Kumily, Munnar, Kochi

The journey to Kumily involved, to date, the most bumpy, nerve racking, uncomfortable, irrational, cold sweat inducing bus trip ever. The driver, I believe, was a dare devil mentalist, he had a penchant for overtaking other buses on blind corners with shear drops, motorcyclists, rickshaws, pedestrians & cows everywhere. “Why is he doing this?!” I cried to Kat, who nonchalantly replied “TIA!” (That's India ay?!) We arrived safely and to be fair the views were amazing.

We checked in, and went straight to see the Kathakali dancers who my friend Mary from Oz said were a must. This is a Keralan storytelling dance tradition that involves an elaborate array of facial and hand gestures to convey emotion and to tell a tale. They use copious amounts of colourful makeup and some very labour intensive dressing up techniques, which we were able to watch. I think the one we saw was about a cheating queen who gets killed by the king, typical.

kathakali eyes

punishment

The next day we headed to the Periyar National Park which we were both excited about as our good friends and travel guides DJ & Durbs had told us of their time there. We went in a jeep and had an awesome guide called Pradeep, a humble local lad. The plan was to trek through some jungles and hills in search of wildlife, namely elephants & tigers. We saw some amazing natural beauty, the pictures do it no justice as usual, with sweeping hills coated in mist and lashings of rain. Pradeep was extremely informative and a really sound guy. He kept trying to track the elephants movements which made everything feel really exciting and perilous; what if we saw them, what if there's a baby, what if they charge us? The wildlife we saw the most of was the blood sucking nos ferato stlying leeches. Shoes, hands, even one on my neck. We had protective socks that reached our knees but that didn't stop them as the photos show. Pradeep, cool as a cucumber, wore plastic sandals, I think he secretly liked it when they got him! The photo of kat taking her shoes off is just before we waded across a river and then got to stand on branches that hung out over a waterfall, pretty spectacular, see video. We also met one of the indigenous nomadic tribes who live in the park with very little influence from outside. They were very shy but Pradeep was able to translate questions & answers so we were able to find out about they way of life and culture which apparently incudes incest! One of the highlights was when we got back to camp, no elephants seen, unwinding over a chai, when Pradeep comes running over, all excited saying theres been elephants spotted nearby and we should go see immediately. A quick hike up a hill and we see three elephants and a baby walking exactly where we had been this morning! Now the mist had cleared and the views were even more breathtaking.

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removal of leeches b4 crossing river

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Pradeep, our guide

elephants

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monkey crew

Nomads in park

nice monkey

largest eva lemon, we reckon

The rest of our time in Kumily was taken up with all the usual things: cooking classes, reading, chilling and eating out. Ever in the trail of our British comrades we accidently yet fortuitously found ourselves on the same cooking course they were on, we even found their scribble in the guest feedback book. Very interesting to learn more about the southern Indian style of cooking; coconut oil, mustard seeds, curry leaves and some of the best locally grown spices we've tasted, fragrant green cardommon and the array of spicy and sweet cinnamon still linger in my mind. We both miss cooking a lot so this was lots of fun, so much so that I decided to go again the next day (Kat preferred to chill) to help cook a chicken biriyani for a local event. What fascinated me the most was that the first thing we did in the morning was visit the chicken shop where live chickens are kept, and humanely 'prepared to order' in front of you. This is very different from the refridgerated isles full of plastic wrapped meat that are so displaced from what they actually are and the reality of where they come from.

ladies cooking

kat making parotta

biriyani beginnings

biriyani middlings

biriyani endings

Next stop was the nearby (5hour drive) tea plantation area of Munnar; high up in the hills with hypnotically stunning views of tea plants. We enjoyed lots of spectacular views as we went for walks in the hills, however the area was overun with very loud, rude Indian tourists (the locals agreed). A highlight had to be the tea museum which was possibly the worst museum ever, with a heavily propaganda driven video showing how 'lucky' the locals were when they were enslaved by colonial British tea merchants. We did get a free cup of tea however which, unfortunately, came at the press of a button, heavily sweetened. Note to self, remember to book into dentist asap on return to UK.

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more tea vicar

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Onto Fort Cochin now, i'll keep it short as I know you readers don't like reading. An old colonial fishing port, part of the larger city of Kochi. There were the infamous Chinese fishing nets which worked using a cantilever which saddled up to the fish market where freshly caught fish were sold. Many we found were actually from local fish & prawn farms. There was a distinctly European (Portugeese we discovered) influence to the architecture and some pretty fancy restaurants. So we went to them. Overpriced wine was drunk, tasty morsels were eaten, budget was blown. C'est la vie. We hired some crazy but cool Indian bikes to cycle round the area, on the hunt for the Jain temple, which we never found, but we did have a memorable adventure cycling in heavy rain through flooded backstreets with not a clue where we were going.

right hand eating of dosa

In one of the places we ate, Cafe Linda, we got chatting to the chef and he agreed to show how to cook some of the dishes if we provided the fish. Next day, fresh from the markets, laden with tiger prawns and butterfish we cook cooking. Favourite was the lightly spiced prawns with coconut chunks, delicious. The lemon rice and the coconut rice dishes were really interesting ways of preparing rice. Our mans had a similar style of cooking as the previous chef but more refined.

After being repeatedly rained upon in Kerala (monsoon time) we decided to head North quicker than planned to avoid further saturation. We jumped on a plane from Kochi to Delhi and braced ourselves for the capital city.