Two stories:

A owns the sweet shop where B and I stopped for cold drinks after a long walk in the hills today. He lived and worked for many years in the UK, but he recently brought his family home to Coonoor to be closer to his extended family. This, we're learning, is a common reason to return to India; another shop owner just down the street made the same decision. Now A is wrestling with regrets. He reports that in India, it's difficult to deal with corruption--not major corruption so much as the slow bleeding away of one's money in response to small requests from political parties and others. And he hates the way that it's so easy to make small bribes to get around the rules. He appreciates Prime Minister Singh, who has a reputation for steadfast integrity, but wishes that other government officials would follow the Prime Minister's lead. Rapid inflation of prices of fuel and other necessary items is also making it hard to stay ahead of the game, he says. He asked about possible opportunities for Indians to work in the US. We passed along what little information we know, suggesting that the best places to consider first might be locations where large Indian communities already exist, such as our own Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond area and Silicon Valley in California. A loves this idea. But he doesn't know anyone in those communities, and we can't think of any leads for him.

The steep mountain slopes around Coonoor--including the slope right below our hotel balcony--are covered with tea plantations. The emerald tea plants, kept lush by reliable rainfall, make this as verdant an area as I've seen anywhere. The tea leaves are harvested by teams of women, who work long hours each day except Sunday, their hands quickly, constantly moving from tea plants to harvest bags and back again. Men don't ever seem to do this work, though sometimes we see a man supervising a team of women--rather extraneously, given that the women seem to be masters of their work and never seem to linger. Their work looks physically demanding, we observe. And do they then have to go home to cook and clean? We hope that others in their extended families do those homemaking tasks. Sometimes as we explore the landscape, we pass within a few feet of some of the tea harvesters. They cast covert, shy glances at us. I soon got into the habit of greeting them, though that's not the usual thing to do here. "Hello, Madame!," I wave. Without fail, faces break into broad, sweet grins, and hands wave back enthusiastically. How satisfying for all of us!

Tomorrow morning, we leave cool, sunny Coonoor to descent back to lower elevations (we've been at nearly 6000 feet here). We're ready for further adventure, but a bit reluctant to leave the beauty and relative calm of this place. We'll head by shared taxi to the big city of Coimbatore, which we've seen far below us from some of the viewpoints we've visited, and then will take a train to Kochi, on the coast of the state of Kerala. There, we've reserved a stay in a homestay: a guesthouse run by a family. We're looking forward to learning about Kerala, which is a very popular destination for tourists from around the world.