Footsteps - Jotaro's Travels: India 2015 Kolorful Kerala : Day 1 & 2

Thursday, January 15, 2015

India 2015 Kolorful Kerala : Day 1 & 2 - Of Spices, Tea Valleys & Cool Hills

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Footsteps - Jotaro's Travels

India 2015 Kolorful Kerala : Day 1 & 2 - Of Spices, Tea Valleys & Cool Hills

Cochin & Munnar - 6th & 7th January 2015

I am getting excited again....
After a few months of planning (by the girls), we will be going to India again. This time we will be going to Kerala in South India. I have envisaged South India to be hot and humid; buy they had planned the trip well and we had a diversified and enjoyable trip - one of cool hills full of tea plantations, tree houses (Tree houses? You will probably ask: "Is this India or Africa!"), and later a nice house-boat cruise.
Not wanting too much hassle travelling in India, we booked a local tour with an Indian tour company called Indian Panorama.

This is page 1 of a 6-page blog, click on the respective titles below to go to other pages :
- Kolorful Kerala Day 3 - Of Tahrs & Kalaripayattu.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 4 - Of Elephants & Kathakali.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 5 - Of Kerala Backwaters Houseboats.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 6 - Of Fishing Nets & Mosquitoes.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 7 - A Dahl Shopping Day.

DAY 1 - 6th January 2015

We boarded the AirAsia AK30 evening flight at KLIA2 bound for Cochin. On board it was a struggle for cabin luggage space as many passengers had two pieces of cabin luggage and the cabin compartments got filled fast.

At Cochin Airport immigration we saw many of the above Indian Malaysians clad in black robes with coloured stripes and wondered why there were so many of them. It was a few days later that we found out that they were in Kerala on an important mission.

For the first night we will be staying at the Flora Airport Hotel, it's a decent hotel with pretty good rooms and clean bathrooms. Even though the hotel was just about ten minutes walk from the airport, they did send a van to pick us up.
The only thing was that our hotel package did not include wifi; there was an additional charge of 300 rupees per room for this.

At lobby were these large armchairs which were tilted at an angle. At first I thought that they were angled up for cleaning but on closer inspection the tilt was part of their design, how ingenious!

DAY 2 - 7th January 2015

Morning's breakfast were a mixed of Continental fare (that's the local term for European food) and Southern Indian food. Being our first day here we opted for the local dishes.
Idly eating these Iddly dipped into assorted Chutneys was our introduction to our roller-coaster Indian food adventure.
I say roller-coaster as the food here was sooooo good that we sometimes overlooked that our tummies were not used to some of the delicious but spicy hot food. Well.... sometimes sacrifices had to be made for enjoyment and overall it was not too bad as at certain meals we balanced off by having Continental fare.

Okay, we are ready to go!

From Cochin we headed to view the Cheeyappara Waterfalls and then went to the Kerala Spice Farm for some Aryurvedic education. Lunch was at Guru's Restaurant, which served on of the best food in Munnar. Then it's up to the mountains for a cooling night's stay at one of the highest spots in Munnar.

It was after the turn off from the the National Highway #1 into the Aluya-Munnar Road that things got heady. We started climbing the hills and the bends became more frequent and sharper. And our driver was honking at every blind corner that we approached, so were other cars. Seems like honking is the practice here, i.e. at blind corners or when wanting to overtake.
With the cacophony of the horns and the swinging motion of the van, we did fell nauseous. Fortunately, we were able to hold in the contents of our breakfast. At times we saw some cars stopping by the wayside and passengers leaning out to vomit - I would advise those who are queasy about the swinging motion of the vehicles they travel in to bring along sea-sickness tablets - or at least keep a bag handy.

Valara Waterfalls.

We made a stop at the Cheeyappara Waterfalls but did not find it beautiful; perhaps the dry season here had lessened it's torrents. Further along on the other side of the roads we saw this other waterfall, the Valara Waterfalls. It was more impressive looking and had the advantage of less tourist, and hence less rubbish lying around.

As we went further uphill, we began to see tall eucalyptus trees! Yes, eucalyptus trees!
I had always thought that these trees were native only to Australia, seems that they grow here easily in the conducive cool hill climate.
And there were so many of them, growing much more densely than those in Oz land. I suspect that these trees did not grow naturally as often their planting seems more organized than a wild growth..... and this part of India is also renown for its eucalyptus oil.
At times, behind these trees, in the hill of the background tea plantation could be seen.

Another stop for drinks at on of the many road-side stalls. Cautious of getting the infamous Delhi Belly we avoided freshly made cold drinks made with the local water.... Heck! We even avoided ice all the time we were in Kerala. Here, instead we had coconut water. These were refreshing but not very sweet like those Pandan Coconuts we find back home.
Oops... the man after cutting the coconut into half, scrapped the flesh out with a dirty looking stick. Dang.... and I was looking forward to eating those flesh! Shall I take a risk?

Somewhere near Kampiline, we visited the Kerala Spice Farms. Entry fee per head 100 rupees.
The farm is in a valley next to the Kampiline River. From the road above (where our van dropped us) we were transported in jeeps down to the valley. Our guide from the farm, Mini, took us on a walking tour around the farm, which looked more like a secondary jungle. Without Mini pointing out the spice plants/herbs to us, we would certainly have overlooked many of them.
Mini was quite detailed in her explanation of the different spices - how they are used for cooking and more interesting what are their Ayurvedic properties. For example, black pepper can increase the blood circulation in the brain! And vanilla acts as an aphrodisiac.... okay more vanilla ice-cream for me! Forget about those berry flavours.
Also many spices has insect repellent properties, a rub of some lemon-grass oil onto the skin will keep the mosquitoes away. Hey! No wonder we did not get bitten by any mosquitoes, the spices have drove them away!
For more on the medicinal properties of spices click on the links below:
- Medicinal Properties Of Spices.
- Healing Properties Of Ayurvedic Spices.
- 10 Common Herbs and Spices Used In Ayurveda.

Just as we were about to leave, I was asked to dip my hands into this tankful of fish.
With thoughts of an Indian version of the piranha and playing it safe, I just dipped in a thumb. The small fishes swarmed in onto my thumb like it was something of a fish magnet and started nibbling away....
Thankfully, these were Doctor Fishes which nibbles of the dead cells of our skin. They are used as an alternate treatment for psirosis.
I started giggling away... tee... hee... hee... actually the nibbling of the fish were quite ticklish.

About another ten kilometres ahead we entered the Munnar Valley... and was I awed by the sight. All around us were rounded hills, hills all bright green with planted tea shrubs!
THIS IS TEA TERRITORY!
One of a huge kind.... the planted area was bigger, much bigger than that of Malaysia's Cameron Highlands.

2:20pm - We rolled into Munnar Town, it's a small town with a few main streets. But it was a busy town with heavy traffic at the town centre.
In all the excitement with the waterfalls, spice gardens and admiring the tea hills and valleys we totally forgot one thing...
OUR STOMACHS!
Being in town, with eateries around and the aroma of food in the air jogged our memories back to our tummies.... suddenly we were hungry.
We had to have those good food of Munnar!

Lunch was at Guru's Restaurant in town.
The waiter came to take our orders, recommended some dishes and asked whether we liked our food spicy or not.
Now, that's an odd question to me. Curry is full of spices. So I answered, "Of course, we like our food spicy." That was a mistake, here when they say spicy they mean chilli hot; so our curries came real chilli hot! Nevertheless, they were good! I was slurping while sweating away from the chilli hotness.
We had butter chicken, fish curry, mutton curry and Kadai vegetables.

AND a couple of Meera Fish. It was deep fried with a thin coating of spiced batter. In the menu photo the fish looked small but when they can they were almost a foot long. Wow! Can we finish them.... We did!
Eating here was fairly cheap. The total bill came to 1,400 rupees including rice, some chapatis, Masala Tea and other drinks. The two fishes cost 800 rupees.

The girls liked the curries & Masala Tea very much and enquired where they could get those spices and the tea.
Hah! Guru's planned their marketing well, just next door is their own shop, Guru's Spices, which sells all of those and even more.

The shop had shelves and baskets full of spice, herbs, different types of tea, ointment, scented oils, etc. There were even spices in authentic packing these scallop-looking shells that came from some tree.

The girls did spend a fair bit of time... and money too here. From the look of Lynn's happy wide grin, choices must be aplenty and pricing must have been very reasonable!

(Read more at : Kerala Curries & Spice Shop @ Guru's blog)

After that wholesome lunch and interesting spicy shopping, we backtracked a bit, crossed the Muthirappuzhayar River at the Munnar Dam Headworks and started climbing.... and climbing up hill passing by tea plantations and then secondary jungles.

For the night we stayed at the Deshadan Mountain Resort. At 1,500 metres above sea level it is at one of the highest spots in Munnar that had a very good view of the surrounding mountains and valleys.

It had been an exciting day of waterfalls, a spice plantation, a very spicy lunch, shopping for spices, winding roads through tea plantations.
The hearty, spicy-hot lunch kept us full for quite a while, fortunately dinner at Deshadan was much later at 8:00pm - that gave our stomachs some time to settle down first!

ശുഭ രാത്രി
(Above is in Malayalam, the main dialect spoken it Kerala. It says Subha Ratri, meaning Goodnight!)

This is page 1 of a 6-page blog, click on the respective titles below to go to other pages :
- Kolorful Kerala Day 3 - Of Tahrs & Kalaripayattu.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 4 - Of Elephants & Kathakali.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 5 - Of Kerala Backwaters Houseboats.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 6 - Of Fishing Nets & Mosquitoes.
- Kolorful Kerala Day 7 - A Dahl Shopping Day.

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