Saneesh, a guy in his mid-twenties who works for the Greenview Guesthouse as a rickshaw driver and tour organizer, picked us up at 10:30am to head out to a spice garden and a viewpoint. I can’t say I was overly excited about the spice garden as botany is not a secret passion of mine but when in Rome...
We bounced around in the rickshaw on Kerala’s ill maintained potholed roads as Saneesh told us more details about the murder back in Munnar. I guess this kind of news travels fast. We arrived at “Abraham’s Spice Garden” five minutes later and were introduced to the man himself, Abraham. He a tall man sporting salt and pepper hair and a full sized moustache. Immediately the inch long hair growing out of the sides of his ears caught my attention and had I not seen it a number of times in southern India it would have been quite distracting during our tour. For men here, it is seen as a sign of distinction, sadly for a man like me, it can be a sign of distraction.
Abraham and his spice garden:
Abraham turned out to be a wealth of knowledge about everything in his garden, from the plants and flowers to the many insects. Not only was he extremely intelligent and gentile, he cracked some good jokes once in a while. He often plucked a leaf from a tree or bush, tore or crumpled it and then passed it to Naomi, me and this young Californian woman who joined us so that we could smell the wonderful and varying aromas of various spices. We also had the occasional nibble on little vegetables growing and I was quite impressed by the spiciness of this one tiny little red pepper. My favourite plant had to be the “Don’t Touch Me” plant whose leaves fold up as soon as you touch them.
The start of many gorgeous flowers:
Hey, that might look good tucked behind the ear:
So it does:
So many shapes:
Abraham's descriptions were excellent and thorough but I have to admit I didn't retain 10% of it:
Believe it or not but this little hot pepper packed a punch:
A dragonfly seemingly entranced to Abraham's stick...is he a "Dragonfly Whisperer"?
Walking through the garden:
Naomi pointed out a big spider on a web and Abraham said “You think that’s big, come with me” and led us to another resident of the garden that was twice the size of the other one, about 8 inches across including the legs. If you looked carefully, it had a skull like face on its back which looked pretty cool. Abraham also pointed out a few hives he had with tiny bees, about the size of your average ant.
The skully spider:
The tour lasted about an hour and only cost 100 rupees each ($1.10 )...pretty good deal as I thoroughly enjoyed it. Abraham’s garden has been in the family for generations and was recently picked by the BBC as one of the “Around the World in 80 Gardens”...I can see why.
Back in the rickshaw heading to the viewpoint, Saneesh stopped by a big warehouse like building which was a cardamom auction house. The house next to it was super fancy and it was the owner’s place so the cardamom business must be quite profitable. Saneesh told us we could walk in and check out the woman working there to sort the dried cardamom. The smell of the spice was pleasant but almost overwhelming by its intensity. Naomi and I recently watched the movie “Outsourced” in which an American businessman has to get a call centre in India up and running efficiently. The movie is brilliant in pointing out some of the local customs and nuances of Indian life and the hero points out to an Indian lady that he adores that he loves that she smells of cardamom as her home is near a plantation...I can see why!
Inside the large vacuous building where about 30 woman sitting on the floor working through piles of cardamom with hand held sifters. They were all chatting away but once they saw us many gave us smiles. We reciprocated and I tried some Indian head wobbling as well...I think I’m starting to get the knack of it. We snapped a few pics and said hi to a few of them. One woman asked if we had any chocolate and unfortunately we didn’t but we stopped by later to drop off a bag of sweets to which they were very grateful. These poor ladies work hard all day for about 180 rupees ($4).
Entering the cardamom auction/sorting hall:
The ladies hard at work:
Sorting, sorting, sorting...
Look at all the cardamom!
We continued along the same road that Naomi and I came in on the bus from Munnar, climbing up the hillside until taking a long straight side road. The other day on the rickshaw tour with Sham, I had asked him if it would be possible to try driving the tuk-tuk a bit and he was cool with it however there just wasn’t a good opportunity as all of the roads were too curvy and hilly. Perhaps this is a better training ground...
Hiking along a rocky road and then out into a small clearing we got a fantastic view down to the open plains of Tamil Nadu, Kerala’s neighbouring state. We were sitting on the last spine of the Western Ghats. The flatlands below had been transformed into fertile farm fields thanks to an irrigation system of canals fed by the water from one of the nearby dams. Naomi commented that it reminded her of Northern Israel.
Saneesh and I chatting:
With great forethought, Naomi had picked up a few sandwiches early in the morning so that we could have a little picnic up here. Great idea! We shared our food with Saneesh as we talked about a variety of subjects but he was quite interested about paragliding. What better place to be able to discuss how thermals (rising columns of warm air generated by the sun which are key for staying aloft in a paraglider) are created with the sun baking various parts of the hills, puffy cumulous clouds forming and birds of all sizes thermalling right in front of us.
At the viewpoint:
Naomi and Saneesh:
I thought this was my chance to pop the question...no not to Naomi, but to Saneesh. “Would you mind if I tried driving the rickshaw?” I sheepishly asked. I much prefer the name tuk-tuk but that seems to be out of vogue with Indians. Saneesh was hesitant at first as his rickshaw was in the garage and this was a friend’s bigger diesel powered one but then he agreed.
Back at the rickshaw, sitting in the front with Saneesh, he gave me a brief lesson on the controls. It drives a bit like a motorbike as it is control by handlebars but the gears are changed by rotating the left handlebar while holding the clutch lever. I took control and slowly began to accelerate. I changed gears a few times and luckily never stalled it. I only drove about 500 meters but still got a kick out of it.
Driving the rickshaw:
Sweet...this is a true Indian experience! One off the bucket list...well it wasn’t on there but is now.
Some lovely birds we watched from our balcony at the Greenview:
That evening we checked out an hour long Malari martial arts demonstration. The two storey rectangular barn like building had some stairs on the outside which we were directed to take. The cavernous room had a two tier platform around the perimeter filled with chairs and in the center was a dried mud floor down in a pit where the event would take place. It reminded me a bit of a bull fighting ring, although this was rectangular. At the far end there were a variety of armaments leaning up against the brick wall: short swords, shields, poles, daggers. Candles amongst the weapons were lit up and soon the show began.
The arena:
The emcee on the speaker had it turned up too loud so his voice was distorted and hard to understand. Soon eight shirtless men walked out and took up positions in two lines facing the far end where they seemed to do some kind of little prayer. They each went up one at a time to kiss their hand, place it down at the base of a small shrine, then back up to their forehead and then left out the door that they had entered from which was obscured from our view.
The loudspeaker blared again and out came two warriors who did some fighting manoeuvres, often squatting down very low. The next two picked up some spears and did a mock fight followed by some fighting with swords and then on to another mixture of this weapon versus that. Some were quite dynamic fights and sparks sometimes flew causing some minor gasps of breath or shrieks from the mainly Indian crowd. The grand finale was a couple of guys jumping through 2 flaming hoops held by their comrades...pretty impressive but I don’t think I’ll be taking up Malari anytime too soon.
Sword and shield fighting:
Sparkly sword clashes:
The flaming hop:
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