Where anyone can be a king

This is the way to vacation! We get up every morning (ridiculously
early, since I'm still jet-lagged) eat breakfast and jump in the car,
where our driver carts us around to different sites, stops when we
want to, and tells us about his homeland. I'm in the state of Kerala,
"God's own country," as they say Jere. It's amazingly green and
fertile. They grow tea all over the place--apparently it only grows on
angles of 35-45 degrees, so they have filled the mountains with tea
plantations. We even got to go into a tea museum / factory (as you can
imagine, they mostly just dry and grind up the leaves, but it was fun
to see). There are also tons of waterfalls, which kind of amazes me
since they come from the tops of the mountains. Where does all that
water come from so high up? I've added a few pix, but my cell phone
camera isn't stellar, so imagine it all being ten times more vivid and
a thousand times bigger and all around you, and you'll have a glimpse
of how awesome this all is.

Meals cost about $2 per person, and it's all pretty amazing food...
assuming you like Indian. It's a lot of curry, even for breakfast.
Also a bit of toast and some sopapilla-esque fried bread patties.
Tours are super, super cheap. All you have to do is get here. You can
stay in a hotel for a couple of bucks, and rent a car with a driver
for pennies (yes, the driver is included, and yes, you want one. They
are insane here--and not just because they drive on the left!).

I have yet to get sick ::knock, knock:: but everyone else has. I've
been brushing my teeth in the water, in hopes that I can build up an
immunity to it all. Maybe that'll be my downfall. I figure if I've got
4 more weeks in SE Asia, I might as well embrace it!