permanent copper colored discoloration into the silencer, and the mud always collected on the same parts of the chassis. It buzzed and grizzled in slow placed urban sprawl, and hummed with the whipping wind on the national highways that spanned states. I knew just about as much as it as I had some of the people I have met along the way, and wondered why it didn’t have a name, was that even necessary? And even if it did, what could a motorbike possible adopt as a worthwhile title beside its brand. I caught myself triggering the horn always twice in rapid fashion on blind turns, and when passing imposing vehicles in the opposite lane. This made me think of the roadrunner, then the vision of India as being in a cartoon made me laugh. It seemed quite appropriate for an Enduro bike chasing across a country and I liked how it sounded. From then on I thought of it endearingly with its new addage.

 

Me and the Roadrunner cruised through the Chinnar wilderness and the fringes of the Eravikulam national park. This was breeding season of the wild Nalgiri Tahr, and thus the grounds would be off limits for another month so I contented myself with the well paved tarmac and the lack of any visible human  generated garbage, at least for awhile. I found out later that Kerala had placed fines on selling single use plastic, and the proliferation of road signs reading with anti-plastic slogans impressed me, though I wondered if this would really change the mindset of nearly one fourth of all people on earth who dwelled here. Munnar was a busy bazaar full of chocolate boutiques, spice merchants, oil and herbal apothecaries, and random curio that existed in every other town from Kashmir to Kunyakamari. The streets swam with bodies like sardines, and I hoped that my hostel was far from the mayhem. I took a narrow fording bridge across a river, one of the classic third world types with boards and questionable support braces, then blazed past tea bushes skirting a river run which eventually left the water and snaked into sandy sideroads where I became lost and the sun was setting early behind the peaks.

My hostel was supposed to be at the coordinates I sought but instead found only an arduous hill hike that would be foolish to try with the bike and a sign advertising for Reiki healing. I hoofed it to the top of the hill and found no hostel, only a broken tree habitation and a shirtless man in a vetti, who kindly offered to call the place for me through the wavering signal that sometimes reached his hill. The transmission did not go through to the hostel, but I did catch a pulse of life on the navigator with only minutes to spare on the power, and it rerouted me towards Palivasal, on east facing side of the valley. I spent the night in a completely ordinary cell type of room and had to suffer for a cold shower which didn’t wash the grime off me. I was looking to socialize tonight but there was no one around, so the feeling bottled up and I had the feeling of staying in a lonesome western motel, but at least the bed was comfortable.

The next morning I moved to The Lost Hostel, set in the background from the goings on, but hosting some very hospitable keepers. I met Raja from Rajasthan there, who rode with a club who called themselves the 4HP Brother hood. In my dorm I met two treeplanters, one from Australia and another from Finland who met down under, then a model from New Brunswick seeking to mold herself a new life in India during the winter. On the rooftop I sipped an extremely hot masala chai with a couple from Bulgaria, and listened as French and Israeli accents chatted at a table nearby. I breathed a sigh of relief, there were other cultured people here like me and I wanted to rope them in for the hiking prospects that this land offered.

 

The Aussie, the Finn and the Canadian entrusted me with their faith and we went off the next day to get lost in a tribal tea plantation, after accidentally trespassing on the grounds of a tea factory. The people that worked in the bushes did not have the same impression on me as the Indians of the streets and cities. There seemed to exist no stress in their lives, and on surface level they had an idyllic lifestyle. Natural work to do, with impressive rows of neatly grown leafy vegetables and root crops that would make any market gardener fawn. Clean waterfalls and shola springs coming out of the ground, bright rainbow painted houses where pictures of Jesus, and Krishna next over the doors next to one another. I sensed no friction of religion, no urgency of business matters or money mindedness, no fear of foreign infringement, and there was no western dress among them. Their warm smiles greeted me in a way the struck me softly, and held a reserve of this kind of inner rightness with it all, like a groove of perfect harmony with themselves and their place in the world. I reckoned they were some of the happiest human beings I have had the privilege to encounter, and their faces shall never be erased from my memory. They guided in the direction up towards the Shola forest that eventually took over where the gnarled aromatic bushes left off. The strong image of so many tea trees will always come to bear when I put a glass of street chai to my lips, or culture a kombucha scoby in a dark cabinet at home. We took frequent fruit breaks and snacked on dates, passionfruit and almonds in the shade, off to the side of bison and gaur trackways.

The idea of reaching the Meesapulimala summit before dark left our minds, and we regaled ourselves to a roundabout route back to Mattupetty Dam, back into the fray of tarpaulin lined shacks selling the same spices and chocolate of the main bazaar. The Australian woman wanted to ride pillion, so our two friends hitched in the back of a truck to Munnar with frequent stops from the driver to inquire of their comfort level, and to offer pillows. We took dinner at Ali Baba & the 41 Dishes and all ordered the same thing, then shared gulab jamun soaked in a jaggery syrup. I had a sweet tooth once in awhile, and like to sample the endless variation of Indian sugary.

The next day I devoted to ‘just chilling’, as the locals would say in their mock english slang, and perfectly enjoyed all the passive luxuries of life on the move that often come between periods of inactivity. I slept in an hour later than my usual pre-sunrise cycle, rested copiously, indulged in literature of other peoples travels, stretched my body, and merged the strenuous life with one perfectly held in zen.

But too much comfort kills, so the following afternoon I was up before the dawn on the rooftop drinking leftover coffee from my flask, and waiting for the sun to rise over Chokramudi peak, this is where I would go solo later that afternoon. The ride into Bison valley was scented with the wafting grassy perfume of cardamom and the deep spice of black pepper and clove. The region had been famous for it since the Silk route, and traders came from the corners of the earth to obtain these precious and rich food additives. On the way, I stopped at a place named Apu’s restaurant for a well cooked fish curry and appam, a kind of rice pancake with a mounded center, another variation of a skillet cooked grain that I had not tried before. I bought a bushel of bananas but these fell off the rack of my bike on the way to the base trail up Chokramudi, so I settled for a coconut sweet and a chai at 10 rupees a glass. This was the going rate over most of southern India I had found. I had no vessel for water, but decided to try the hike anyways, which had me huffing and puffing about two thirds the way up the solid black granite. The upper reaches were burned off of cardamom with only grassroots clinging into cloven niches showing any sign of their once existence. I had no idea why so much of the crop was set on fire, but I could make up an idea that satisfied me enough to think about something else.

On the road out of Bison Valley I passed several toddy shops, and the going price for a liter was fair so I thought why not, and stooped inside a dark house to collect my fill. A man behind a table of bottles holding milky white liquid filled my copper flask while others sat on benches with their own bottles, sipping down the inebrious coconut wine. The toddy was the fermented milk from the tender coconuts, and cultured to a point that released a tangy aroma, and a low alcohol. I liked the drink, and felt a similar levity to what I had just experience at the top of Chokramudi. The electrolytes energized me, and I felt it was just the thing I needed after losing so much sweat to the charred and baked slopes of the ghat.

Raja gave me some words of advice on how I might connect with the gypsy cobras in Rajasthan when I reached the Thar desert later. The young woman from New Brunswick turned out to be traveling to Varkala beach the next morning as well, so I offered the extra seat on the bike. She was the first to go any long distance with me. In the morning we stacked the bike with her 60L backpack, my saddle carriers, a yoga/sleeping mat and blanket roll, and somehow was able to comfortable accommodate her. We ate an entire watermelon for breakfast, said goodbye to friends and said an affirmation for the trip. Together we would cruise from the mountains to the sea, and it felt good to have the extra moral support.

I would meet with coast once again, before peeling away and powering up into the core center of India. Little did I realize what karmic clearings and words of power were to find by the sands of the Arabian sea, and how that would change my outlook of India and myself.