Earlyish start today as we relocated from Udaipur to Kochi.
Booked out at 8.30 and used the hotel arranged tuk tuk to take us to the carpark – the hotel is in the old town and vehicles, bikes excluded, are not allowed to come into the old town. That last comment is made with tongue firmly in cheek as numerous times, in the vicinity of the hotel, we have chosen to move aside to allow cars to go by rather than be added to the road statistics!
Our faithful Ashok was waiting for us, the bags loaded into his vehicle and he took us to the airport, our last ride with him. After we had unloaded we gave him “gifts” for his wife Gita and for each of his daughters Priya and Riya as well an envelope for each girl with some rupees for adding to their wedding bank accounts and for him double his tip for the last couple of days. The gifts were in fact amenity packs in nice bags we received from Singapore Airlines on the two legs getting here.
Both of us gave him a hug and wished him well for the future and asked that he send us photos of his new house when completed and also of his family’s Holi festival celebration on March 14th.
And with that Ashok Kumar drove away to pick up his next client in Jaisalmer 500 kms away, arriving back in Delhi on 13 March (the day before the Holi festival) such is the life of a tourist driver.
As we walked towards the departure area Sherry said that I got quite emotional saying goodbye to Ashok – if I did, which is obviously denied, it must have been my feminine side coming out!
To get to Kochi we first flew to Bangalore and then another flight from there to Kochi arriving around 4.30 exiting the arrival hall to be greeted by Jinas our driver for the remainder of our trip.
One shouldn’t make comparisons but Jinas is no Ashok! No pressed white shirt, no name badge, has only been tour driving for a year and while Ashok had achieved his super licence for F1, Jinas is still trying to develop the skills to get his.
The drive from the airport to Munnar was around 2.5hrs up into the hills where there are tea plantations and we could see, prior to it getting dark, that the landscape had changed from barren, brown and dusty to lush and green.
The only negative being the windy roads with kilometres of roadworks – the last 35 kms taking approximately an hour.
Since we have arrived in Kochi we have received texts from Ashok asking whether we had arrived at Bangalore, telling us he had got to Pokhran City and another with a photo of him and a young Priya
A long day of travel completed
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