striking munnar

following the wonderful fabulous city of kochi sara and i took a supposedly four hour bus (it really was five) through the mountains (crazy small and windy roads) to the town of munnar. munnar is beautifully nestled high in the mountains completely surrounded by luscious green tea plantations. i mean these tea plantations were about the prettiest thing i had ever seen, it was also a relief to feel the temperature drop as we rose into the mountains, i actually got chills! unfortunatly as soon as we were off our bus in munnar and deciding where to go to stay we were informed by a rickshaw driver that the WHOLE town of munnar was striking for three days and this was the first day of the strike. we had noticed that the town seemed quite dead, but didn't really think too much of it. there were no hotels, no restaurants, no nothing open anywhere! we talked with the rickshaw driver for a bit and he found a friend who said he had a very small room we could rent for the night, with no other option we agreed to the 300 rupees (more than we have paid almost the whole trip...around 7 dollars) and followed the man to his home. we hiked up a small path as it began to rain and were informed at the house that we must wait while they fixed up the room. long story short, the room was TINY, sara and i had to sleep together on a single bed and the room was in a sort of shed. we had lovely surroundings with someone next door to us retching and vomitting and i swear huge rats running around on the roof. yuck! we didn't have any food with us and decided we should at least try to head into town to find something and to figure out how to get a bus out of that town early the next morning. we found that a hotel door was open and slipped inside to ask some questions. the manager was so super friendly and helped us figure out the bus as well as hooked us up with some chapatis, coke and the best fresh tea i have ever had. the agreement was though that we could tell no one we had eaten with him because serving us during the strike was illegal. anyway, this morning we boarded a bus to theni, about a 3 hour trip and then transferred buses onto trichy, another 4 hours. we arrived in trichy to find that almost all of the hotels are full because of a big marriage celebration tomorrow, but we did find one available room and were so incredibly thankful. we just finished visiting the temple on the rock and hiked the 437 steps to the top, drenched in sweat, yay! it was a beautiful site to see the whole city of trichy. luckily while trying to catch a bus back to the hotel we found an internet cafe and stopped so i could make sure to send my mom a happy birthday email. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! The pictures are of tea plantation workers, a beautiful tea field, sara in front of our delightful shed and me in our spacious room...