Learning about spices and spotting birds and animals in Periyar - terrapins and otters the favourites!
We were staying outside Kumily up in the hills - quite steeply up in the hills with tight turns on poor roads so we were glad our driver Das was so good.
The Aanavilasam is a beautiful hotel in an idyllic setting, it has only six rooms set in seven acres of spice gardens, surrounded by cardamom and Arabica coffee plantation.
We had been given one of the best rooms in the hotel, a fabulous villa with plunge pool, and we seemed to be the only guests. We discovered that the hotel was actually having some work done, building a new kitchen and dining area, and the hotel had opened just for us because our travel company, Kalypso Adventures, is so highly regarded. A young family did turn up for one night and we think they had just asked on the off chance and got lucky too! The work didn't affect us at all and it was amazing to have the place to ourselves.
The room was lovely, very comfortable, the only drawback being the gap around the glass door leading out to the pool area. Of course, you have to expect wildlife in this kind of location, but a little care in sealing this gap would have stopped any bother with insects, especially the large moths, which tried to get in as soon as it was dark, some succeeding. There were a lot of insects! We plugged the gap with the curtain and slept peacefully.
The pool was a good place for bird watching too, looking out over tropical jungle. Very hard to photograph though, especially without the proper lenses!
The hotel is very proud of its food, and our first lunch was fine: a spicy vegetable, a gooseberry pickle which neither if us was keen on, a mild dahl - the ubiquitous lentil dish, and a very good chicken curry with lovely flavours, mostly cardamom and pepper but some clove and other spices too. Served with very light papadums, plain rice and chapati.
First dinner, however, was the least enjoyable of our trip so far: chunky vegetable soup followed by a number of dishes - cauliflower in a reddish batter but dry, no sauce, a dry lentil dish which was not nice, paneer which neither of us is fond of, though it did come in a nice sauce, chicken curry, plain rice and chapati. The best bit was the dessert - a beetroot halva which was excellent, a bit like Christmas pudding!
However, breakfast was very good with freshly squeezed pineapple and cucumber juices, the very good estate Arabica coffee, fresh fruit - pineapple, papaya and banana, eggs - fried and an omelette, toast, excellent lemon conserve - honey and banana conserve too, the honey comes from the estate hives, and a small muffin.
We couldn't resist one lunch of a very good chicken sandwich, chips (and ketchup!), and superb pineapple juice. And fortunately the second dinner we had was much more to our taste: an excellent fish curry, a chicken dish which tasted a bit sweet and sour, vegetable jalfrezi which is a North Indian dish, aubergine in a spicy sauce and fried potato chunks - most unusual! The rice served here is always plain, unlike the more interesting rice dishes we'd had elsewhere.
Kumily itself is a busy little place, though we really only walked up and down the main street.
We happened to be there on Palm Sunday when the congregation was just exiting the church, all carrying palm fronds and crosses. These are symbolic of the palms cast by the crowds in front of Jesus as he rode on a donkey into Jerusalem. The ladies were wearing the most beautiful saris.
We visited a spice garden and had a very informative tour. For instance, allspice is a mixture of flavours, predominantly clove cinnamon, cardamom and pepper.
Pepper, green, black and white, come from the same plant, the differences being due to processing - black is the strongest. Ginger and turmeric plants look much the same (apart from the flowers) and so do the tubers, but the inside of the turmeric tuber is orange.
Exiting through the shop, of course, but I wanted nutmeg and vanilla essence in any case.
We were also taken to what was described as an elephant orphanage which, we were told, takes elephants from all over India, for example from circuses - elephants, or any wild animals, are no longer allowed in circuses in India apparently.
We were offered a ride on the elephants but I won't do this, I've heard such terrible things about how they are "trained". I wanted to see where the elephants lived but they wouldn't show us. Instead we watched an elephant being bathed and then collecting vegetation, maybe food or bedding. The elephants look well-cared for, and although they wear shackles, there did not seem to be any marks on their legs. There was a big shelter for shade and plenty offry palm fronds underfoot, but I couldn't see any water there for them.
I wasn't sure about this setup. The man bathing the elephant seemed very harsh, yelling commands at the elephant, and not very friendly.
When they had finished washing the elephant she stood up and at one point sucked up water into her trunk and tossed it onto her back. I'm pretty sure she did this on command, and I don't like animals of any description performing tricks.
The elephant was then shackled and led off to a pile of palm fronds. It picked up a load and walked away.
I saw no evidence that this really was a place that was rescuing elephants. I would have thought they would have been keen to prove that this is what their primary purpose is, not giving rides and "experiences" to tourists.
We had been due to go trekking in Periyar, but like many other parks in the region it was closed due to recent fires which had killed 16 people, and the only way to see anything was on a tourist boat. This is not something we would normally do, but we had no choice. As was predictable, it was crowded with tourists including one particularly obnoxious American woman who complained loudly about anything and everything.
We ignored her, everyone else was fine, it was just rather too many people and if you weren't on the edge of the boat, which we weren't, you had very little chance to take good photographs.
However, one of the crew seemed to take a liking to us and took the Nikon off our hands for practically the whole trip, coming back occasionally to show us the great photographs he had taken. He had an amazingly steady hand and knew the camera better than we did!
Periyar Lake was formed when a large dam was built by the British in 1895. It is an obvious congregation area for the animals, especially in the dry season. We were going out late afternoon so were hopeful of seeing lots of animals.
We actually saw quite a wide variety of creatures, though no elephants or tigers which are very rarely seen. I think my favourites were the terrapins basking in the sun, and the otters, just mucking about in the water.
