On the road from Madurai past rice fields, past triumphal gates leading to villages off the main road, past brick works housed under huge thatch roofs, past Shiva, Genesh but also past St. Joseph's School, past a convent, past half a dozen weddings (the driver said it was a "good day" for weddings, I asked if it were "because it was Sunday" but he said "No it was a good Tamil day" and I think he began to count off from the last full moon), past textile and spinning mills, past sugar fields, past coconut groves, past several vast engineering college campuses, past dry river beds, past Mother Theresa's University for Women, past Unibank ATMs, and the beginning the climb up the hills, the western ghats ("steps"), up the 13 hair pin turns, climbing above the dry plains, and, at a turn, the Cardamon Planters Association College, the Organic Coffee Growers Welfare Association, then crossing the border outpost into Kerela at what seemed to be a continental divide and then the tea plantations one after another and finally to Munnar and the Munnar Hights (their spelling) Hotel where they might have been expecting me but it didn't seem they were waiting for me or anyone else. At least Ajay and Sindo didn't seem to know much about signing people in. So they gave me my own cottage overlooking the hills and a small lake. And made a chicken (not vegetarians like the Tamils in Tamil Nadu) curry. It's not what my Dad meant when he said we'd go for a Sunday drive.
