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Published: November 12th 2009
Lake Periyar
...and its redundant pleasure boatsMonday’s journey from Munnar took us first to the internet café in the town to upload my latest blog and to check e-mail, then onto a winding road through the tea plantations. The weather was fine at first - we even saw some blue sky for the first time in days - but, as tea gave way to cardamom plantations, the cloud returned and down came the rain. For the next three hours, the rain continued on and off (actually more on than off) and our movement along the road was hampered by landslides and fallen trees as a result of the recent heavy rain and high winds. By the time we arrived at Kumily, it was pouring. Despite what The Hindu newspaper says, everyone seems to think this is not the north-east monsoon but something to do with a cyclone coming up from the south. Whatever, it’s very, very wet!
The owners of the
Pepper County homestay here, Cyriac and Dolly Kizhakkethalakkal, were waiting for us and showed us to our accommodation, a large, bright room on the ground floor with ample cupboards, private shower, ceiling fan, and a view
At Lake Periyar
A langur monkey towards the trees and hills beyond. The beds were the hardest I've ever encountered in India, but the bath towels were also the fluffiest and whitest I've ever encountered too! This lovely house is only three years old, built on land bought by Cyriac’s father 60 years before, and stands in seven acres of fruit and spice plantations.
Over a lunch of curried prawns, chicken, dhal, rice and chapattis, we chatted with the ever-attentive Cyriac about our proposed programme here. We’d planned a full-day bamboo raft trip on Lake Periyar but, disappointingly, boating had been halted during investigations into the recent sinking of one of the double-decker pleasure boats that usually tour the lake. Apparently, passengers on the upper deck had all moved to one side of the boat to see some elephants and the boat had turned turtle. Most Indians can’t swim and lifejackets weren’t provided. The result was over 40 fatalities. I had known about this before coming and had booked a bamboo rafting trip instead of one of the double-decker boats. However, in a slight over-reaction, the authorities had now banned boating of all kinds - ordinary single-decker pleasure boats, as well as the ill-fated double-deckers,
Lake Periyar
Photo by Cyriac and even bamboo rafts - pending the outcome of their investigation. The fact that the boats are owned and operated by a government body might have something to do with this! Meanwhile, those whose living relies on local tourism are feeling the pinch because a ride on the lake is one of the main attractions here. Indeed, the raft trip had been a major reason for us coming to Periyar and, if we had known in advance about its cancellation, we might have made other plans too. The only alternative full day trip was by jeep to the forest at Gavi but, still bruised from our jeep ride to Kolukkamalai, we were unanimous in deciding against that.
As it was still raining anyway, we opted to catch up with some reading this afternoon. I hadn’t been feeling too good since yesterday, so couldn’t do justice to the excellent dinner of fish soup, appam, fish curry and vegetable curry prepared by Dolly.
By breakfast on Tuesday, I was better and it was Lajpal who now had just toast, while I tucked into the sweet coconut dosas. I did, however, pass on the iddli (steamed rice cake) and sambar (soupy
Pepper at Pepper County
The green and black pepper are one and the same - the difference is in the processing lentil and vegetable curry with asafoetida and tamarind)! The morning was cloudy but dry, so we took the car through the little town of Kumily to Thekkady and Lake Periyar Tiger Reserve (which is probably a misnomer as no-one will swear to the existence of a single tiger in the reserve these days!). The reserve covers around 770 square kilometres of the Cardamom Hills region of the Western Ghats. The lake is actually a reservoir created by the British in 1895 with a dam on the Periyar River, to provide water to the drier parts of Tamil Nadu. The water is also used by Tamil Nadu to generate electricity and, now that the dam, which is in Kerala, is leaking, there seems to be some tension between the neighbouring states.
Today’s Rs300 (GBP4) entrance fee for foreigners proved a total waste of money as, apart from a view of the lake, the redundant pleasure boats and a couple of monkeys, there was nothing worth seeing. I ‘forgot’ to pay the fees for use of my video and still cameras, otherwise it would have been an even bigger waste of money! The Forest Department is doing itself a disservice by
In Pepper County's spice garden
We ate the ripe papaya you can see here! continuing to charge an admission fee and is missing a trick by not finding some way to provide visitors with an alternative to the boat rides. If you plan going to Periyar in the next few weeks (or months, maybe, as investigations are likely to take some time - this is India, after all!), I suggest you check what there’ll be to do when you get here, and adjust the length of your stay accordingly!
Cyriac regards himself as an agricultural worker and farms a wide variety of fruit, herbs and spices, among them cardamom, pepper, vanilla, chillies, guava, mango, papaya, oranges, tapioca, chikoo, cinnamon, cloves, and jack fruit - all of which we saw when he gave us a muddy guided tour on our return from the lake. He even climbed a ladder to pick a ripe papaya, which was immediately peeled, chopped and presented to us on a plate.
After a light lunch of baked fish, rice and dhal, we took a nap. Plans for a walk up the hill behind Pepper County were put on hold when the cloudy sunshine turned to pouring rain again, and out came the books and laptop instead. We decided
Vanilla on the vine
The flowers of the vanilla vine have to be pollinated by hand as bees and insects cannot get into them - explaining their high price that, although we could still fill tomorrow morning with a nature walk, we should cut short our stay here and move on to Madurai and spend two nights there instead of the one in our original itinerary. I told Cyriac over another of Dolly’s delicious dinners, this time a chilli chicken curry with small bhatura (like puri - crispy, puffed-up, deep-fried wholewheat bread); he wasn’t pleased but realised that the boat ban and the weather had conspired against him.
Our alarm went off at 5.45 on Wednesday morning. It was still dark outside, but at least it wasn’t raining for a change. We had a cup of our favourite cardamom-tea half an hour later, then left in the car for Lake Periyar again. There, we joined an Indian couple and a young Anglo-Indian man from Highgate for a three-hour nature walk around the reserve with a Forest Department guide.
Suitably attired in canvas gaiters (which were like long socks that went inside shoes and were tied under the knee) in an attempt to foil the leeches that infest the damp forest, we walked down from the Forest Department’s office to the lake shore and, ironically, took a ferry-like
Pepper County homestay
A modern house, where nothing is too much for Dolly and Cyriac. The blue sky is by courtesy of Photoshop! bamboo raft (without lifejackets) to the opposite bank of the lake. From there, we walked through dense forest of semi-evergreen and deciduous trees interspersed with rocky outcrops and grassland in search of wildlife. Underfoot, the red earth, covered in grasses, ferns, dwarf bamboo and tree and shrub seedlings, was wet and slippery. The leeches, alerted by an increase in temperature, waited in the undergrowth to attach themselves to our boots, legs and arms with the intention of gorging on our blood. They were having a field day. The only lady in our little group was constantly in fear of being eaten alive by these one- and two-inch-long creatures and the Anglo-Indian guy, who had unwisely invested in rubber wellies, had discovered the slimy things leaping into the open tops of his boots and, unseen, attaching themselves to his knees and shins! Their bite isn't painful - like a quick pin-prick, but they inject an anti-coagulant so the tiny wound bleeds like mad for a long time after the leech has been removed! As the temperature and humidity soared, we stopped every now and again to catch our breath and to flick off the wretched things with our fingers or a
Inside Pepper County
The inside of the homestay was comfortable and well-equipped stick.
Leeches aside, we saw very little - the teak and ficus trees, many of them with huge vines coiling around them, fungi of various kinds, three sambar deer, a couple of black monkeys, holes made by porcupines, a frog, some butterflies, a couple of giant hornbills, some week-old elephant droppings and some fresh faeces from a sloth bear. We experienced the sounds of the forest - birdsong, the calls of monkeys, and buzzing insects and, almost three hours later, we returned tired and sweating to the bamboo raft ferry back to the other side of the lake. While waiting for the raft to be hauled to shore, we met several local people on their way to do some fishing - they didn't wear shoes or gaiters but dusted their feet and lower legs with tobacco powder. Leeches hate nicotine!
When we'd removed our gaiters and some of the smaller leeches that had found their way into our shoes, we rejoined Jino and drove back to Pepper County homestay for a quick shower, a cup of cardamom-tea and some toast before departing for Madurai. Although it was still dry, the clouds had started to gather...
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