Travel Reports
Kerala
India’s most southerly state on the western coast is a lush landscape of verdant green tea plantations and beautiful backwaters.
There’s a sign on the road outside Thiruvananthapuram that reads “Leave Early, Drive Slowly, Receive Safety”. But it’s not the charming use of the English language that catches your eye; it’s the fact that absolutely nobody pays a blind bit of notice. Before you go to India, you’re advised to expect scenes of desperate poverty, yet no-one warns you you’ll also be thrown into a literal version of Sony’s Wipeout Playstation game.
I mention it only because it’s so at odds with a typical Keralan experience, and because, despite the ramshackle nature of this road traffic – consisting of tiny rickshaws, blundering buses and lorries, the odd elephant, and millions of scooters – I failed to see a single accident during the time I was there. Perhaps the state, known colloquially as “God’s Own Country”, really is looked after by some mysterious force.
Kerala is India’s most southern state on its western coast, sandwiched between the Arabian Sea and the green-capped mountains of the Western Ghat, where elusive tigers, trying to evade poachers, roam amid the tropical undergrowth. Long-ignored by mass tourism as being too far to go, Kerala has lately picked up a pace with the arrival of package tours for those suffering from Goa-fatigue. Planeloads of pallid Brits now touch down in the capital, Thiruvananthapuram (aka Trivandrum), and are whisked off to their beach cabanas in nearby Kovalam with barely a glance at the fortress-like Shri Padmanabhaswamy Temple or the intricate Puttan Malika Palace in the city centre. Despite the fact that it has 340 miles of sandy coastline, this is the only place in Kerala truly to embrace the ethos of the visiting western sun-worshipper with the consequence that high-rise hotels now tower above the spindly coconut palms and prices have shot up well beyond the Indian average. Never mind what the average Indian can afford.
Not so down in Poovar, where veteran travellers Mark and Sujeewa Reynolds have created an oasis of calm in Friday’s Place, a small cluster of cabins carved from teak and mahogany and topped with thatched banana leaves. These seamlessly blend into a lush, tropical garden of dense greenery and towering palms. Only accessible by boat, Friday’s Place appears to belong to another world; one that’s in harmony with its environment and not in constant battle against it. Mark and Sujeewa’s dream was to make a retreat that’s as eco-friendly and self-sufficient as possible, which means the power occasionally goes out when the generator fails and the rainwater shower – with water filtered from the river – is far from being a “power shower”, but the fixtures and fittings of the cabins are comfortable and the atmosphere is second to none.
Some hours before dawn on my first night I got a full taste of this atmosphere at its most cacophonous and alarming. Still sleepy from the long journey and disorientated at being cocooned beneath a mosquito net, I woke to the sound of the night – a discordant symphony of rustles, chirrups and crackles, joined by the loud squawks of myriad crows. Peeking up at an inky sky, peppered with millions of stars, I could just make out their huge, menacing forms, skitting from treetop to treetop like characters from Hitchcock’s The Birds. By contrast, the morning was calm; a couple of palm squirrels hopped across the dusty garden, a kingfisher ducked and dived in the trench of the river looking for fish, a coconut languidly plopped onto the thatch of my cabin, and Joe, Mark and Sujeewa’s daily help, arrived with a bowl of fresh pineapple and mango and an omelette made with eggs, freshly laid by their feisty chicken.
Food has often been a big concern for visitors to India, and there can’t be many who come back without having suffered a dose of the dreaded Delhi Belly. But Keralan cuisine is milder that the fiery vindaloos of Goa, and coconut milk is a constituent part of the wonderful fish molee (curry) and traditional eshtew (stew – usually made with chicken and potato) served with the classically Keralan appam (a rice pancake mixed with coconut milk that resembles a fried egg). Vegetarians are unusually well catered for with abundant local vegetable produce from the fertile hills. Each evening Sujeewa serves up a miraculous meal, often based on the principles of Ayurveda.
With links to yoga, Ayurveda is widely practiced in Kerala and comes from the Sanskrit word meaning the “knowledge for prolonging life”. Anxious to gain some of this knowlege for myself, I accompanied Sujeewa to the Poovar Beach Resort, just a short boat ride from Friday’s Place, for an Ayurvedic massage. The Beach Resort is where wealthy westerners with mid-life health problems go to restore their sense of wellbeing – and perhaps grab an extra decade or two. It’s open to non-residents, and I was soon stripped down to my birthday suit and lathered up with aromatic red sesame oil. I could have opted for a foot massage (this isn’t where your feet are massaged, you understand, but whereby the masseur dangles from a rope and administers the massage with his feet), but instead chose to lie on the cushioned bench and submit to the gentle, perfumed pummelling by hands which left no inch of my body untouched.
This carefree attitude to nudity (none of that nonsensical origami folding of the towels practised by western masseurs) isn’t repeated, however, by the poolside; at least not for Indian women, who are expected to paddle in the shallow end in their saris. But Sujeewa, who originally comes from Sri Lanka, stripped down to her bikini and joined me for an after-massage beer with barely a glance from passers-by. She told me I should visit an ashram during my stay, and recommended the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwanthari Ashram near the Neyyar Dam high up in the Agastya Hills. So, the next day I hired a driver to take me in his ubiquitous Indian Ambassador taxi (based on a 1950s’ Morris Oxford), scented with garlands of jasmine. Along the ragged road we tried to communicate in pidgin English and crazy sign language, then made an impromptu stop to watch a vociferous demonstration. Alarmingly, I heard gunfire, but this turned out to be a nearby shooting range. My driver, Valsalan, told me the demonstration was being conducted by the local beekeepers, and while I was still trying to digest this unusual information we sped off towards the ornamental gardens and a welcoming cup of sweet tea at the ashram.
Kerala is a democratic Communist state, and everywhere you look you’ll see the hammer and sickle sign daubed on walls. Lately, however, it’s also seen a paradoxical rise in the number of massive, vulgar mansions built for those who’ve gone off to make petro-dollars in the Gulf. Planes buzz back and forth from Trivandrum to the Middle East with the frequency of local buses, and the cash brought home is changing the Keralan landscape, though some would say for the worse.
It’s certainly a far cry from the contemplative atmosphere of the Sivananda Ashram, where the day begins at 5.30am with group meditation. A young French girl the size of a sparrow showed me around the grounds and explained that she’d been there several months, but was leaving soon to travel to the north of India. She also pointed out the signs that set down the ashram’s strict rules forbidding sex, smoking and loud music. Fearing I wouldn’t last five minutes, never mind five months, I grabbed my shoes and made haste for the exit, where I demanded an, as it turned out, illegal cigarette - Kerala became the first Indian state to ban smoking outright in all public places, including the street; a law that’s flagrantly flouted in rural areas, but that does provide convenient pocket money for the police, who can administer on-the-spot fines.
Sensing my pain, Valsalan indicated he had a treat in store for the rest of the day, and we sped off past the dam (where crocodiles languished in limpid water) and turned off onto a dirt track riddled with alarming potholes. We parked in a heavily wooded area and waited several minutes, listening to the chirrups of the softening afternoon. Then, out of the shadows they came; two Indian elephants, just a few years old and still as small as horses. If you time your visit right you could catch one of Kerala’s many festivals, most of which feature elephants, usually beautifully bejewelled and leading the processions. But if you want to ride one bareback, then Mark and Sujeewa will happily arrange a trip to Periyar where my two babies made short work of a bag of bananas before sneezing half the contents back into my face.
Fearing a banana shower was all I’d get for my troubles, Valsalan led me further through the forest where a huge beast was being doused in the shallow waters of the river. Her keeper invited me to join him in the bathing ritual and, suitably cooled, I was heaved up onto her vast, scratchy back by using her spongy front leg as leverage. I’m not sure if the grin on my face was as wide as the one on Valsalan’s (I’m not sure if that would be possible), but I do know that if an elephant keeper in Periyar ever wants to do a job swap, I’ll be happy to volunteer.
The next day, with the temperature dangerously close to cloying and after a cooling dip in the silky waters of the yellow river (sadly under threat from illegal sand mining), Mark suggested I take a trip to the tea plantations high up in the Ghats in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. The road winds precipitously up through blue gum trees where monkeys taunt you from the side of the road. It’s here in the second-highest mountain range in India (after the Himalayas) that most of the rainfall happens throughout the June to October monsoon season. It’s also this that gives the landscape its breathtaking, verdant quietude and, stopping off frequently along the way, I gazed at miles of luxuriant, carpeted mountains as far as the eye could see.
It was as far from the bustle of Trivandrum and the hordes of budget bucket-and-spade tourists back in their beach huts on Kovalam as it’s possible to be. But this is the Kerala that Mark and Sujeewa want to share; the secrets they want to reveal – secrets which, once uncovered, are so astonishing you can understand why God chose it as his own country – or so legend has it. Perhaps I’d received that safety after all.
Travel Details:
Flights: Seven nights in dormhouse accommodation costs from £729 per person (inc. flights and airport transfers) departing January with Manos Holidays. Note that Manos can’t provide flight-only bookings in winter. Visit www.manos.co.uk or call 08707 530 530. For flights only, contact Emirates: www.emirates.com/uk or call 0870 243 2222.
Accommodation: A cottage at Friday’s Place costs £95 per night (based on two sharing; single occupancy £50) with a three-night minimum stay. This includes breakfast, lunch and dinner, chai or coffee throughout the day and an alcoholic beverage in the evening. Visit www.fridaysplace.biz, e-mail letschill@fridaysplace.biz or call 01428 741 510 for further details.
India Tourist Board: Call 020 7437 3677 or log onto www.incredibleindia.org.
Andrew Copestake