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Kumily home to the Periyar wildlife sanctuary is thankfully situated at a highish altitude (1000m) and was a nice escape from the heat in the valleys. We arrived by bus as a continuation of our game plan to keep traveling short distances and were met by an auto-rickshaw who whisked us away from the town and to our accommodation, Coffee Inn, about three hundred yards form the park entrance. It was a quaint gaff that had a garden which doubled up as a restaurant over looking the park. The food was really nice however whenever we decided to eat there we had to factor in an hour of wait time as they were so painfully slow in bringing the grub out.
The town was something of a reprieve from the rest of the places we had just spent time in; clean and less populated with a lovely freshness to the air and for once both of us felt that walking into town wasn't going to need 2 litres of water to make it. Walking past Mudra we decided to book a couple of tickets for the Kathakali performance taking place in a few hours. Little did we know that by
booking directly and not going through a tourist office we secured front row seats on a performance that was packed.
We arrived early to watch the actor apply his make-up and put the costume on. He was painting his face predominantly green which meant he was a goody. The first part of the performance was the explanation behind the facial expressions and dance moves then the second half was the full on performance about life, death and all things goddly. It was good to see and in parts I understood the performance which I didn't think I would. No could barely keep his eyes open - that's culture for you!
5am and our alarm sounded to get us up and to the park in time for the first boat trip of the day. Currently its the Indian summer holidays so we raced down to the water with hundreds of holiday makers to the boat ticket counter. In India men and women tend to queue separately so being a lady I managed to get nearer to the front than No. After an hour of pushing, squeezing and watching grown-ups fighting about queue position in a wildlife park I finally
Spotted
Indian Bissongot my hands on two tickets for the 7am boat.
The boat trip lasted two hours during which we managed to catch a glimpse of indian bisons, deers, kingfishers, monkeys, black squirrels and from a distance elephants. The scenery alone was lovely, so different to hot and dusty Tamil Nadu. We had planned a walk after the boat trip but having been subjected to the awful queue incident we were both knackered and needed a nap.
The next day we went on a spice tour around the Kumily hills. It included a visit to a spice garden, tea plantation, tea making factory and flower garden. We were on the tour with two other travelers from Britain who were both retired and had sold one of their houses to go traveling. She took us under her wing like a surrogate mum re-explaining what the guide had already just said, sounds annoying but I learnt more that day about herbs, spices and flowers than I ever previously knew!
In the tea making factory No saw a huge spider running across my back, obviously had been there awhile and was making a migratory route towards a sack of tea, luckily
I never saw how big it was but was told it was a fully grown adult one..!
It was only a half day tour so that afternoon after lunch we went back to the room for a kip. It was that evening No decided to de-clog himself with laxatives and ended up making himself so ill he was up all night. No couldn't go anywhere so we decided to stay on in Kumily one more day while he serviced the toilet hourly.
We'd had enough of the grotty room in Coffee Inn so we made a beeline for El Paradiso homestay and what a great place it was; lovely balcony, big room and all the cable tv channels you could hope for. We went down for breakfast and whilst gobbling down Keralan pancakes, jackfruit jam and bananas we witnessed the yearly house blessing by the local priest.
With No back on form we undertook two bus journeys and much later found ourselves in Alleppey, otherwise home to the Keralan backwaters. We stayed at another homestay a little out of town called Palmy Lake Resort. Once again the owners couldn't be more nice to us giving us beer
Chocolate!
Coco Seeds Before Cadbury's Gets Theirs Hands On 'Em and water to enjoy on our balcony which overlooked the backwaters. In order to rid the place of mozzi's the owners had introduced a fish into the water which eat the mozzi's. For somewhere that was overgrown in palm trees and other jungle greenery the fish were doing a very good job in keeping the mozzis away as we didn't get bit once.
We arranged a three hour backwater canoe trip through our accommodation which in our opinion was a really good way to see the area in fine detail. The house boats were so expensive and noisy and could only go on the main waterways whereas our canoe squeezed down tiny Africian moss laden waterways and we even met some of the local people who live in the area including the boatman's family. Enroute we stopped at the riverbank equivalent of Costa Coffee for a nice cuppa chai. I couldn't help but wonder whether I was drinking river water or not, either way we didn't get ill.
After the backwater tour we scrounged some lunch off our hosts; she done a lovely jam sandwich with jackfruit crisps - delicious! We got to the bus station thinking we'd
head to Kollam however we found a bus heading to Varkala so thought we might as well make some headway and get to the beach for the weekend. As we were in for a long boring bus journey I purchased some fried banana and banana chips - sounds weird but trust me it tastes awesome - I think we're going to be the only travellers ever to leave India having put weight on!
Several hours later we were beckoned off by the conductor and got straight into an autorickshaw for the 10km ride to Varkala cliffs. We had originally asked to be taken to Hill Palace hotel however we were dropped off at Bamboo Huts, we couldn't argue the R500 price so went with it however we quickly regretted the decision. The bed was concrete with a wooden frame mounted around the edge and the mattress was made from coconut fibres, this would have been ok however one giant cockroach appeared then I managed to find another one whilst tucking the bed sheets in so we made a quick dash for the door. We were hoping we could leave however the manager found us another hut which apparently didn't
have cockroaches - great, we'll do one night then leave first thing in the morning. And that we did, we found Green Palace the next day a little further down the cliffs, which was a lot more expensive but the views from the balcony and the clean spacious room made up for it.
Varkala had a really chilled out vibe which meant pretty much the only arduous activity to do of a day was walking along the cliffs and beach. We could hardly tear ourselves away from the place however we had to get on the move again to Cochin as we had a flight booked to Delhi.
As usual we got the train times wrong again so we ended up sitting on the platform for an hour and a half. When the train finally showed up the journey went by fairy quickly. We decided to not make the trip over the water to Fort Cochin until the following day so we found a hotel nearby and headed straight for Pizza Hut which was just down the road. The food was alright however I got raw chicken on my chicken caesar salad which was a bit weird. This
was a reminder to us once again that the best food to eat is local as it is always prepared well.
The ferry across to Fort Cochin was all of R5, we boarded the boat first and got a good seat however when it tried to leave the jetty we quickly realised something was amiss when everyone dashed off the boat and piled into another one leaving us seatless and with great views of someone's head. We walked from the jetty to our accommodation though it didn't go smoothly as we had been dropped of at the other jetty (there's two) quite a distance from the town centre. Nevertheless we found our place tucked nicely away from the crowds in a little slice of colonial france. We holed up with the "affable Waltons" and what a pucker room we got, quite clean, new room with all the mod cons we like - I didn't save all that money for nothing!
The only problem in Kerala is the humidity so if you decide not have an air-conditioned room everything inside the room starts to get moist and on our last night the bed sheets felt decidedly damp. We rattled
away the days wandering along the beach front watching the fishermen haul their nets in and out of the water. And just while I remember this was the place that scored second place in the tour of indian curries from our favorite roof top restaurant, all we had was a simple veg curry but they used a wonderful array of herbs and spices that made it taste like no other curry you get back in England. Also a big thumbs up goes to the lovely chap who runs Monty Carlo cafe; great for a spot of breakfast and a chat with the owner.
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