We spent the last few days of our vacation with Nathan's sister Claire up in the Western Ghats of Kerala, in the little town of Kumily, which is nestled between the Periyar Tiger Reserve and endless spice, tea and rubber plantations. It was a long bus ride, and we arrived tired and dirty but happy to have some cool air after the heat of Kochi.Day 1 - Dog attack!
Kumily may be a quaint little mountain town, but like all of India, it is full of dogs. Some have owners, many do not. All look a little sketchy. Our first morning in town we were on our way to breakfast to sample some of the local coffee (which, incidentally, was weak and bitter) and two dogs next to use started fighting (or humping, it's hard to tell). A local guy broke them up and one barking and growling at us. When Nathan stuck out his foot to try to shoo it away, it took the opportunity to wrap its jaws around his bare foot. It didn't do too much damage, but it did break the skin in a few places. Rabies is rampant in India, and although someone came and took the dog away on a chain (we still don't know if it was taken home, beaten, or killed - all are plausible) the chances of it getting tested for rabies was less than zero. We had to get Nathan a rabies vaccine, and quick. The guidebook said this is almost impossible to find in India, and given where we were, we got a little nervous. We cleaned up the wound and rushed off to the local Catholic hospital, where Nathan got a clean foot, some antibiotics, and the first of 6 nasty shots in the arm, all in less than an hour all for the low low price of about $10. Dunno if the guidebook was wrong, or if it's just Kerala's history of quality accessible health care, but the whole process was remarkably easy. The hospital was simple but efficient and hygienic. The female (!) doctor seemed very competent, and the nurses got the job done well.
Day 2 - Spices spices everywhere, except in the food
We took a tour of the Aroma Organic Spice Garden, a small home-run place run my Mr. MS Sebastian and his wife. He gave us an amazing tour of the garden, looking at, smelling, and tasting all kinds of different spices. He had cacao, ginger, turmeric, clove, nutmeg, allspice, coffee, pineapples, holy basil, chillies, pepper, vanilla, cardamom...... and a few very cute goats. It's amazing how low-maintenance most of these things are. With the exception of a few root crops, most are trees and don't seem to require much attention until picking time, which is incredibly labour-intensive. The fresh young ginger was juicy and strong, like no ginger I've ever seen. It hadn't had the time to develop the woody lignin fibres that make ginger stringy, and the flavour was amazing. Pepper, as it turns out, can be processed four different ways to make black, white, red, and green peppercorns. The black pepper is simply picked and dried. Red is left on the vine for longer to bring out the colour. White pepper, the most expensive, is soaked overnight until it becomes white and gelatinous, and is later dried into the hard peppercorns we get. The best part of all this was the vanilla. We could smell it drying in the sun as soon as we pulled up at Mr. Sebastian's driveway. The oily seeds inside each pod give such an amazing aroma that hangs in the air like late autumn harvest moon.
Mr. Sebastian's spice garden is small and family run. He and his wife are a sweet couple who are clearly very excited about spices and eager to show off what they are doing. Mrs. Sebastian grinds all their foods by hand using a giant mortar and pestle that is almost as tall as she is. She grinds all the coffee (of which mister drinks 10 cups a day), rice, spices - yet claims not to work as hard as her husband because she just works in the house. They proudly told us they were Catholic, and described all the saints in the pictures decorating their small living room/bedroom/office. They beamed as they told us about their son, who works at the cardamom trading centre in town. We saw not only his photo, but his college magazine, diploma, and countless other mementos. We were still keeping up our story that Nathan and I are married (keeps things simple in a conservative country like India), and now we had a sister. This clearly gave us some street cred with these two.
Despite the wealth of spices growing on plantations, in small gardens, and even wild in the forest, we had a lot of trouble finding any sign of them in our food. The restaurants in Kumily were either invisible to foreigner eyes or geared strongly toward rich Indian tourists and western backpackers. These people and their unadventurous palates have given all foreigners a reputation for disliking spice (and apparently any kind of flavour), and we have to suffer the gastronomic consequences. One thing I miss about the north is the ability to get, if not great, decent food in a restaurant.
Day 3 - Long walk to Tamil Nadu
We couldn't leave Kumily without a visit to the Tiger Reserve to catch a glimpse of some large and wild beasts. On the recommendation of the man who organized our visit to the spice garden we avoided the crowded government boat in the main part of the reserve and instead booked our own jungle walk with a local guide. We were told we would be taken to a less touristy part of the reserve and assured that hiking shoes were not necessary. I was concerned since I only had flip-flops, but we were assured they would be no problem. The only worry was leaches, and the guide would have leach socks and powder.
So, we set off on foot at 5:30am, and our guide quickly left the road and directed us into the jungle. (First warning bell: What the hell are we doing here in the dark with a stranger, instead of going off by jeep like all the other people we saw out at that hour of the morning?) We were directed to put on the leach socks - basically huge cotton gaiters with full feet that tie at the knee. Claire and I stuck these inside our sandals, but mine kept slipping out of my backless flip-flops. We quickly realized this was no walk in the park; this was a full-on hike through the mountains into the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. Up and down over the hills, mostly off trail. I was working double duty just to keep my shoes on, and eventually gave up and walked shoeless in the leach socks. Once they got wet and heavy, the guide said it would be OK to just walk barefoot in my sandals. I trusted him (Mistake #2). By the time we stopped for food near a little stream, I was soaked to the knees in water and mud, starting to get blisters, and really tired and sore. I took off my shoes and rinsed my feet in the water. Then I found the leach stuck to the bottom of my foot. Rabik, the guide, plucked it off and covered all our feet in tobacco powder to kill leaches. We set off, but not before Rabik washed his huge knife in the steam to cut up a pineapple for us to eat (Another warning sign ignored. Stay tuned...) Anyway, after 4 hours we were all tired and I was miserable, so we asked Rabik to take a short cut out of the park. I didn't get any more leaches, but it took some serious scrubbing and soaking to return my feet to something resembling their normal colour. No major damage, but lots of small cuts that seem like ideal parasite access points, and I still haven't gotten the dirt out of my cracked and calloused heels. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And that pineapple? Well, I avoided it, Nathan got lucky, and poor Claire, having only been in India a few days, hadn't built up a lot of stomach resistance yet. The nausea started soon after, and we had to make many emergency pit stops along the road during our 6 hour drive back to Kochi in the afternoon. Thankfully our taxi driver was kind and responsive, and Nathan and I were able to screen her from passing cars by holding up a dhoti.
So, for all our efforts we saw:
- giant squirrels
- black monkeys
- bison
- lots of funky birds
- elephant tracks but no elephants
- n'ar sign of the elusive tiger (which is maybe OK)
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