Strap yourself in and hold on!

 I’ve tried to resist but my willpower has waned to the point that I need to comment.

The driving around these parts is scarily frightening and dangerous in the extreme.

There was an area of roadworks controlled by two workers each holding a green and a red flag. We stopped in the red flag queue until those coming in the other direction were signalled to stop with the red flag.

Did they stop, not bloody likely so you had two sets of vehicles trying to get through a one vehicle width of roadway - result chaos.

A large excavator with extendable boom was straddling the right hand lane scrapping at the “cliff” face on the left side of the road, so what did our driver do? Drive under the excavator boom - isn’t that what all drivers would do!!!

The roads are narrow with many corners as they wind their way up and down the hills on which the tea trees are planted and it is not helped that there are numerous areas of roadworks and buses galore – this afternoon we passed at least 7 buses coming down the hill from one school alone, each school it would seem having their own fleet of branded buses.

We have survived (so far) so we are thankful.

This morning we visited another tea plantation (Lockhart Estate) and had a more leisurely walk through a part of it. There is a part of the estate where for 50rs you can access it without a guide and wander at your leisure.

We then visited their tea processing plant and while we could see how tea was processed from leaf to cup unfortunately the presentation by the tour guide was very poor and difficult to understand. No photos were allowed, it couldn’t be because they have a different process to other manufacturers so it must have been because the whole place was dusty and dirty and if consumers saw the conditions the product was manufactured in sales would fall dramatically. The factory started in 1936, and it would seem that no money has been spent on it for the last 89 years, produces approximately 20 million kg of tea a year.

Our next stop after lunch was the Mattupetty Dam, a storage concrete gravity dam which  conserves water for hydroelectricity and opened in 1953. If nothing else it allowed us to stretch the legs but was unspectacular.

To round off the day we went to a village town, Alimadi and had a stroll in their Main Street.