Ponmudi

On Sunday, after a short nights sleep, we had arranged to travel to Ponmudi, a hill station about 60kms from Trivandrum.

Although the distance is not very far, the roads that lead there are very windy, bumpy and unsigned. So the journey took about 3 hours. We passed through valleys, and over rivers, winding around hillsides, and through a lot of towns and villages. The scenery was a lot different to the other parts of Kerala that I have seen. It was even more green and lush.

The traffic was a lot less than in the more populated areas, and it seemed a lot less frantic, but the buses are as psychotic as they are everywhere else.

On the way we were planning to stop at Menmutty Waterfall, where apparently you can walk along the river and climb round the falls. However these were closed for maintenance due to a land slide, s o we went to some other un-named part of the river for a swim.

There were a few other people in the water when we arrived, we clambered across the stream to a large flattish rock, and got changed to swim in the water. Actually swim is an exaggeration, as the pools in the stream were only a few meters across, but there was plenty of room to splash around and cool off.

Shibu, his friend who’s name I have forgotten, and I clambered further up the stream, to one of the other pools. There were another group of guys, about the same age as us splashing about and posing for photos just like us.

One of them came over to me with a stern look on his face, and asked me

“Where are you from?”

I told him that I was from England, wondering why the stern face.

“I support Arsenal. Highbury!!” he said

“Welcome to Kerala. This is God’s own country, enjoy.”

Then all his mates came over to pose for photos with me.

After we clambered out of the river, dried off, and went back to the car, we continued our journey to the Hill Station. There are plenty of signs that tell you how far there is to go, but not very many at junctions telling you which way to go. However we got there eventually and settled into the beer parlour for some drinks whilst they cooked us an egg curry. The curry took an ice age to arrive, so we ended up drinking quite a bit. Thankfully the view from outside was fantastic.

After eating, we made our way to the summit, not far from the beer parlour. There was not long left of the daylight, so we took as many photos as we could, tried to get echos from the valley below and generally took in the magnificence of it.

The vista spread out below was very impressive. I’m told that normally it is very misty, and so the visibility is limited, but not when I was there. The view went on for miles.

As we stood on the top peak, the skies gradually darkened, and the clouds came in below us as well as above us, it got pretty cold, by Indian standards, and we had to go home.