20th Anniversary Dream Trip Contest

Great Travel Moment

Traveling through Kerala's tea region, we visit an abandoned English plantation house.As we approach the village a group of boys, sons of tea laborers from Tamil Nadu, abandon their cricket game and eagerly follow our jeep. Spirits are high at this unexpected cross-cultural meeting. Communication is not limited by a lack of common language, as laughter and spontaneous song augmentthe few English words known by all.Together we explore the outside of the decaying house. When one of our party accidentally pulls down a loose storm drain, laughter explodes and the Tamil boys echo our cries of ''Theresa broke the house!'', and I snap a photo.Our car finally departs amid goodbyes in several languages - Tamil, English, and the Malayalam of our Keralan hosts– and for the first mile or two we drive silently, flooded with the warmth of how simple friendship can be.