The house at Kodai and the wall project

Building project at the house in Kodai

Sriya’s parents have owned the property for about 25 years I believe, and it sits on the edge of the mountain with a spectacular view of the valley below. The front of the house faces southeast so the sun cascades into the house in the mornings particularly..
Syria’s mom loves to work on the house and has made many changes over the years. The downstairs, where my bedroom is has been remodeled and expanded in recent years. There are beautiful hardwood floors and a huge window in the lower living area and a very nice grassed outside area. It is a beautiful house to be at for the weekend.

 

  

 

There is some construction going on at the house. There is a retaining wall that is being rebuilt on one of the terraces and the crew was there today (Sat) and the project is getting close.

 

  

 

Team is 6 people. Two appear to be the masons and there is a lady who mixes and carries the mortar. She also helps another guy who is breaking up the rock (which must have been hand carried to the site) to move the rock to the wall for final trimming and placement.

World of Concrete India style

Two ladies who are moving the backfill from the lower level in sacks that they carry on their heads complete the crew. We estimate that there is 60 to 70 pounds of fill dirt in each bag.

It will take a lot more bags to complete the backfill. I do not know what they earn but a reasonable estimate would be between $2 and $4 per day per person with the masons making the top end of that scale and the laborers the bottom end.

 

Lead mason on his cell phone lining up the next job!

It is all very labor intensive, but there is plenty of labor who need jobs and money. For this particular job it would have been very difficult to use any machinery because of the access issues.

Up to the Eastern Ghats. A mountain home visit

Friday

Travel to KodaiKanal

Before I tell you about the journey to Kodi and what a beautiful place it is I want to take a few moments to describe some of the aspects of living abroad for work, and share a couple of pictures.

India is a large country but only has one time zone. The history behind this decision is that the decision was made as a unifying strategy after independence from Britain in 1947. Anyway it is 10 ½ hours different from US Eastern time and 2 ½ hours different from Beijing.

This means conference calls at all sorts of times day and night. Two countries is fairly simple but if you try to get India, China the US, and Japan it is next to impossible and often involves late night calls. The day I arrived my good friend Vivek had such a meeting at 9.30 at night.

The photos show him in his executive office (aka bedroom) with his hand crafted teak desk and executive phone!!

There are no doubt some great advantages and opportunities for personal growth. For example their 3 ½ year old daughter speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, Tamil (one of the Indian languages) and of course English. She is able to switch between them effortlessly and does not know any different!!

Kodi

For this portion of the trip I had made no specific plans and Vivek and Sriya had arranged to spend a long weekend at Syria’s parents house in Kodi. It is what is called a hill station and used to be a refuge from the summer heat.

I believe Kodi is about 7000 ft elevation and is a 9 hour drive from Chennai. The last 35 miles or so take you from the very fertile plain up a sometimes narrow but always winding road. Kodi is also something of a tourist spot so there are local busses, tourist busses, trucks and the usual assortment of cars, mopeds, bicycles and ox carts. Lots of horn blowing on sharp bends and curves and the occasional need to back up and let a bus around the corner. It takes about 2 hours to cover the 35 miles, but nobody gets bored!!.

 

  

We actually flew from Chennai to Madurai, which is about 100 miles south of Kodi. It was a 50-minute flight on Paramount Airways one of the many excellent carriers in India. They are Chennai based. Babu who is the senior driver for Sriya’s parents in their very smart BMW X5 diesel SUV met us.

It was an Embraier 170 jet and very comfortable, and they managed to serve a 3 course lunch (very tasty) in the allotted time. The flight attendants hustled but did not rush you. A little nostalgia for those of us who fly domestically in the US!!

We arrived around 5.30 and were welcomed by Kumar who cares for the house on a full time basis. 

I was going to continue with the description of the Kodai housebut will do a seperate post for that hopefully later today (Wed)