Nature-gazing in Thekaddy

Impressions of India - 5:

I’m currently travelling for 3 months in India, through Goa, Kerala and Rajasthan, with a pretty hot and hectic schedule of boutique hotel reviews. The galleries below are my online photojournalist diary of scenes caught, people met and things found along the way. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did and am still.

Please do take a moment to log and/or e-mail me your reactions and comments? Given the slow upload speed, each post takes around 3 hours straight to get online (not counting image-selection and -editing time), and knowing that lots of you are reading and enjoying it will add great fuel to my fire!


Thekaddy, 2 hours' drive south-west of Munnar and its amazing tea plantations, has many more nature-gazing opportunities - spice gardens and tusker trails, Periyar (Tiger) Reserve and expressive families of roadside monkeys.

You can take an elephant ride through the Tusker Trails Spice Garden, but you won't see or learn nearly as much about how all our spices grow as if you are guided through it on foot. This is coffee on its bush, with its heady, jasmine-fragrance white blossoms which make the air intoxicating.

I put the 'Tiger' of Periyar Reserve in brackets because, although they are there, and I saw tiger poo to prove it, they're also very shy, only generally come out at night and can smell us humans coming a mile off. So you're about as likely to actually see one as you are to win the lottery. Possible, but terrible odds. Which suggests they should really just call it the Periyar Nature Reserve to avoid disappointment and encourage visitors to fully-appreciate all the other natural wonders to see.

It's South India's most popular wildlife sanctuary, covering 777 sq km, and all the entry and guided tour fees go towards the 'Tribal Tracker Eco-Development Committee' and preserving and studying all the animals within. It's home to bison, sambar deer, nilgiri langur apes, bonnet macaque monkeys, wild boar, over 1,000 elephants and, at the last count, 46 tigers.

My personal guide Mani, from a 'tracker tribe' like all the other Reserve rangers, was expert at spotting barely visible, motionless animals (where I generally needed some movement to lock in). He also communicated his own enthusiasm so effectively (in hushed, awed tones, David Attenborough-style and with a gentle hand touching my arm to still me), that as our 2-hour early morning tour progressed I found myself getting just as excited about spotting tiny far off birds (such as racket-tailed drongos, white-bellied blue flycatchers and velvet-fronted nuthatches) as him.

Luckily I had a longish lens with me - a 300mm - which allowed me to see some detail in what was, to the naked eye, often just a distant dark blob. It was particularly thrilling to watch blonde-haired Langur Apes having breakfast and swinging through the trees.

Then we saw the giant squirrel, giant indeed but also with red and blue fur. It too was having breakfast, munching on nuts and then swinging by its big fluffy tail from the branches.

Herds of Sambar deer made frequent appearances too, gazing back at us with almost as much interest as we were gazing at them. 

When Mani spotted these delicate, tangled spiders, hanging in the crook of a tree trunk like a hairy armpit, he pulled a bunch out to show me. 

Then, en route to my second Thekaddy hotel, my driver drove me to and stopped beside this tribe of roadside monkeys, which he'd seen hanging out in the same spot many, many times before.

I just love this one below - 'Kids eh?!' The mum looks like she's wearing blue eyeshadow & has her eyes closed long-sufferingly, the little one having his ear bitten also has such a human expression, & the other adults facing in left and right complete the triangle.

And some more plastic-eating - looks like candy floss, sadly not nearly so sweet!

Next Post:

Kidnapped by 2 lovely children on the beautiful, white-sand fishing beach of Mararikulam's fishing beach, near Alleppey, and led to see their homes among the palms where they gave me some village water (whoops, but I survived!) and a piece of sweet jaggery pancake.

Up in the much cooler Western Ghat mountains

Impressions of India - 4:


I’m currently travelling for 3 months in India, from Goa to Kerala and then Rajasthan, with a pretty hot and hectic schedule of boutique hotel reviews. The galleries below are my online photojournalist diary of scenes caught, people met and things found along the way. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did and am still.

Up in the much cooler Western Ghat mountains:

 Sunset above Munnar, where the views are breathtaking.

Wild elephants live in the Western Ghat hills, though you’ll be lucky to spot them. Here’s proof that one passed by not that long ago.

A cardammom plantation, high in the hills above Munnar, reached by a car-wrecking hairpin road.

 Unfortunately cardammom pods grow right at the base of the plant, next to the ground.

This apparently tends to mean terrible arthritis and bent bones for cardammom pickers after the age of about 30.

The tea plantations stretch up and down the rolling hillsides, as far as the eye can see. I never knew they were such a vivid green, though it was hard to capture on camera given the harsh light. Nor that, thanks to their careful plucking every 15-18 days, they look so wonderfully velvety from a distance.

This is the new growth of the bush the pickers pluck.

Most come from Tamil Nadu, where the minimum wage is 150 rupees (about 2 British pounds) a day. In Kerala, the minimum day wage is 300 rupees.

The mountain sun is very bright and strong from around 10am to 4pm, meaning most wear headscarves and have sun-blackened faces. Almost all tea and cardammom pickers are women, thanks to their more delicate hands.

They have ready smiles and pick deftly through the narrow channels, with large sacks hanging from their heads, shoulders or draped on the bushes

 

And, down in a little open-fronted convenience shop in Munnar, I met this joyful lady and her son, just  2 of the many strikingly beautful, happy Indians I’ve seen.

Next post: A Walk on the Wild Side

Animal-spotting in Periyar Nature Reserve, monkey-watching in Thekaddy, and playing with bright-eyed children in the fishing village at Mararikulam beach.

On the night train to Cochin, coach class

Impressions of India - 3:

I’m currently travelling for 3 months in India, from Goa to Kerala and then Rajasthan, with a pretty hot and hectic schedule of boutique hotel reviews. The galleries below are my online photojournalist diary of scenes caught, people met and things found along the way. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did and am still.

On the night-train to Cochin, coach class:

 

Getting on the 9.30pm train, braced for crowds, I found my reserved seat was in this front 8-berth section of the very first carriage, completely empty.

I was mostly alone, though a few people quietly came and went during the night. I also might have slept straight through had it not been for a chai-wallah shouting 'offee offee offee offee OFFEEE!' at 3 in the morning. Tiny things were biting, the diesel and nearby toilet did not smell good, and the metal screeches were often deafening. But it felt like my second little Indian adventure and the rollocking motion rocked me to sleep.

 

With the dawn came the chai-wallahs, all having little breaks before turning round and doing another breakfast sweep through the train.

As it was still early, the platforms were pretty empty.

My lower berth looked a lot prettier in daylight than under nighttime neon. The backrest cleverly lifts up, on thick chains, to become the middle bed, and there's a third bunk above.

 

And this is the lovely Bhowani, an 8-10 year old who came through the train begging with her worn-down, harmonium-playing father. When she skipped back into my carriage on her own, as if to keep me company and no longer flinty-eyed or demanding, we briefly became sign-and-eye-language friends and, when we got to Cochin, I was sad to see her go.

 

Fort Cochin’s line of Chinese fishing nets are huge and graceful, and a famous sunset-watching draw.  However, given that they’re a catch-all mechanism which also kills dolphins, they should probably be kept just for beauty and not for use from now on.

 The police car pound, under big old banyan trees which are clearly home to many birds.

 An afternoon on the waterfront.

Next post:

Up in the cooler Western Ghat mountains, with their stunning views and endless tea and spice plantations.

Just a night and a day on pretty Palolem Beach

Impressions of India - 2:

I’m currently travelling for 3 months in India, from Goa to Kerala and then Rajasthan, with a pretty hot and hectic schedule of boutique hotel reviews. The galleries below are my online photojournalist diary of scenes caught, people met and things found along the way. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I did and am still.

Just a night and a day on pretty Palolem beach:

This seemed wonderfully Indian – possible, like a cheap room, but don’t count on it.

Palolem Beach is famous and popular as a chilled-out tourist destination, and its picturesque crescent looks just beautiful when almost empty and seen in the rapidly-changing, soft dawn light.

 A fair few early morning joggers, power-walkers and dippers were loving it too.

The colourful beach shacks have all the fun and romance of treehouse-living 

and their floors bounce underfoot.

 It’s still a working fishing beach, though the boats are few and there’s no smell or mess.

 People played as the sun sank.

Then a golden sunset appeared. It took quite a few determined attempts to nail this lovely moment.

Next post:

On the night train to Cochin