OMG, today I saw wild elephants and I fed an elephant a pineapple. Not quite as famous as ‘I carried a watermelon’, but I think it is actually better because it was totally unplanned.
I had breakfast and was making my way off to find a rickshaw driver who would take me around the local sights, when one found me first! He is called Selva and was very knowledgeable about the TATA tea plantations that dominate the hills and mountainside surrounding Munnar. I spent the day jumping in and out of the Auto-Rickshaw, taking photos and generally absorbing knowledge about the area.
What I learnt today:
- The TATA tea foundation owns 85,000 square kilometres of tea growing land.
- The workers work for ₨180 a day, this is made up of 4 hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon, broken up by a long lunch break out of the midday heat.
- TATA has an onsite hospital in which the workers can go if they hurt themselves. They are not charged for this.
During part of the day I was sent off to walk through a vegetable growing village. It was really rustic with vegetables everywhere, obviously, and it just looked like The Shire, from Lord of the Rings.
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