The Road Into the Mountains

Another 5-hour road trip with another (thankfully) expert driver took us up into the mountains to the "Peermade Development Society" headquarters which is located in the midst of tea plantations. We are staying here for 3 days of R & R. More about PDS tomorrow.

The way here took us along 2-lane roads lined with shops, homes, villages, towns often crowded with pedestrians, school children, cycles, dogs, goats, and cows. I managed to catch two sleeping next to the median.

Then it was a one-lane, paved road, then a one-lane mud lane, then again paved as we wound our way up and down the mountains ever-winding our way with many a hair-pin turn through rubber, banana and tea plantations.

I sat up front so I could catch some photos out the window, but it was a challenge: both to get the photos and also to maintain cool. The photos are fuzzy because they were taken out the window at what seemed like break-neck speeds.

You can see the icon of Mary on the dashboard in my photos. I was glad she was there; I alternately enjoyed the thrill of speeding past all the obstacles, passing scooters, trucks, buses, and 3-wheeled taxis just in the nick of time before some huge bus or lumber-laden truck came barreling head-on toward us.

We passed many churches and also many Christian shrines, in the style of Hindu shrines. We passed some mosques as well, but I never was able to photograph one. In the towns there would often be arches announcing various things like a feast day.