Candy from strangers

On our way down the hills of Kodaikanal, we stop to take more photos of the vista that’s like postcards of Santorini, but much more colourful. The homes dotted all over the hillside are an impressive sight. A man walks out of a house we’re standing by, and invites us to climb on top of the garage in front, to get an even better view. He tells us a bit more about Kodai, and then insists we come into his home. 

It’s like an episode of Julian and Camilla’s World Odyssey, my favourite Travel Channel programme about two Kiwis on an OE. People rave about those ‘real life’ experiences of being welcomed into strangers’ homes, and now I’ve finally got my chance. The man is called Haizer, and he introduces us to his mother and sister-in-law – two of the many family members who live here. The women immediately set to making us coffee and bringing us biscuits, which we accept, even though we can barely move after our embarrassingly extravagant breakfast. The women tell us we’re the very first guests into the newly refurbished home – the place has been in the family for years but they’ve recently spruced it up.

Haizer had spotted my Canon and brings out his own Nikon D3000 and an impressive array of lenses – one longer than my finger tips to elbow. He’s a technician who worked in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi until he had to return home to his dying father. Haizer now runs the family electronics business with his brother, but he’d love to return overseas and tells us he’s applying for jobs in the States. He loves photography and is a total whiz with cameras – something passed on from his father many moons ago, so we look at some of the photos he’s taken of wildlife in the area and he then brings out his sister’s wedding album. Pete must have missed the part where Haizer said it was his sister’s wedding, as he enquires as to where Haizer’s wedding had taken place. Haizer replies, “I am unmarried. By the grace of God, my two younger sisters and brother are married, but I am not.” I sense it’s a bit of a sore point. 

He tells us about the work he does – mainly fixing tourists’ expensive cameras. He says the tourists are often surprised at how cheap it is to get work done here; he recently fixed a camera for Rs 2800, and the tourist had said he got a quote back in the UK for the equivalent of Rs 12,000. “I fix a lot of old cameras. It would be cheaper for them to buy new ones, you know, but a lot of the time it’s sentimental. They want to keep using a camera that’s special to them. And I understand that – my own father gifted me this camera and it’s very precious to me,” he says.

Haizer talks to us about our lives back in New Zealand, and asks if we’re Christian. We say we are and he smiles approvingly. He tells me he grew up a Catholic, but has since converted to Pentecostal. He starts a spiel about Jesus’ second coming in India, and we patiently listen, nodding and making false promises to start reading the bible every day. On that note, we graciously thank Haizer for the hospitality and take our leave, making a more truthful promise to visit him in his electronics store before we leave Kodaikanal.

At sunset, after a much-needed nap and a late afternoon lunch of thali, we meander along Coaker’s Walk, a stunning path around one of the highest hills. I have to pay an extra 30 rupees to get my camera in, but the battery dies after one or two shots; the landscape is too wide and too incredible to be captured on film anyway, so it’s a memory to be etched only in our heads. As we walk, Indian tourists keep approaching us wanting photos of themselves with us in them too. I’m not sure if it’s Pete’s height, or simply our white skin – whatever it is, we are a huge deal here. The sign at the end of Coaker’s Walk says, “Come back after 6.30pm to see the evening jewel box” – referring to the lights of the city by night. It’s getting darker, but we don’t wait around, instead pressing on to tick off all the must-sees in Kodai.

We make our way to the eponymous Bryant Park, landscaped and stocked by a British officer; we haven’t brought our jerseys with us and it’s getting chilly, so we pay 100 rupees each for second-hand, David Bain-style woollen ones from a stall by the lake – mine a bright purple and cream zig-zag, Barn’s decorated with sparkly Christmas wreathes and baubles. He looks very Colin Firth in Bridget Jones' Diary. Interestingly, no-one seems to want photos with us anymore; “Incognito,” Barn reckons.

Our third travel companion, the Lonely Planet, says, “If you’re sappy in love like a bad Bollywood song, the thing to do in Kodai is to rent a pedal boat (Rs 50 per half-hour) or row boat (Rs 120).” It goes on to say, “Screechy crooning to your significant other is entirely optional.” We’re neither sappy in love, nor each other’s significant other, but here in India everyone thinks we are – so we decide we may as well just go for the boat ride. We see other insignificant others doing the same – groups of guys in their early twenties hooning around on honeymoon boats and cheering in Tamil. Apparently a lot of the university students come here – I gather it's a bit like the Queenstown of Otago. I don’t know how the man rowing our boat takes us seriously in these outfits, let alone how he remains so polite. He ends everything with ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ – almost to the point of irritation; “Yes, Madam. No, madam. Certainly, madam. Madam, madam.” I’ve never been called a madam so much in my life. 

After our late lunch, we skip dinner and crash early, glad we didn’t wait around for the evening jewel box, as there’s a power cut in the city – not a jewel to be seen tonight. We head out the next morning on a tour of the hills, and our driver warns us, “Bad luck today. Thick fog.” We visit Silent Valley, which is not at all silent (with all the Indian tourists around), and the fog is relentless – a total repeat of the weather when I visited Jungfrau, the highest mountain in Europe, a few years back. Bugger. We can’t see a thing, but according to the pictures on the signs, the view is excellent. Back in the car, our driver asks us how long it takes to fly from New Zealand to India. 

“About twenty hours,” Barn says. “But worth it.”
“Wife?” our driver replies, not understanding “worth it”.
“Ahhh, worth the long flight, to get to India?” Barn says, more slowly.
“Long flight, wife, India?”

Here we go again.

We continue on to Caps Valley, at an altitude of 2350m, and finally to Berajim Lake, before going back to Kodai to work on our itinerary, which is getting exceedingly more difficult to plan, with the Indian Railways overnighters being booked up weeks in advance, not to mention with us changing our minds on an hourly basis.

After reading an article in the Air Asia in-flight magazine about Makar Sankranti, the Indian national kite festival, we immediately want to change our travel plans. Visions of an Indian version of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner flood our imaginations, and we talk to locals in Kodai about whether or not we should try and get there. A man in a bag shop describes the experience in Ahmedabad as “unforgettable”. “If you go to Makar Sankranti, you will remember it always. It is just magical; thousands of colourful kites filling the sky. The biggest ones two hundred, three hundred…five hundred metres wide!” he enthuses. “The smallest ones, just tiny! Tiny!”

Haizer working by candlelight

We look at each other and nod. We must get to Ahmedabad. We spend the afternoon rearranging travel plans, and trying a host of Indian lunch dishes like dosai, gobi and paneer panatha, chani masala and dahi puri. Before dinner that night, we make good on our promise to Haizer to visit the family business, Robert Electronics. When we arrive, Haizer is working by candlelight fixing a Nikon camera, as the power has been cut once again. I get the feeling I should come to expect this of India. In his shop, Haizer tells us more about his business and the AV equipment he hires out for conferences, as well as the photography services he provides for large group events. He also tells us more about his plans to go overseas again, and asks our opinion on a cover letter he has drafted. Attached is a brief CV, which he has headed up “Bio-data”.

As nicely as possible, we suggest this may be better received in countries like New Zealand and Australia if called a Curriculum Vitae, and as we walk out the door, Pete says, “When I saw ‘bio-data’ I half expected a tissue sample to be attached.” After a brief joke, we discuss how hard it must be for those with English as a second language to get a job in a Western country, and I suddenly feel bad for laughing, and for all the previous times I’ve done the same. We’ve seen that Haizer is an absolute guru, but if I’d been the recruiter on the receiving end of a bio-data, it would have probably been binned at first glance. In atonement, I promise myself I’ll keep an eye out for camera technician roles in New Zealand and to email Haizer if any come up.

Regrettably, we leave Kodai early the next day after waking up to yet another picture-perfect sunrise view from bed. As we wind down the hills in the morning sun, we pass Rattail Falls, the impressive agricultural Manjaralu Dam, and endless plantations of coconut trees and mango trees. I think about the highlight of Kodai – being welcomed into Haizer’s home – and think that sometimes it’s not all that bad to take candy from strangers.