Go Bananas - My trip to God's Own Country
August 2003
Thursday saw me leaving the office with a wide grin on my face. Not so much because I had a holiday planned to Kerala, but just since I did not have to be in office the next 5 days. Friday was a holiday because of Independence Day and Tuesday for janmashtami. Monday, I had taken an off...
I left Thursday night for Ernakulam, a town in the district of Cochin, by the Bangalore Kanyakumari express. Since there are no local trains on this route, the train halts at almost every small town and village and there are people boarding and alighting constantly. Not that I mind too much! I love train travel and the coconut palms, plantations and paddy fields made me thankful that I had a window seat.
CochinErnakulam is a very pretty town. Beautiful, clean and plush, a seaside town with broad roads - broad enough to handle real heavy traffic, with new multi story buildings and shopping complexes.
The nice restaurants, posh cafes, seaside parks & jetties added a nice 'Bandra' touch to the place.
You can see Gold shops everywhere and always full of shoppers. (Lot of Gulf money?)
We (me and my parents) spent the day taking a boat tour. I chatted up a nice french couple, me in broken french and them attempting english. Toured a lovely village set up in colonial times, full to the brim with stalls stocking antiques and local jute, nuts and handicrafts. The huge wooden elephants, brass and copper vessels, wheels and lanterns from ancient ships, models of watercraft, ivory handicraft were a delight. So what if I could only window-shop! An ancient Jewish synagogue with Belgian and Italian chandeliers, and hand painted Chinese flooring also vied for attention. I was the only one on the whole tour to spot a dolphin on the way back and it was a wonderful sight.
The Cochin (ernakulam) port is a natural harbor. Surrounded by seven islands, its waters are calm. It is wonderful to just sit at the shore with the waves lapping away gently at the rocks below. The waters harbored oil search vessels from ONGC Bombay, a really HUGE stationary cement compactor aptly christened 'Haathi', cruisers to the Lakshadweep islands, container ships, dredgers, fishing boats and coast guard vessels. There were also quaint restaurant boats and party boats and one ship had a live band with singers crooning to a full audience in the local langue 'Malayalam'.
There were broad triangular 'Chinese' fishing nets along an island shore. The broad end of these nets are just dipped into the water and pulled back by balancing weights at the other end like a pulley and I spotted flat fish, crabs and catfish amongst the catch for the day. Some of you must have seen similar nets along islands near esselworld and Manori in Bombay. They are not made in China. They are called Chinese fishing nets since they were introduced by a Chinese trader in Cochin...
The Cochin municipality has added good walkways and bridges along the shores and creeks. I spent an hour at a nice park along the seaside much like carter road and here they have a bridge and walkway called the Classic Music Pathway where they played soft classical music. That evening at the walkway, I witnessed a beautiful sun setting far into the harbor, sheets of rain and fishing boats in between. A sight of Peace and calm, a sight to cherish.
When I went out for dinner that night I was a little surprised seeing everyone, all the families drinking some beer like liquid at all the tables. It turned out to be just some hot ayurvedic spiced water. Quite tasty actually.
Thekkady
The next morning I left for the little sanctuary of Thekkady. The journey was really beautiful and quick paced. Some of the country buses had big tarpaulins tied along all windows, which were lowered to veil the bus when it was raining. It seemed to me that the bus was in a burkha. Our driver was really quick and given race gear, would have given Schumacher a run for his money.
The road sped along farms and hills ribboned by streams and waterfalls, full of banana, coconut, rubber, cardamom, pepper, jackfruit, guava and beetle nut farms. Teak & Tea plantations and coffee estates carpeted some of the hills. There were miniature steeples every few miles and large school and missionary establishments in most villages.
I booked into a beautiful room facing the forest just outside the Thekkady sanctuary gates in a place called 'Jungle Palace' in the town of Kumily. The owner was a boat driver in the sanctuary lake and his nephew a rickshaw driver who drove us around kumily that day.
We visited a spice garden where I learnt a bit about plantations. I saw cabbage, cauliflower, pepper, cardamom, bay leaf, beetle nut, coffee, rubber, brinjal, ladies finger, sandalwood, tapioca, jackfruit, all spice, ginger, mint, cinnamon, nutmeg, and berries being grown. Raw rice had been arranged in a mound, ready to be thrushed. I tasted green pepper, fresh green bay leaf, ginger leaf, cinnamon bark, fresh green cardamom, all spice and mint leaves.
The farmer also had a few vines of Vanilla and informed me that it sells for 120 Rs for 10 grams and is the second most expensive farm product after saffron. The vanilla, which we consume in our desserts and bakes, is just a chemical lab produce. He also told me that farmers do not flood Paddy fields since the rice needs water. Weeds grow very slowly in water, whereas the rice takes root quickly and hence the farmers work is reduced if they flood their fields. I also learnt how they decipher when a root (tapioca or potato) is ready to be consumed and when they harvest pepper, coffee, rice, vanilla, and other produce. They walk on the pepper pods to separate the grain much like you see the viners dancing on grapes to make wine.
Next, I visited a tea factory and saw the entire processing, the leaf grading, wetting, grinding, drying, segregation and packing of the tea. A lot of jackfruit, bananas and coconuts simply rot away in the trees along the roadsides, since it is too expensive to get them down and send them to market.
That evening I spotted tall gray deer, cows and wild buffaloes from my balcony at 'Jungle Palace'. Soon it was dark, the forest floor was lit up with fireflies, and the night sky seemed just a reflection with its stars. The amount of light a firefly emits will never cease to amaze me. Kumily is a nice village and hosts plush resorts & spice shops. There are many Kashmiri shopkeepers and they seem to stack produce sourced right from Kashmir to kanyakumari. There were also numerous ayurvedic massage adverts and a small theater with a stage for kathakali performances. Very surprisingly, banana chips and coconuts are more expensive here than in Bangalore.
The next morning, we left early for a forest trek in the protected sanctuary. The treks are in groups of five and the guide informed us that he had not spotted animals since quite a few days. We were joined by Joanne and Dewey from Washington who were in Bangalore earlier on a software assignment. We were given knee high rugged canvas socks to ward off leeches. Much to our surprise, we spotted a few wild dogs chasing a group of gray deer after just a five-minute walk. A baby deer and the deer mother waded far into the Periyar Lake. The dogs looked much like the foxes in London city. They were short and did not follow the deer into the water. The deer spotted us and kept glancing both ways until the dogs got bored and left. Just after a few minutes, we saw a repeat of the event and I was very glad that I did not see any killing. Again, the deer waited cautiously in the water until the dogs left. The deer are not afraid in the water, since there are no predators in the periyar lakes. There are only fish, turtles, small water snakes and otters.
As we walked the forest trails, I spotted some wild boar and called the group back to where I was. We soon spotted a group of otters and beautiful birds. The forest got thick after a while and we walked closer in a group. After that, we only spotted wild mushrooms, butterflies, a lot of elephant and deer dung, crabs, insects and animal footprints. Baboon calls and cuckoo songs filled the dense forest air. We spotted numerous herbs and our guide rubbed teak leaves on our palms. Our palms turned a beautiful red. (The leaves source the red color used in kathakali make up). The trek was very tiring and we were back at the sanctuary office in time for breakfast.
Once we took off our canvas socks, we realized that we had picked up plenty of leeches on the way. Soon my mom spotted a leech on herself. It had ballooned from a thin broken rubber band size to the size of a snail. When it fell and hit a rock, a lot of blood oozed out...UGh... Then I sensed some movement in the forest and we spotted some wild pigs who were feeding on some picnic leftovers. Joanne and Dewey were very thankful since they had been on the boat trip the previous day and had not spotted any animals in that tour.
After lunch at a sanctuary resort, we rested a few hours and amused ourselves watching the antics of a large family of monkeys who were amusing tourists with a lot of cackling and fighting. A French family was thrilled at the sight of the baby monkeys and the kids were very pleased. They kept photographing the monkeys jumping in the bamboo growth and eating chips and biscuits handed out by tourists. One monkey was so hungry or bored, it tried to taste a camera bag and it did not seem to like the taste at all...
We took the evening boat ride on the periyar and thankfully saw several wild elephants grazing and showering themselves with mud. One mother elephant felt threatened with the noise of the boats and all the attention. Its daughter kept running in circles behind the trees and the mother trumpeted threateningly. The pair got irritable and retreated into the refuge. We also spotted some bison and some more deer on the banks. Snakebirds and darters dived into the water with unfailing regularity and malabar hornbills noisily flapped their heavy wings reminding me of scenes from the Jurassic movies.
Very surprisingly, many village people had joined us (Sunday picnic) and got hazaar excited looking at elephants and monkeys. I thought they should be very used to these animals. However, they were apparently from small cities and were picnicking from neighboring Tamil Nadu. They were also surprisingly very scared of monkeys, and kept running away and screaming when monkeys approached them for food at the boat jetty. The boatman had a tough time asking them to be silent in the sanctuary and stop them from running all over the ship.
KumarokamThe next morning we left for kumarakom, a village on the banks of the Vembannad lake and sanctuary. The bus ride was again beautiful. Traveling with locals in their bus gives you such a wonderful glimpse of their culture and living. The journey was amazing, along rubber and tea plantations clinging to mountain ridges with the clouds far below us.
Kumarokam is a wonderful village and you can play 'land or water' everywhere. There are multitudes of canals full of lotus and lily flowers and every house in the village seemed banked on a canal. There were ducks and handcrafted teak boats used for fishing and ferrying goods all over. The village had a small theater with a wooden roof, playing a local movie and promising a Van Damme movie next. There was also a gym called Tyson.
Children jumped from coconut trees into the canals and the villagers use canal waters for washing, bathing, farming, rearing birds and for transport. We checked into a brand new room with a view of the lake, at 'Breeze County'. These rooms were being set up by a city returned farmer on his ancestral property and gave us better view of the lake than even the Taj at perhaps 1/5th the price. There were also houseboats made of teak with palm leaf knitted walls, which cost something like 5000 a day, which keep touring the lake.
That evening, we walked through the vembannad bird sanctuary for about 5 Km and spotted several bats, snakebirds, darters, Cranes and Egrets. It was sad to see that tourists had discarded plastic bottles even in the sanctuary waters. I also spotted a small turtle and a black furry animal (probably a raccoon) which played hide and seek for a few seconds before disappearing into the forest. We then took a village hand oared boat ride along the lake and into a canal roofed by vines and palms. That night there were fireflies in my room and one sat on my blanket inches away. I bet man can never make anything as efficient.
The next morning we took a motor boat ride along the village canals and spotted crab fishing, paddy farming and took in sights of village life. The boatman had worked in diamond polishing units in Bombay, Papad mill in Gujarat and as a tourist driver in Rajasthan and spoke good Hindi. The village kids wanted pens and books, but we did not have any. We went along a canal in Arundhati Roy's village and spotted several weaverbirds and bright blue kingfishers. The canals and lakes are just 5-10 feet deep and hence there is sufficient light to allow a lot of water plants and plankton to grow all along the bottom and the sides. Ducks waddled into canal waters over bent coconut palms and birds stood still over twigs and water hyacinth leaves.
The people in kerela were very helpful and nice. There were hardly any liquor shops and women have a lot of power. In all these places, the drivers, guides, and boatmen find enough work for hardly 1 out of 5 days (except on weekends and season time) and they have to make do with what they earn. Most of the boatmen and rickshaw drivers just rent their craft since they cannot afford their own. Foreign tourists are catered to by boats owned by their five * hotels and most of the money does not trickle down to the actual villagers. The country is clean and green, safe and thankfully well to do otherwise. The entire trip was pleasant and passed without incident.
Only once we returned to Bangalore, we had a fight with a rickshaw driver (not unusual). I hope u enjoyed this note and would recommend you to visit these places if you have not already. And, do take notebooks and pencils for the village kids.
Luck
v
