On return, Fort Kochi seemed as hectic and crazy as London in comparison to the relative solitude of Thuravoor! It was good to be back though and straight away we headed to discover more of the Biennale art festival.
The day passed by in a blur and before we knew it we were in a rickshaw and on our way to Thattekad - 70km away! In England we'd cover that distance in no time, but in India, in a rickshaw, it took 3 hours...Nas, a friend of Debs, offered to drive us and he made sure he took us all of the way up a bumpy, rocky dirt path right to the guest house door!
Lonely Planet describe Thattekad as 'worth a trip' and even wrote a special feature on it, but honestly it was like a tropical Clumber Park! Pretty enough, but not spectacular and with some true Indian elements...
We found one of these not so long after arriving. Debs wasn't well, so Megan and I travelled off in search of the glorious wildlife we'd been promised. Instead, we were photographed constantly and then stumbled upon an "Animal Refuge." It was truly tragic. The animals' cages barely allowed space for the animals to flap, crawl or walk and despite tons of spare cages they'd been oddly paired up. One cage contained both owls and monitor lizards, another held a fully grown chicken with a snake!
We meandered back from our walk just in time to be served tea - a delicious Thali meal which we ate in the company of a racist, spice hating Brit couple and an elitist family from Delhi - the conversation was interesting to say the least!
Through the evening Debs became worse and early the next morning she was taken to a convent hospital and was treated by a group of nuns! Oh India!
Megan and I took the chance to have another walk, this time avoiding the caged animals and going in to some private forest area. The "hike" was easy and we saw lots of lizards and spiders before coming across a beautiful spot overlooking the Periyar River and gorgeous countryside.
In the afternoon we headed in the opposite direction and finally found some interesting birds - horn bills and tiny birds with huge tail feathers! We also came across a lot of teenagers having secret dates in the privacy of the forest and two men trying to steal spiky jack-fruit from the trees.
Back at the homestay, Debs had put on a brave face and was ready to head to Munnar - a hill station full of spice and tea plantations. Bags packed and ready, we hopped on another local bus and spent 5 hours veering round narrow bends edged by steep drops. Along the way, gorgeous views were punctuated with ominous skulls, not that this fazed the diver who would respond by putting his foot down and overtaking any vehicle in his path.
We arrived safely, dropped our bags in our new room and went to explore. The town was busy, fast paced and colourful. I drank it all in, for the first time I felt like I was in India - although with hindsight Munnar was incredibly peaceful!
We ate at a restaurant called Rapsy - they crammed 8 or 9 people around tables for 4 and made you write down your own order, but it was seriously tasty! We ate the most tender beef and I threw caution to travel advice and tucked in to a huge salad, thankfully with no bathroom based repercussions.
After eating, and in an attempt to be cultural, Megan and I went to watch Kathakalli theatre and Kalaripayat martial arts. We arrived in time to see some of the make-up process which should have indicated just how bizarre an evening it was going to be! Layer upon layer of green and orange paint was pasted on to two young boys' faces and bells were attached to pretty much anything that could be jangled!
We quickly moved on to pick our seats and waited for the show to start. We were in for a long wait! The first 30 minutes were made up of a man looking in different directions and raising his eyebrows whilst another man shouted random English words - apparently we needed to remember these to understand the story...Finally, we were given a short synopsis - the play was about a woman who tried to seduce a demon, unfortunately for her the demon took great delight in chopping off her ears, nose and boobs! A delightful family play!
A musician drummed and sang so atmospherically that I forgot about how ridiculous the whole art form was. Not to worry though, the green demon soon stomped on to stage before I had time to really appreciate anything. One thing I really admired was the length of time one of the characters spent with his tongue sticking out of his mouth - literally ten minutes!
With the actors out of the way, the real show began. Six men flipped, kicked and jumped their way in to a pit below us. They performed a small puja (fire prayer) before giving the most incredible display of what can only be described as aggressive, fighty yoga, each round accompanied with different weapons.
The next morning, we headed out on a tour of the area. We'd requested a fun driver and when the rickshaw arrived blasting out music, it seemed a good fit. We set off and quite quickly discovered that our driver wasn't one for following instruction as we saw the signs for our first 3 stops disappearing behind us. At first, this wasn't a cause for worry, it's India after all and we were enjoying the many cows decorated for Pongol, a Tamil festival which we didn't really understand, but hey - painted cows! We went with it for maybe 25km until we reached Lakkam Waterfalls which were pretty small and unimpressive, however there was a troop of super cute monkeys playing near by.
We then drove maybe another 60km with just one stop for sugar cane, though none of us wanted it and none of us knew how to eat! We arrived at the next destination - Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary. Estimated cost - 100 rupees, actual cost - 600 rupees! We also wasn't told that it was a 3 hour trek requiring sturdy footwear and sacrificing the other stops on our tour. Politely, we declined and instead made the stop in to a beautiful tea break, interrupted only by the arrival of 2 honey collectors. I adore honeycomb, but must say the sight of bee larvae wriggling through the holes did make me question how much I loved it!
Our next stop was another overpriced wildlife park, but we coughed up and went in. The park, Erivakulam, is famous for the apparently wild, elusive Tahr goats...this wasn't exactly true. After taking a bus to the base of a small mountain/big hill, we were immediately greeted y these wonder full cute goats with backwards bending horns. We took a gentle stroll to "the limit" - 2695 meters above seal level, before making our way back down.
When we arrived back to the rickshaw, we were told the tea factory was absolutely 100% closed. Regardless, we asked to go and the driver obliged. Even better, when we arrived the was no problem getting in. The factory was very curious;it looked incredibly old and whilst it wasn't a tea producing factory, it still did produce tea... Two moments did stand out though - the delicious, albeit alcohol free, fruit beer and Debs' glorious photoshopped mug!
At the end of the tour, we went back to the agency and had a stress-relieving row with the owner. He was defiant his prices were up to date and we got nothing more than the chance to argue, but that was enough.
When we arrived home, Debs' ear infection was still playing up and she told Benoy, the owner What happened next was one of the funniest things I've even seen/ Benoy made her sit on his bed with Megan and me on either side before asking her to close her eyes, presumably so she wouldn't have to suppress the giggles like Megan and I did! Benoy then slow-motion slapped Debs' head. To finish off, he hawked up a great load of phlegm, complimented her chakras and asked the pair of us if we wanted our chakras assessing...Reiki is definitely not for me!
For our farewell dinner, we headed back to our beloved Rapsys and had one more delicious beef - nom!And, because we were saying bye to Megan, we though it would be nice to toast to our little adventure with a cold beer. This meant a trip to the state liquor shop. Debs braved it and headed in to the narrow metal walkway which led to the beer cage. She came out proudly clasping her prize and despite a few detours in to hilarious shops with phones, lamps and photo frames combined, we headed home quite quickly to enjoy our beers.
On our final morning, we headed to our favourite breakfast spot - a real authentic and fast paced place, where our earlier hefty 60p tip made sure we were treated as VIPs! We ate a delicious breakfast of tomato and onion rice flour pancakes and said our goodbyes. I was definitely happy to say goodbye to the cold mountains!
The day passed by in a blur and before we knew it we were in a rickshaw and on our way to Thattekad - 70km away! In England we'd cover that distance in no time, but in India, in a rickshaw, it took 3 hours...Nas, a friend of Debs, offered to drive us and he made sure he took us all of the way up a bumpy, rocky dirt path right to the guest house door!Lonely Planet describe Thattekad as 'worth a trip' and even wrote a special feature on it, but honestly it was like a tropical Clumber Park! Pretty enough, but not spectacular and with some true Indian elements...
 |
| A local tribe of monkeys woke us each morning. |
We meandered back from our walk just in time to be served tea - a delicious Thali meal which we ate in the company of a racist, spice hating Brit couple and an elitist family from Delhi - the conversation was interesting to say the least!
Through the evening Debs became worse and early the next morning she was taken to a convent hospital and was treated by a group of nuns! Oh India!
Megan and I took the chance to have another walk, this time avoiding the caged animals and going in to some private forest area. The "hike" was easy and we saw lots of lizards and spiders before coming across a beautiful spot overlooking the Periyar River and gorgeous countryside.
In the afternoon we headed in the opposite direction and finally found some interesting birds - horn bills and tiny birds with huge tail feathers! We also came across a lot of teenagers having secret dates in the privacy of the forest and two men trying to steal spiky jack-fruit from the trees.
Back at the homestay, Debs had put on a brave face and was ready to head to Munnar - a hill station full of spice and tea plantations. Bags packed and ready, we hopped on another local bus and spent 5 hours veering round narrow bends edged by steep drops. Along the way, gorgeous views were punctuated with ominous skulls, not that this fazed the diver who would respond by putting his foot down and overtaking any vehicle in his path.
We arrived safely, dropped our bags in our new room and went to explore. The town was busy, fast paced and colourful. I drank it all in, for the first time I felt like I was in India - although with hindsight Munnar was incredibly peaceful!
We ate at a restaurant called Rapsy - they crammed 8 or 9 people around tables for 4 and made you write down your own order, but it was seriously tasty! We ate the most tender beef and I threw caution to travel advice and tucked in to a huge salad, thankfully with no bathroom based repercussions.
After eating, and in an attempt to be cultural, Megan and I went to watch Kathakalli theatre and Kalaripayat martial arts. We arrived in time to see some of the make-up process which should have indicated just how bizarre an evening it was going to be! Layer upon layer of green and orange paint was pasted on to two young boys' faces and bells were attached to pretty much anything that could be jangled!
We quickly moved on to pick our seats and waited for the show to start. We were in for a long wait! The first 30 minutes were made up of a man looking in different directions and raising his eyebrows whilst another man shouted random English words - apparently we needed to remember these to understand the story...Finally, we were given a short synopsis - the play was about a woman who tried to seduce a demon, unfortunately for her the demon took great delight in chopping off her ears, nose and boobs! A delightful family play!A musician drummed and sang so atmospherically that I forgot about how ridiculous the whole art form was. Not to worry though, the green demon soon stomped on to stage before I had time to really appreciate anything. One thing I really admired was the length of time one of the characters spent with his tongue sticking out of his mouth - literally ten minutes!
With the actors out of the way, the real show began. Six men flipped, kicked and jumped their way in to a pit below us. They performed a small puja (fire prayer) before giving the most incredible display of what can only be described as aggressive, fighty yoga, each round accompanied with different weapons.The next morning, we headed out on a tour of the area. We'd requested a fun driver and when the rickshaw arrived blasting out music, it seemed a good fit. We set off and quite quickly discovered that our driver wasn't one for following instruction as we saw the signs for our first 3 stops disappearing behind us. At first, this wasn't a cause for worry, it's India after all and we were enjoying the many cows decorated for Pongol, a Tamil festival which we didn't really understand, but hey - painted cows! We went with it for maybe 25km until we reached Lakkam Waterfalls which were pretty small and unimpressive, however there was a troop of super cute monkeys playing near by.We then drove maybe another 60km with just one stop for sugar cane, though none of us wanted it and none of us knew how to eat! We arrived at the next destination - Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary. Estimated cost - 100 rupees, actual cost - 600 rupees! We also wasn't told that it was a 3 hour trek requiring sturdy footwear and sacrificing the other stops on our tour. Politely, we declined and instead made the stop in to a beautiful tea break, interrupted only by the arrival of 2 honey collectors. I adore honeycomb, but must say the sight of bee larvae wriggling through the holes did make me question how much I loved it!
Our next stop was another overpriced wildlife park, but we coughed up and went in. The park, Erivakulam, is famous for the apparently wild, elusive Tahr goats...this wasn't exactly true. After taking a bus to the base of a small mountain/big hill, we were immediately greeted y these wonder full cute goats with backwards bending horns. We took a gentle stroll to "the limit" - 2695 meters above seal level, before making our way back down.
When we arrived back to the rickshaw, we were told the tea factory was absolutely 100% closed. Regardless, we asked to go and the driver obliged. Even better, when we arrived the was no problem getting in. The factory was very curious;it looked incredibly old and whilst it wasn't a tea producing factory, it still did produce tea... Two moments did stand out though - the delicious, albeit alcohol free, fruit beer and Debs' glorious photoshopped mug!
At the end of the tour, we went back to the agency and had a stress-relieving row with the owner. He was defiant his prices were up to date and we got nothing more than the chance to argue, but that was enough.
When we arrived home, Debs' ear infection was still playing up and she told Benoy, the owner What happened next was one of the funniest things I've even seen/ Benoy made her sit on his bed with Megan and me on either side before asking her to close her eyes, presumably so she wouldn't have to suppress the giggles like Megan and I did! Benoy then slow-motion slapped Debs' head. To finish off, he hawked up a great load of phlegm, complimented her chakras and asked the pair of us if we wanted our chakras assessing...Reiki is definitely not for me!
For our farewell dinner, we headed back to our beloved Rapsys and had one more delicious beef - nom!And, because we were saying bye to Megan, we though it would be nice to toast to our little adventure with a cold beer. This meant a trip to the state liquor shop. Debs braved it and headed in to the narrow metal walkway which led to the beer cage. She came out proudly clasping her prize and despite a few detours in to hilarious shops with phones, lamps and photo frames combined, we headed home quite quickly to enjoy our beers.
On our final morning, we headed to our favourite breakfast spot - a real authentic and fast paced place, where our earlier hefty 60p tip made sure we were treated as VIPs! We ate a delicious breakfast of tomato and onion rice flour pancakes and said our goodbyes. I was definitely happy to say goodbye to the cold mountains!
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