Trip to Top Station 11th March

I'm finally better though it took a trip to the local hospital and some antibiotics to get me back to health. No more buying food from stalls in the bazaar!I've spent around 3 days in the hotel room reading and recuperating close to a loo. Meanwhile Samuel has been going on half day walks in the surrounding hills.

[Samuel - The hospital was most efficient we were in and out with the drugs in about an hour and a bit. It cost 185 Rupees (2.70GBP) 55 for the doctor and the rest for the drugs.]

Today I felt well enough to venture out and we took a bus at 8.00 to Top Station which is a beauty spot on the border with Tamil Nadu. After monsoons washed away the railway line which transported the tea to the coast in Kerala in the 1920s, they built a cable car connection to Tamil Nadu via Top Station to carry it in the othr direction. In Munnar you can see the site where it started and at Top Station we could see the concrete in which the winding equipment was embedded descending into Tamil Nadu but not the other end of the Munnar Line.

The bus journey was great with wonderful views of 2 reservoirs. Madupattu was enormous and boating facilities are popular. Endless stalls fringed the road but they were mainly empty or just setting up as we ascended but crowded with local and foreign tourists when we came back at midday. There were some tethered elephants beside the lake. The second lake was smaller and soon after we reached a cfe and were told to get off as we'd reached top station. Nothing was really visible, and it looked a bit of a disappointment. We wandered up a dusty track and found more stalls setting up and a small hotel, where we ate breakfast still faintly baffled what the fuss was about.

Fortified by food we ventured on, ignoring a trespassers will be prosecuted sign, and eventually found ourselves on a spectacular ridge which stuck out between two mountain ranges (around 2000m) with deep valleys falling on either side beneath. The sandy path with sketchy steps descended 100m to a couple of fragile looking viewpoints protected by bamboo barriers. Despite some early morning mist the views were incredible. On our return we realised the path and steps were created by sandbags to make it relatively safe to descend.

On the bus journey back through the ubiquitous tea plantaions we saw a working elephant at the side of the road where they were felling some trees.

We've cut  a CD of some of our photos and hope we can add one of two to the blog soon.

On Saturday we're off to the bird sanctuary at Thattekad for 2 nights and then on to the backwaters we hope.

Cathy