I hadn’t really clocked how far south Kerela is.
It’s Tuesday 19 April today and the program is to go from Cochin to The Windermere Estate in Munnar today. I forced myself out of bed at 6 to go exercise because I could feel my body atrophying and had a great workout, albeit short, in the Marriott’s gym. I would have loved a swim, but no time. The breakfast buffet was great and ended up with a dosa (which was a bit oily:() and a croissant and some of the awful version of coffee (see tomorrow for what I should have asked for). The food is a bit spicier - everything is a curry - I felt my stomach do a bit of a summersault, but turned out ok. I tried curried oats (on the right in the fruit plate picture) - was actually really good.
At 9 Saif and I were off to Munnar. I found out his English wasn’t quite as fluent as I thought. He told me it was a 5 hour journey and I said I’d like to go back in for fruit and he kept pulling away. It took about 4 more tries to get him to go back to the hotel. Here is a picture of Saif and the car. What is that hood ornament anyway? Looks phallic to me!
Here is our route. We also went through a town called Thalekode - nothing interesting there, I just saw the name on a roadside and will see if it is on our route as suggested by Google.
Anyway, we were off. The first thing I noticed was a lot of churches. The first churches I’d seen on this trip.
Here are some shots of the town areas we drove through. Traffic was going every which way - the usual.
The plethora of churches was later explained because the first colonizers were the Portuguese followed by the French before British moved in. I am enjoying the lushness of the area. After 2 weeks of 100+ heat and dust and scrub land, I am in 75 degree heat and jungle. Yes, high humidity - it actually reminds me a lot of Florida. The humidity makes my bee sting itch. You could see the clouds build for a rain later in the day.
We went through one area with store after store selling teak wood furniture - I wish I could have taken that with me to Florida.
As we drove you could see big houses lining the streets which looked more like Thailand than India. In fact even the men’s clothing - wearing sarongs instead of trousers - reminded me of East Asia.
I’m not sure of the local political situation and couldn’t communicate well enough with Saif to ask, but in many places you could see the hammer and sickle painted on the walls or on flags.
Our way took us along NH49 which is a winding and mostly 2 lane road through the jungle. Lots of overtaking on blind curves, lots to TukTuks. One of the TukTuks had lingfishers in it (a big fish - but this was Saif that was telling me and it could have been anything, since I didn’t see it). There were many beautiful trees with blue flowers - jacarandas maybe.
It seems like many things in India are unregulated, like, we could ride in wide open Jeeps at Bera without seatbelts and get as close to the wildlife as we wanted, even get out of the Jeep and walk up to a leopard if we wanted to. Other things are very regulated, like all the paperwork needed for the tourism pass to Kerela. Which gives us more freedom - not having rules, or having rules?
In a few hours we crossed an impressive bridge
and entered a national park (can’t find the name anywhere) and saw the CHEEYAPPARA WATERFALLS,
a bit further on was the smaller Valara Waterfall.
Neither were awe inspiring due to a general lack of water.
Further on it was clear that this was considered the ”spice route” since there were signs declaring it as such. When I arranged my trip I said I wanted to visit a spice farm to see how things were grown and I was told to ask my driver. Well the local greeter (see yesterday) said we’d make a stop at one. What a disappointment - it was a tourist trap. To make matters worse, because the humidity was up all the mosquitos were out. The only positive was that it make me stop thinking about the itching of my bee sting for a few minutes. Laura gave me a “tour” which consisted of walking up a walkway and telling me about the 1 example of each of the different Ayurvedic medicinal herbs and spices they were growing. Below is a list and there’s a movie too.
-Nutmeg tree: takes 10 months for the nuts to ripen and they are black when they’re ready. The red flower, when crushed, is called nutmaze
-Cocoa tree
-several types of Boswellia (Indian Frankencense) - for arthritis pain
-Mexican mint
-Pepper longum (black pepper) vine - grows up onto trees and needs 8 or 9 months to ripen. This particular vine was growing up a mango tree.
-Bilimbi- good for cholesterol
-Seragundi - urinary tract infections
-Vanilla- is pollinated manually because is a hermaphrodite - male and female are both on one plant
-Curry leaf
-Coffee robusta
-Lemongrass
-Cashew tree: the cashew nut is attached to the “cashew apple” which is also edible and good for making wine
-Allspice a.k.a. Jamaican pepper- can be harvested every 2 or 3 years and can be a replacement for Graham masala
-Sandle wood tree: Sandler wood is now very closely monitored and protected. It takes a long time to grow
-Asian pigeon wings - a small white flower on a vine
-Wild termeric- not for food, larger than its edible cousin
-Jackfruit
-Cardamoms - is on a plant that looks like ginger
-Brahmi: good for lowering bp and brain
-Cinnamon
-Desmodium- reduce obesity
-ornamental pineapple
For a brief moment while being eaten alive by mosquitoes I forgot all about my bee sting!
After this underwhelming stop we continued on to Windermere and started getting into higher elevation. I can see why they call them tea gardens as the tea is planted in such wonderful patterns to allow the tea pickers access. The older gardens are in more vertical patterns (looks a bit like the pattern of a brain), the newer are in horizontal rows. We enter misty hills and come into some rain. I am amazed to see Lantana and morning glories- I later learned these escaped from a garden and went wild. Eucalyptus trees groves are also seen- they grow fast for use in the tea making process, but the government has prohibited further planting of them because they are not native to the area. The local trees are not allowed to be cut any longer either.
Windermere is not what I expected, but it will turn into being a pleasant surprise. I am at about 1500 meters of altitude. The website makes it sound like a very fancy place, but it’s a bit “weathered” due to all the humidity (e.g. looks run down). They realize they have me in the wrong room (I paid for something higher grade), so shifted upstairs while I went for lunch. At 6pm I went on a tour of the tea plantation. This is actually a spice plantation (so I didn’t need to go to that awful place earlier at all) - it grows (wonderful Arabic) coffee and cardamom. The tea garden which encircles it is all owned by TATA. The tour (hike) around the tea plantation was nice because a)it was the first walking I’ve done after being trapped in a car or plane for days, b) you could see the mist and hear the thunder as we were walking and c) there were surprisingly few mosquitos. Here are some of the flora and fauna we saw (movie below):
Flora:
-Cardamom
-Sisal - like agave plant
-Arabica coffee
-false guava
-tree tomato
-gooseberry
Fauna
-Giant squirrel
-Marlabar whistling thrush
-Cicada
-green tree Frog
-Sunbirds, oriental white tail
-Laughing thrush
-An amazing bee hive 50 feet up-measuring about half meter by half meter
-there are also porcupines. I didn’t see one, but did find a quill!
We got back in time for coffee/tea time. I ordered a milk coffee (big mistake - see tomorrow’s breakfast) and it came with kerelian snacks which were fried bananas. Really tasty.
On the way back to the room I heard the frogs and actually found a little green tree frog.
I passed out at about 7 and got a call asking if I was coming to dinner. I passed on dinner and had a wonderful sleep.
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