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)