Day 18
I went to the same tourist office as yesterday for another tour. At the back I met old lady who tried to speak to me in some language, but then she switched to English. It came out that she's from Netherlands and she heard that other people on our tour are from Netherlands too and they came soon, two guys. With old lady was half younger malayali guy. She said that they met on "laughter yoga" that she's leading while he was playing drums.
Generally I had more reasonable vibes from the group than from Israeli group of yesterday. And yet I couldn't completely stop to wonder about relationship between the old lady and malayali guy. People here are very open and any instinctive assumptions could be wrong.
Tour covered botanical garden, Mattupetty dam, various viewpoins, top station, echo point and generally Kundala lake. But among all these, the most interesting was tea museum. It showed various typical museum displays about history and old machinery of tea plantations and then short documentary about history about it. The most interesting though was display of working machinery that presented how tea is processed. One other highlight of the trip for me was that when we stopped at the dam, there was playground park nearby full of monkeys (macaques). I was filming them and they were going around with their business, mostly ignoring humans, but without fear. One monkey just came to me and pushed me lightly - it was like pressing my legs. And they just walk away as if it was nothing.
When we returned from the trip I went to the hostel for quick unload and I asked for instructions of how to get to Kodaikanal. I went to station also to check when it will leave next day morning. While I was going to the station tuk tuk driver asked if I want to be driven to good sunset point. I dismissed him as usual I do with them, but when I was returning from the station I thought it's my last day here so why not. I asked about the price and 400 ₹ seemed little too much, but I set my mind on it.
We were driving for some time until we arrived at some point with many big rocks around. He said that I should climb the biggest one and it's perfect spot. I actually climbed it, but during climbing I felt that going down will be actually more tricky. I sat at this rock and waited for the sunset, doing photos and videos of the landscape. When I was satisfying and sunset finished I went out of the rock easier than I thought. Often it's easier to climb something than climb down safely.
After return I did little walk to main town center, but I didn't have much to do there really except soak general atmosphere of hill station town. I returned to the hostel tired and prepared to take long journey out of Kerala for the first time.
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