Return to Cochin

Early start again – 5:30am rise to get in the Minibus ride down the Mountain to Coimabatore to take the State 'Express' Bus to Cochin. We set of in the dark and were able to see sunrise over the edge of the mountain range which was astounding, the sun rose as a large orange glow which soon became too bright to look at directly, however has it rose the colours in the valleys below changed from dark black through blues, oranges, and the then to green where visible and white where clouds filled the valleys. We got the driver to stop a couple of times to take pictures but they will never do the view any justice. A slight incident on the way down the switch back road woke every one up when we hit a local stray dog (they are everywhere in India and often run blindly in the roads) The driver Skidded to a halt and there was a lot of yelping and whining and a horrible scraping sound from under the vehicle. It turned out the dog had bounced of the front of the vehicle and ran behind us barking at the minibus the scraping sound was just the dislodged number plate, so with that re-affixed and the dog long since ran off, we carried on down the mountain. After about 2 hours and with a number of people feeling a little travel sick we stopped in a village to get breakfast in a very busy restaurant and then continued on to Coimabatore. We got on the Bus at around 11am and set of for the drive to Cochin. At first everything was fine and we thought it was just a posh bus as it had a large screen at the front showing a movie however once the movie had finished there was some kind of televised debate interspersed with really whiny Indian music video's and hears where the problem began as the driver who was sat in a separated area wanted to listen to the audio track so he turned the volume up so loud that you couldn't hear any thing else in the back of the coach, all you could do was lip read. Twice the request went to the front to turn it down but at the start of the next track it just went up again. Really annoying. On the journey the only thing to do was to look out the window as talking was out. For some reason the Indians like their specialist hospitals and two that caught my eye in the way back were the 'Hospital for Piles' and the 'Ganga Hospital'. The first appeared to be on the 5^th floor of a building (I hope the lift worked) and the second I can only guess how they treat you! Also on the way back we passed a paddy field and initially all I saw was a load of men on the side watching the a cloud of water move up the field. It turned out they were buffalo racing. This is where they change the plough to a sort of skiff plate and set the buffalo off charging up the paddy field, the 'driver' then stands on the skiff and sort of water skis between the buffalo.
We arrived in Cochin at around 6pm the traffic was horrendous apparently due to a load of VIP's and the Indian President being in town so loads of roads had been shut or made one way. The other bad news coming in was that one of the Political Parties was arranging a Bandh for the next day. A Bandh is essentially a General Strike and tend to be enforced by bands of supporters roaming the streets with rocks and sticks. Initially it appeared the the party didn't really have the support to shut the whole state down. Michael the Guide had already made confirmed arrangement for those of us traveling the next day and I was due to leave at around 10am however at about Midnight Michael got a call to say they would only be able to transport us at 5:30am to get to the Airport before things got too hairy on the roads. Not good news when you've just polished off a couple of beers and a whiskey an we expecting to be up at 9:30 and now you need to be up at 5! (early again). So packing the bags at 1am then into bed for 4 hours slightly tipsy I was awoke by Les shouting at me to get up at 5:20am oops – a very quick shower and dashed down to meet the others.