Mysore to Ooty

Saturday November 24th
A painfully early start still not early enough to beat the builders outside to it. The construction going on under my window is of the typical kind - barefooted, cotton-shirted workers, bamboo & string scaffolding, very little machinery and absolutely no protection for the workers or general public having to climb over all the mess. Hard-hat area be blowed! They were still hard at work went I went to bed before midnight, trying to chop up 10 metre steel supporting rods. By hand. In the middle of the road. One guy to hold the chisel straight, another to bring down the wooden hammer. No wonder they were there all night....
I am off to the famous hill station, Ooty, in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. My 23-seater air-conditioned mini bus rocks up on time but with only 13 very dirty seats. This'll be fun.
We head off to collect the rest of the passengers in quite a nice neighbourhood. There are a lot of them - allfrom the same family - and even more of their bags. The grandmother gets on first with 2 bags. She is very ugly and somewhat cross that she is unable to wedge her stuff under the very low seats. Cue shouting and hand-waving at the driver. An equally scary man signals to the rest of the party to board. Three littlle boys get on, then some younger, more attractive women a young man, a baby, several more bags, then another man, oh, and one more kid. It's a squash alright. Grandma almost has the driver pinned up against the wall, such is her rage that there is no more room. The kids are throwing empty water bottles into the street and being generally awful. The baby coughs like she has TB and I am seriously concerned that I've got 5 hours of this to comotion to follow, not to mention the risk of a nasty infection at the end of it. It's just gone 8am.
There is no more room anywhere and I'm pleased to see the driver is now on the phone, presumably calling for a bigger bus. If I were him I'd be calling in sick. So as not to look anybody in the face and thus convey my anguish, I look away, directly behind me. In the gateway to the same house are as many people again, with as many bags. Mother of God!!! I'm almost crying. It's been over 20 minutes now and I'm beginning to wish I'd picked another travel company.
But I should know by now, that with every Indian catastrophe-in-waiting, comes sudden respite. Without any evident signal, everybody gets off, taking their bags with them and we just drive off. I'm numb with relief - and disbelief. What luck! We drive almost to where we started, to another hotel, where another crowd and their bags are ready and waiting. Every seat is filled and off we go. Now my question is this: just how many tickets had they actually sold for this one journey? And how were there exactly the right amount of people waiting to fill the unexpectedly empty seats at a moment's notice? Somebody help me!!!
The new crowd are a much friendlier bunch, mostly one Muslim family with a couple of randoms behind me. I try to strike up conversation with a couple of the younger wives by gesturing that I admired the beautiful henna designs on their hands. Their English was bad so one of the husbands chips in: "They are wearing this because on they are on tour". Cool, is this the rest of the band? Of course, once the ice is broken, they're all off, asking me where I'm from, do I like India etc. The guy behind me is singing to attract my attention, and when I give it, I'm met with the interesting question "So Mem, which do you prefer, Mysore or Birmingham?" Well, let's see....
The journey is actually beautiful, taking in a National Park where we spot a couple of elephants. And, after 36 hairpin bends (!) we arrive in beautiful Ooty...