We are on our way to southern India, more precisely Kerala, to escape – as we often do – the rigours of Christmas. We are looking forward to a tour organized by our friend Jane Points, who has fallen in love with India, particularly the south, and has a business arranging tours, called Points South.
So far we are at the Millenium Airport Hotel in Dubai. Staying here overnight achieves my objective, which is to avoid all night flights. Our other objective of escaping Christmas is under serious threat. At breakfast each table is decorated with a hideous Christmas decoration and the background muzak is Christmas carols. Most of the other guests are Chinese.
We arrive at Cochin airport and manage to get through Immigration. Life is more complex, curiously, now that the visa system is “on-line”. You have to be armed with a printout of the visa and your return ticket, all of which have to be checked at least three times, once by an official in a separate office. We made it.
The next challenge is currency. The Indian government has embarked on the very worthy policy of trying to reduce corruption – or, if you like, getting people to pay tax. This has involved “demonetisation”, as illicit funds have been kept in cash under the proverbial mattresses. One aspect of this is that you can’t get more than 2,000 rupees (about £20) out of an ATM. We get our entitlement on the way from the airport. But it’s a problem. Not really for us as we’ve paid for most things already and will use credit cards for extras. The people who’ll suffer are the people looking forward to tips.
Dewalokam
We arrive at our first port of call fairly late in the evening, but just in time to join the assembled company for dinner. The drive took about 2 hours and provided a fine re-introduction to the joys of driving in India – mostly in the dark.
Dewalokam is an organic farm, surrounded by vast trees and on a river. We are welcomed royally by the owners, Jose and Cinta, with the traditional jasmine necklaces being draped around our necks..
Very soon, as we are having dinner, we have a surprise. One of the guests comes up to me and says, with a warm grin all over his face, “I know who you are!” I look very confused, wondering which bit of my past has caught up with me. “I am a partner at Allen & Overy and remember you – even if you don’t remember me!” It turns out that he was an associate when I retired (not in my area) and is now head of the “Restructuring Group” – known in my day, less politely, as Insolvency.
Next we have to decide what to do tomorrow: village walk, forest walk, spice tour, Ayurvedic massage, yoga . . . How will it all fit into two days? And what about elephants? A throwaway reference to an elephant park had appeared in our itinerary, but suspiciously there was no suggestion of elephants. We gather that there is a park some two hours away. We dismiss the idea, reckoning that we need a rest from local roads for a day or two.
I go on the forest walk, largely because that’s what the other guests are doing. (Mary decides not to, having heard about wading across the river.)
The novelty for me is the rubber plantation: hundreds of rubber trees, each with its sap, looking deceptively like milk, running into a little bowl. Each bowl has to be collected every day. A very labour-intensive process.
Another novelty (for me) was pineapples. It was good to see them growing, hidden amongst the spiky leaves of the plants. I am slightly mystified by the economics. Each plant occupies about a square metre and seems to produce only one pineapple a year. Why aren’t they more expensive?
The next morning I am introduced to Yoga. Our teacher starts with a prayer and leads us (about six of us) through endless stretching exercises. He is amazingly flexible and, being of a certain age, is a clear advertisement for the merits of Yoga. As he says as he touches his toes, “Hold onto your toes and you will be thin and beautiful”.
Later on, Cinta takes us on the Spice Tour, a walk around the property to see the various spices and vegetables used to feed us all. We see the small cattle shed with its three cows and a bullock – used for milk, not meat. Cinta explains how all the dung and urine gets passed into an underground tank and processed. It’s used for fertilizer and the methane provides the fuel for the gas cookers. All very organic.
I go to the cooking demonstration that the head cook gives every evening (Mary has had enough of cooking). I am inspired and have a signed copy of his book of recipes. He cooks in a large flat-bottomed pan, a sort of wok that seems to be unique to Kerala. I try to look it up on Amazon and the only one I can find costs US$550. They sell in local markets for about £15. I may investigate the position in Brick Lane. I should add that his cooking is excellent – probably the best we had during our whole trip.
In the afternoon, Mary and I are introduced to Ayurvedic massage – very different from any other massage I’ve had (although I’m definitely not an expert). Men and women are separated: men massaged by men, women by women. You take off all your clothes and they (in my case, two men) sprinkle you with huge quantities of oil. The massage is rhythmical and quite tough. You need several showers to get rid of the oil.
Our time at Dewalokam was lovely. Jose and Cinta are perfect hosts. The plan is that we go to “home stays”, so far as possible, and this was a real home stay. The idea is, obviously, that in this way you meet the people, see the real Kerala, in a way you never would in tourist hotels. The whole idea has become popular and, needless to say, is getting abused. We saw little apartment blocks in towns where they were advertising “government approved home stays”.
I should add that most of the guests at Dewalokam were Brits, although there was one Belgian couple who seemed to be relaxed about being surrounded by the English. It was their fourth visit, I think.
Paradisa Plantation Retreat
We now meet our proper driver, Shibu, who will be with us till he deposits us on the houseboat in a few days’ time. Shibu is an excellent driver, as well as being a nice man. Excellence has to be defined in India in terms of extreme caution. The roads are largely fine, but much of the driving is certainly not. Shibu shares this opinion, but blames drivers from the neighbouring state, Tamil Nadu. A lot of Tamils are on the road, in gaily decorated vehicles of all kinds, on their way as pilgrims to a Hindu temple in the vicinity (of which more anon).
We survive the drive to our next destination, Paradisa, which Shibu takes at a leisurely pace, allowing us to admire the hugely impressive scenery on the way: mountains covered with massive lush greenery.
We arrive at Paradisa, situated well up in the Western Ghats, in time for lunch and discover that we are the only guests, providing a big contrast to the last few days. The Paradisa is a collection of buildings set on the mountainside and designed by the owner, a rich businessman, called Simon. Our “room” is a separate building, much of it built in teak, luxuriously fitted out.
We soon meet Simon, a very elegant, amusing, charming individual, who is glad to join us for dinner. He stays on the premises, but actually lives with his wife and family nearby. He is interested to hear about my previous visits to India, including advising BSNL, the Indian telecoms company, and tells us that he has spent the last decade or so suing them. He won and they paid up, which allowed him to increase his investment in the Paradisa and other properties, so presumably it wasn’t a small claim. He speaks perfect English (although has never been to Britain), as well as Malayalam (the language of Kerala), Tamil and Hindi.
Simon tells us – in the context of what, I forget – that he keeps Rottweilers at home. As guard dogs, he explains, although one did bite a lady a while ago. She recovered after a trip to hospital. The dogs are very friendly to his family members, which is good to know.
In the morning, Shibu drives us to see the two local sights. The first is, perhaps slightly curiously, the graveyard in the local Christian church. Here one sees graves of the British settlers who worked on the tea plantations. The first I saw was a Mr Pollock from Dundee (where my grandfather came from) who died at an early age. Many of the graves are for babies. Probably most are people in their 20s and 30s. It’s very difficult to find anyone over 50. I suppose there were two main reasons: first, obviously, the perils of a tropical climate for Europeans; but maybe also, one hopes, the fact that some survived for longer and retired to the Home Counties – or Scotland (as did my Scottish grandfather who had worked for many years in Calcutta).
The other thing to see is the summer palace of the kings (or maharajahs) of the princely state of Travancore. This is now in a state of sad decay. It goes back, they say, for over 200 years, although the building presumably for less. It was last lived in 20 years ago. Simon tells us that it has been bought by a group of investors with great plans for renovation, all of which are on hold, as the late royal owners laid it down that only Hindus can modify it.
We are shown round by an ancient caretaker who doesn’t know how old he is but does know that he’s been caretaking the place for 50 years, recently unpaid, relying on tips.
All this inspires interest in the history of the maharajahs of Travancore (one of the richest of the princely states) and, more generally, the history of the whole area. Simon, who again joins us for dinner, fills us in with this and lends us the definitive history, The Ivory Throne by Manu Pillar.
Connemara Tea Factory
We leave in the morning, Shibu driving us to our next destination, a mere one hour away, prolonged by a visit on the way to a tea factory, the Connemara Company, indicating its origins.
We arrive just as a tour is starting. A very mixed group: a couple from Dorset; a couple from near Dresden; two Scandinavians; two Italian ladies; and us. Our guide obviously spoke English, with a slightly impenetrable accent, but he also had a card with the key words for each stage in the tea making process translated into German, Italian and (unnecessarily) Spanish. This made comprehension even more challenging as one struggled, at various points, to work out whether he was in English mode or consulting his card.
However, despite all this, the tour was fascinating, particularly for someone like me who had never knowingly even seen a tea plant, let alone a tea factory.
Many things were learnt. One was that the little tea bushes are kept at waist height by the regular picking of the green leaves (the old ones are useless). If this didn’t happen they would be trees. We then saw the process: drying the leaves (called “withering” – I forget the German and Italian); shredding (converting into powder and granules); drying (done in vast cylinders fed by huge quantities of wood); and sorting. I suppose the product finds its way mostly into tea bags. Leaf tea, so our guide told me, was produced at another factory.
Tea originally came from China where it was first produced many thousand years ago. It came to England, we were told, via Catherine of Braganza, queen of Charles II.
Aanavilasam
After our tea break (sorry), we arrive at Aanavilasam, in Thekkady, still up in the Western Ghats. This is another surprise in that again we are the only guests. We are greeted by the delightful Finnish lady, Pirkko, who runs it; and shown to our “room”, which consists of a large sitting room, an outside terrace, a bedroom, and a bathroom with two showers - one outside – all exquisitely appointed to immaculate modern European, possibly Finnish, standards.
We begin to wonder what we do, surrounded as we are by forests. We go on a walk around the property, with a young guide showing us the various spices, some of which we’re getting quite good at identifying. But cardamom is the special feature here.
We have dinner with Pirkko and hear how a Finn came to be married to an Englishman and to be living in Kerala, running a hotel far from anywhere owned by a famous Indian photographer.
Next day we go with Shibu over more mountains and down the other side onto the flat plains of Tamil Nadu. This is to visit an organic (everything is organic) fruit farm called Harvest Fresh. We get a tour, driven behind a tractor. They specialize in pomegranates, but also grow bananas, papaya, mango – to name only those I can remember. Also, Aloe Vera, which is good after too much sun. It has spiky leaves with nasty serrated edges that are full of the miraculous fluid.
Our guide takes even more photos than I do. He wants them for some kind of album – of limited circulation, I would guess.
They give us an excellent lunch and we go back into the mountains, seeing a tourist place on the way with two docile and enormous elephants giving rides to tourists. We catch a glimpse of one being bathed and doubtless given Ayurvedic treatments, but get kicked out as we haven’t enrolled for a ride.
Our sightings of wildlife are limited to Macaque monkeys. They are jumping around on the road in Tamil Nadu. They seem to have something against Kerala.
We have to equip ourselves with liquor. Aanavilasam doesn’t have a licence (Pirkko says that it’s appallingly complicated and expensive) and we know that some of our future destinations are dry. This means going to the state-run liquor store, along a rather sinister passage and dealing, through a grille, with a non-English speaking operative. With some difficulty, and a bit of help from Shibu, I get some of the red wine (Cabernet Shiraz – not at all bad) that we’ve already had. It’s about £8 a bottle which Shibu thinks is excessive.
A houseboat on the backwaters
We get up early to do the 4-hour drive to the houseboat, coming down from the mountains and onto the coastal plain with all its famous waterways.
On the way we hear more about the Hindu pilgrims. The pilgrim season is in December and January. The roads are full of garishly decorated buses and vans carrying the pilgrims. Where are they going and why?
Shibu explained the bizarre story. A king adopted a child that was found abandoned by a river (overtones of Moses?). His queen who looked after the child got ill and, inconveniently, could only be cured by tiger’s milk. The child got on the back of a passing tigress, got some milk, took it back and the queen recovered. The child is revered as a god called Ayyappa and pilgrims in huge numbers descend on his shrine, Sabarimala, which is not far from our route. Shibu doesn’t have a very high regard for the pilgrims, particularly those from Tamil Nadu and the north. I ask about the litter beside the road. It’s caused by the pilgrims. At the end of the pilgrim season, the local authorities clear it up and life resumes at its normal civilized pace.
We get to the houseboat place, near Alleppey, back among the crowds, in seeming chaos, but in fact it’s all pretty organized. We need, typically, to fill out various forms and show passports, but are then allotted our houseboat, run by the firm of Lakes and Lagoons.
We say our sad farewells to Shibu and get taken to the boat. These houseboats have to be unique. Each is constructed on a boat similar to what were once used as rice transports. But each has a superstructure made of bamboo, although they are by no means identical. Ours is substantial, even though among the smallest. There are three staff, an outside sitting area (very comfortable), an inside
air-conditioned dining room, an air-conditioned bedroom, plus a bathroom with shower.
We set off down the waterways, admiring the scenery and watching the birds: many egrets, the occasional kingfisher, various herons and cormorants.
We’re served a substantial lunch, to be followed later on by a substantial dinner, both excellent and all prepared in a tiny galley at the back. As always in the places we’ve been, we get given a multiple of dishes in quantities that it would be foolish, even impossible, to finish. We war-babies, taught to eat up everything on our plates, find this embarrassing. What happens to what we leave? Don’t worry, we are always told. Nothing goes to waste. We assume the staff get it.
I should digress for a moment about religion. India is, of course, mainly Hindu, although with a substantial Muslim minority. Kerala is a bit different, largely because of the Christians. St Thomas (doubting Thomas to you and me) apparently made the trip to Kerala in the first century AD. I had always heard this and dismissed it as legend. But here it’s certainly regarded as fact. So Christianity has been here longer than in Britain by a few centuries. The Portuguese gave it a serious boost after Vasco Da Gama’s famous visit. Now Christian churches are everywhere – and very prominent. We visited one that claims it was established (with suspicious accuracy) in AD427. Any Christian house or other establishment has its picture of Christ with an image of his heart on his chest. As I write, I have one above me, as presumably the houseboat firm is Christian.
Philip Kutty’s Farm
We are now at Philip Kutty’s Farm, an idyllic place on one of the backwaters.
Our voyage here on the houseboat ended with a mini-drama. We cross the big inland lake, Vembanad, negotiating our way through the evil water hyacinth that infests the backwaters (of which more below). But as we turn into the backwater that the Farm is on, we get stuck in it, apparently stranded. The motor is switched off. Much phoning ensues. Eventually we are rescued. A solitary canoe appears in the distance punted by an elderly figure. We clamber onto it and are transported to our destination.
Actually we are only five minutes away. The local fishermen, we discover, had sensibly – but without telling the houseboat people – put a barrier across to hold back the dreaded water hyacinth and stop it invading the backwater.
This water hyacinth (what a charming name for a pest!) has recently been banned by the EU. Once it arrives, it spreads alarmingly, its robust leaves – and pretty pink flowers – floating on the surface. But it takes over. It’s certainly in the process of taking over throughout the backwaters of Kerala.
Philip Kutty’s Farm is serene and charming. It’s run now by Anu, the daughter-in-law of the eponymous Philip. He died some years ago, having established the farm, or at least the home stay business. Sadly, Anu’s husband also died (very young) leaving Anu with two young children, Philip and Anya, now in their teens. They help with the family enterprise, as does Philip senior’s widow. It must be one of the most wonderful home stays in Kerala.
It’s nice, particularly for Mary, to be back among people; we having been for a few days on our own in mountain retreats and a houseboat. We have lunch with a family from California, he in the IT business – “a very attractive man” Mary opines. But they are only passing visitors. We are told to expect a large group of three families, to arrive later . . .
Too true. The three families, unrelated but old friends, are mostly from north London – 13 of them in all. The leader of the pack seems to be Philippe Sands, professor of public international law at UCL and a practicing barrister in his spare time. One of the daughters is currently at King’s Cambridge; another son is at Trinity. We all watch “Love Actually” for the umpteenth time – on what is appropriately Christmas Eve.
We are faced with a decision. Do we go to Midnight Mass in the church across the water – with Anu and her mother – the household being distinctly Christian? It’ll last over an hour, we are warned, and we may have to stand. The adults of the party, even though Jewish, are keen, particularly the Prof. Mary decides that bed is a more attractive proposition, as do the younger generation, but I go along for the experience. And an experience it is.
One hour? Forget it. It lasts at least two hours. Our main concern is whether we really have to stand, as they don’t do pews. There are a few chairs at the back, which we seize upon. The church is packed (many hundreds), men all to the left, women to the right, all standing.
The service is in full swing when we install ourselves, with much chanting and loud amplified music. The priests (it is very Roman Catholic) in heavily decorated raiments doing all sorts of things at the far away altar. After about an hour of this, interspersed by readings, presumably the lessons (it’s all in Malayalam), a massive procession moves down the church, the centerpiece being a model of the baby Jesus, held under an awning. The procession is joined by everyone, each holding a candle. It goes outside the church, around the church, down to the water, back again – well over a thousand people, I would guess. Very impressive.
They all settle back in the church at around midnight, after about one and a half hours. I assumed that we would then have some prayers and a blessing, and be released. But no: celebration of the mass itself now starts. It is after all a midnight mass.
In due course, two or three priests circulate among the congregation, dispensing the bread. At about 12.30 am things are drawing to a close. But hey! The priests amaze the Londoners by starting to draw the prizes for a raffle, of all things. I ask someone how long this is likely to take. About an hour, I’m told. Mild panic breaks out among the Jewish contingent and me, as we look for Anu who is in charge of our transport across the water. We find her eventually and get to bed at 1.30 am. Certainly an unforgettable experience, in parts moving and impressive, all of it fascinating. Christianity is alive and well in Kerala.
Next day, at about 5.30 in the evening we go on the Sunset Tour. Our friendly boatman punts us in the wide-bottomed canoe that we’re getting to know well. We see the sunset over the water, but the highlight is to see the boatman set up his fishing net for the night. The net is one of the Chinese nets that Kerala is famous for. A net about 4-5 yards wide is lowered into the water at the end of a large levered contraption. Our man will come back at about 10.0 pm (unaccompanied by us) to raise up the net and collect his catch. We repeat the trip next evening and he is proud to tell us that, the previous night, he had caught 5 kilos of the tiny fish that find their way into the net – as well as a crab that was still wandering around at the bottom of the canoe. “Very lucky!” he repeated several times.
On Christmas day we say goodbye to the three families – and greet the next lot. If we were feeling any loneliness in our various mountain retreats, we are certainly making up for it now.
The next batch comprises three unconnected groups: a family called Mendelsohn from Phoenix. Arizona; an English mother and her daughter, the latter working in Turin; and a Slovenian couple from Ljubljana.
The descriptions, so far, of our stay in Philip Kutty’s Farm must give the impression of constant socializing and activity. It is indeed pretty social, but the overall ambience is tranquility and peace. I am writing this, sitting in a hut looking out over the backwater, watching and listening to the birds, as a canoe slowly makes its way towards me. Anu insists that there are no motorized boats; nothing to disturb us – or indeed the odd heron or cormorant patiently waiting to spot its breakfast.
We leave after an embarrassing incident. Still suffering from periodic back pain, I lean too heavily on the basin in our room just before going to bed. The whole thing broke off and fell to the floor. I worry not just about the cost and hassle involved in getting a new one, but also about how the next visitors are going to be catered for. I go along to see Anu and confess. She immediately assures me that there will be no problem. And sure enough, next morning a plumber arrives armed with a new basin and assorted spanners. It is all duly installed by 11.0 am as we leave and in good time for the next lot of visitors. So, embarrassment is followed by real admiration at how efficiently things get done in this relatively remote part of Kerala. Could we conceivably match this in west London, I ask myself.
Fort Cochin
We are punted in the canoe to the mainland, meet our new driver, Anil, and are driven to Fort Cochin, the historic part of Cochin, the much larger commercial city, Ernakulam, being over the water.
Our hotel, Trinity, is behind what is apparently the oldest gateway in Cochin, dating back to the Dutch or even perhaps the Portugusese. The hotel, by contrast, is very modern. Our room is vast with the largest bathroom and shower I think I’ve ever seen in my life.
We have dinner at the Malabar House, a building very much in the old style, but all part of the same hotel as the Trinity. The food is good but on the poncey side. Maybe we’ve got used to endless large dishes of spicy delights, all served in huge quantities. At the Malabar House, nouvelle cuisine has hit the sub-continent. We choose the “degustation” menus, partly to save having to study the detail. We get many successive dishes, each delicious, each small and perfectly formed – with long waits in between, during which we listen to the trio of musicians seated cross-legged on the floor strumming their sitars.
Next morning we go walkabout. I look into a local tailoring shop and order a shirt to be handmade by later that day. The price is 1,500 rupees (£15). Mary goes to buy a dressing gown at the up-market Ashoki, where the few mens’ shirts are cheaper than mine, so I guess I haven’t got a bargain. But I hope I have a nice shirt.
I take a longer route back than Mary, taking in the famous Chinese fishing nets. They are the same in principle as those on the backwaters, but much bigger, twice the size and constructed of wood. Crowds gather to watch the process of lowering the net and raising the catch. I tag along with a group of Aussie tourists. The catch is a miniscule “tiger fish”. Each contraption has egrets perched at every available point, waiting to participate in the fun.
I also pay a visit to the St Francis Church, said to be the oldest church in India. It was built originally by the Portuguese, taken over by the Dutch (who stripped it bare in their protestant fervour), “given over” to the British and is now a Church of South India. It is very bare and boring inside (blame the Dutch and us). It has in the nave Vasco Da Gama’s (also very boring) tomb, from which his body was removed back to Lisbon many years ago.
Our hotel is on the Parade Ground, making one speculate about what it might have looked like when it was a parade ground, surrounded as it is by the Malabar House and the Old Cochin Club, one of those colonial clubs that didn’t admit Indians – or indeed women – as members. Now it’s rough ground, although kept reasonably clean. Goats are picking their way around a gigantic tree, which Vasco Da Gama might have seen in its early days. Small boys play football on it. What would the brigade major think about it now?
Anil, the driver, took us to the so-called Dutch Palace, which was the palace of the Rajahs of Cochin for many centuries. Some of the rooms are decorated with truly wonderful murals depicting stories of Hindu deities. They are said to include erotic paintings. My relatively diligent researches failed to identify them, unless they were the stylized images of various ladies giving birth to some of the aforesaid deities. I’m still not sure why it’s called Dutch. (I should add that I’ve since discovered that the erotic paintings are on a different floor that we didn’t get to – or which was closed.)
We then went to the synagogue, located in what they still call “Jew Town”. The Jewish community was quite large but is now tiny.
We have tea and chocolate cake at the Old Cochin Club, sitting on the terrace looking out on the lawn, just as if we were at Hurlingham. I had to become a day member for 50 rupees (50p). I was able to bring Mary as my guest. Not bad value for one of the oldest clubs in India.
We had dinner at Brunton’s Boatyard, another luxurious hotel. The food was excellent, but to our surprise almost entirely non-Indian. We spent a lot of time studying the next table, consisting of about 10 people of all ages and races, apparently celebrating a marriage. We struggled unsuccessfully to work out who was marrying who and who were whose parents. Mary approached them but even she felt inhibited about pursuing enquiries.
On our last day we decided to cross the bay to have a look at the commercial city of Ernakulam. This taught us how much you need a guide in India (we had said goodbye to Anil the evening before and turned down his offer of a substitute).
We managed the ferry (price 4 rupees or 4p each) and then started walking to what we thought might be the centre. But it was soon clear that this would be too tiring in the heat and, anyway, we weren’t quite sure of our directions. So we got a tuk-tuk. The driver didn’t understand my pronunciation of the main square, so I said “Museum”, knowing the main one was in the square. Not very clever, as there are, needless to say, several museums. After many miles we stopped at the Museum of Folklore (I think), way outside the centre. He drove us all the way back to Fort Cochin. Guides are worth it.
On our last evening we had dinner at the Old Harbour hotel - the best we had in Cochin – and made friends with a Swedish couple from Uppsala, Jan Winter and Nina Österberg.
Then, next morning we had to leave at 5.00am for the airport. The airport is way north of the city. In normal conditions it would take an hour and a half, but they’re building a metro so the traffic could be horrendous. It took us only an hour.
* * *
It would be nice to end with some profound thoughts. Kerala is certainly a delight, with the waterways near the coast and the Western Ghats inland. For us, the highlights were the home stays, particularly Philip Kutty’s Farm and also Dewalokam. It’s there that you get to know the people.
One characteristic sticks in the mind and that is tolerance. We obviously experienced that in the home stays, but perhaps more surprisingly we kept noticing it walking around, in the streets, on the road. I’ve been rude about the standards of driving. But you never see any road rage – even where it might be forgivable. It’s a very civilized place.
Tony Herbert
1 January 2017
Comments