Waking up to a marvelously refreshing sunrise overlooking the valleys below (Lazarus, Porcupine Tree, but in a completely different context), we embarked on the road to Munnar. Resuming our road trip listening to the tunes on Victor’s pen drive, we passed into a succession of tea-covered hills, indistinguishable from one another to the untrained eye. The first big change from the overbearing greenery was Madupetty Dam. I took a walk along the small row of shops to the side of the dam. In the inescapable way of China-isms, a tag on a wholesale bunch of key rings read: “The advanced spoon is deducted”, leaving me bemused and the shopkeeper even more so, at my mirth.

The long and winding road (a la The Beatles) was marked on the hillsides by the descent of elephants! This was borne out by the “Elephant Crossing Zone” warning opposite the narrow tracks left by the slides of enormous behinds, indicating jumbo shortcuts. I made my voice echo at the eponymous point, and we retraced our path a little to re-meet the road towards Munnar. The cercopithecidae along the dam were tourist-friendly, at least from inside the safety of the car. We handed over a few fruits to their eager arms, and crossed a cornucopia of beehives that sounded like a Jugband Blues-type riff from Syd Barrett. Below the trees on which those honeyed masses hung was a minute temple, which drew my attention because it was well-maintained despite its being relatively diminutive.

Along the way, a government horticulture flower exhibit presented itself, and it wasn’t like us to pass up an opportunity, especially when the sun was still hanging above the horizon. Heeding the notice to not sit on the iron ‘rode (sic)’, we did a quick walkabout and made our way back towards Thekkady. Passing cardamom plantations (or fields, given that the spice grows below thickets of some other plant in these eponymous Cardamom Hills) on either side, we made for bed to get an early start for the next morning’s exestuations.

Sterling Thekkady is excellent, to say the least. I was overjoyed to see the pool, and made it a point to ask about the ‘No Diving’ sign’s purpose, discovering that it was only to discourage accidents leading to harm to novices. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first day was bookmarked for visiting the tea gardens of Munnar.

A lazy start to the day is nothing rare, especially after being on the road for a couple of days. In any case, I learned over time (or have learned over time, what with being a minimalist in things but maximalist in experiences) not to rush things. The best thing to do, sometimes, is nothing. Time passes nonetheless, so simple breathing can take on new meaning if used to fill in those atrocious waiting times. As is my wont, I digress.

First of all (to coin a trending meme), the first glimpse of the hotel was by looking directly left after being stopped dead in our tracks by a padlocked metal gate with serious lettering on its circular notice board: “Periyar Tiger Reserve. Closed Area. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.” I liked the fact that it shared a boundary with Periyar, so it was a near certainty already when I went up to have a look at the lodgings. One look at the kidney-shaped pool and I didn’t bother giving the other options nearby a second glance.

At the crack of dawn, we bundled ourselves against the fog rolling over the valleys (the previous morning was actually more of an early afternoon by the time I had looked out the window). Picking up the prearranged passes en route, thanks to Mr. Kumaran’s expediency, we were allowed in on our open safari jeep by the officials.

Pictures here:

Kerala pt. 3 – Idukki, Munnar, Periyar Tiger Reserve + Gavi

Munnar – tea gardens aplen-tea! Kerala sojourn part 1Kerala sojourn part 2Sterling Thekkady is excellent, to say the least. I was overjoyed to see the pool, and made it a point to ask about t…

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A few birds and small animals flitted in and out of sight, when we turned a corner and saw a bison grazing peacefully in an open field. I slid down the embankment to record the bulky bovine, and also clicked (tapped? I do use the volume buttons frequently, but touch screens are tapped – maybe for more than just pictures; information flows to us through the screen) mom with the bison in the background, for perspective. We josh, we jest, family time’s a regular fest.

Apropos, bands like Pink Floyd are a‘kin’ to family in a way. Given what happened – whatever happened, because none of us were there – with Barrett, I think the others did what they could. To have gone on for so long the way they have is testament to the bonding potential of creativity. Even the Waters-Gilmour feud appears gentlemanly, on average – and they are anything but.

Speaking of Pink Floyd, a rhyme schema tumbled its way through to Notes the other day, running like this:

Electronic devices

Permeate crevices

My voice reaches you via silicon

My thoughts seem vague in emoticon

Rhyme got hung out the window

And stolen by Arnold Layne

Letting it all out

Is just a way to cut through the pain

Ennui is heavy

Humour is not

I take it light

Fighting the good fight (Himalaya)

Regrouping

Rearranging

Resuming under a clear moon

And one at a time

A day, a night

Resuming our sojourn through Kerala, and I DO feel the slight percolation of my current ennui into my words here, we reached the Gavi Eco Tourism complex at 9, and proceeded to have a sumptuous breakfast. There was quite a foreigner presence there, even as early as it was. Understandably so, since once the sun had made its way across the near-cloudless sky overhead, it would be too hot to venture outside, for animals as well as us.

A brief walk upwards got us to the well-preserved skeleton of an elephant, among other natural history exhibits. I didn’t know that an elephant’s tail has bones: must steer clear if the future brings me within lashing distance of a live one’s!

The trek for the view of Sabarimala resumed without mum and sis: they weren’t much inclined to stay long on the upward path, choosing to relax by returning to the shady grove roofed by vines of lady’s slipper, Thunbergia mysorensis, the Latin name drawing on trumpets and Mysore – a place that comes up often in my work.

I continued along the path around the hill, till our very competent guide pointed out the Sabarimala temple complex, deep in the jungle of Poongavanam, and I got a few panoramic shots of the Periyar forests – green in varying degrees – and rolling valleys. In places like these, where I am told about the beliefs surrounding the pilgrimages undertaken by people (apparently women aged between 10 and 50 do not make the arduous trek through the forest to Sabarimala), I find myself imagining the centuries of conflicting stories that have percolated into the contemporary version of affairs. History is written by the victors, said Churchill, and I’m inclined to agree.

Rounding the hill, we descend towards the cardamom and spice plantations, en route which I photograph a dead cinnamon tree that frames the cloudless sky within its plaintive branches. A group of aliens walks past, discussing how cardamom, the smell of which pervades the air, is used in cooking. I pepper their curiosity with a few sprinklings of culinary information about spices. A hopping, happy bunch of 5-7 people, European from their accents, they are wide-eyed when I describe tadka, an act that is the starting point of many Indian dishes. As they wander amongst the plantations, my guide and I saunter back to the Gavi dam, from where we had begun our short trek.

The water in the reservoir and catchment area was almost still under the afternoon sun, but there was a fair wind which made it ripple at the deeper parts. Mother dear, li’l sis and I were settled into one of the rowboats after we had slipped on the mandated life jackets. Biju (I recalled his name in one of those sudden flashes of memory that accompany reminiscences nearly exactly, which is another reason I endeavor to document everything pictorially) rowed us out to the far shore, where we could see the elephants’ traces – footprints and slides down the slope, better defined here than at Madupetty due to the muddy banks (NOT of the Wishkah, RIP Cobain). To return to the starting point, which was just the grass banks sloping into the reservoir, we took a turn at rowing, and Dear Mum and sis managed appreciably well! Just goes to show, always best to be prepared to revise your preconceived notions which, in any case, tend to be misplaced. When we returned to the embarking shore, where other groups of tourists including the aliens I’d discussed spices with earlier awaited their turn, I dropped an oar and a hint to Biju about taking another shot at oarsmanship when the afternoon had drawn on and the tourist waves had subsided.

I notice now that I use zeugma sometimes, but justify it as a part of harmless solecism on my part. If even the earth is mostly harmless, what little measure of chaos does my levitating over the constraints of formal grammar add to the already swirling whorl of entropic literature? This stems, perhaps, from my ennui of rephrasing technical features on the weekdays. I empathize a little with Pynchon writing for Boeing in his early days. I think I first ran across his name when he sent “good vibes to everybody” through a fax and a friend (see, there I go again – it takes a while to veer off into other spirals sometimes, while others clandestinely persevere) in 2011. Those were FMS days, and I was given to reading online – much as I am still.

At Gavi, returning to the past (as possible as that is), Biju, li’l sis and I floated out the rowboat after an hour of lounging under the gazebo and overhearing the travel travails of a couple of foreigners who were also chilling in the shade of nearby trees. The motion of water is captured well in slo-mo, and I dug in with some gusto to get footage of good splashes. A lunch later, we were deposited back at Sterling for some well-deserved rest and resuscitation.

The afternoon saw us load ourselves into a shiny jeep and get driven to Elephant Junction. Boy, there couldn’t be a more appropriate name.

Two elephants stood near the gates, and I confess I was slightly intimidated, lest one or both take a sudden shine to me. They are intelligent, those pachyderms.

A few paces down the path leading to the platforms built for climbing the basic seats piled on to the elephants’ backs, we heard screams of delight from behind a screen of bamboos, and were accompanied there to see a French lady astride Ramba (we were told the elephant’s name when our turn came next), sopping wet but clearly thrilled. Once she and her companion left after she shared her excitement at experiencing another unique thing to share with her kids and grandkids back home, the mahout invited us to feed Ramba cut up pumpkins.

The mammoth-descendant (I think correctly, I hope) slurped in the fist-sized pieces with relish, and soon I climbed in the precise three steps shown by the mahout on to the back – or neck, hard to differentiate while in boxers and atop alive tons of life. At a short command from the mahout, Ramba knocked the air out of my lungs with one spray of water from his trunk.

This was unfamiliar territory. Rushing water is fine by me: I’ve spent many an afternoon since childhood in mountain streams and rivers, pitting my body against the brunt of onrushing water. So is riding elephants, but that was on safari in Rajaji and Jim Corbett National Parks, not in Idukki and Periyar. There is a first time for everything, though, and if that isn’t how I deal with all sorts of flotsam and jetsam in the turbulent seas of life, I don’t know what is. It seems I have been in a Kunstlerroman for quite a while, but I think of it as a never ending process, the gaining of experience and knowledge in all their forms for influencing my words and their combinations, convoluted or otherwise.

Looking back on it, those bursts of water are ingrained as another experience inimitable even if I were to visit that same Elephant Junction again! The elephant ride that followed echoed previous jumbo jaunts that I’d been on, except I had the elephant all to myself this time around.

As I waited at the entrance to Elephant Junction after I’d alighted my pachyderm, Ramba stood in its bath, as the mahout barked orders and bathed it. Gentle creatures when calm, these behemoths.

The same jeep we had arrived in took us along a short and winding road (inescapably, Beatles) to a spice plantation – or as we realized as the ‘tour’ of the plantation concluded, actually a wholesale outlet for ayurvedic emollients, hair & brain tonics (not altogether hare-brained, though) and concoctions made from local flora.

Mum and lil sis obliged the courteous staff with a few purchases, and we returned to Kumily (adjacent to Thekkady/Sterling) for a memorable performance of Kalaripayattu, starting in the somber mood of exercises and routines then finishing with a flourish amidst rings on fire like those we jumped through for Tattoo (during Founder’s Day celebrations in the first week of October) at Sanawar. A committed physical performance, full of daring and obviously hard to get down pat.

I ventured out into the cool evening for a breath of tea-tinged air as mom and lil sis watched Kathakali in the auditorium right next door to the Kalaripayattu arena.

Climbing is not a far climb for me as far as climbing hills and mountains goes (just another antanaclasis). I took a leisurely stroll in the market of Kumily, observing that the spices sold in bulk here compared evenly to those we had bought at the bazaar in Munnar. That tracks, since the entire Idukki range is one enormous tea and spice plantation, as borne out by Victor pointing out all sorts of spices up the hillsides and down in the valleys from the very first day we had hired him to take us to Ponmudi.

Remembering that day, nearly a week ago, I realize that the act of reliving memories is akin to attempting prognostication, since the present is being given up to thoughts about the past or the future. I trod and thought for a short while before returning to click pics of mum and sis with the Kathakali artistes (and also take a rudimentary obligatory selfie from the viewing gallery, just for keepsakes), after which we took a local autorickshaw back to Sterling for a sumptuous dinner, after an incredibly novel day – no pun intended.

Being in south India, albeit far from the madding crowds (apologies to Mr. Hardy), reminded me how much I enjoyed R K Narayan’s writings, from his accomplished saga of excesses and redemption, The Guide, to his whimsical, nostalgic and frankly sarcastic account of his journey through America in 1956, My Dateless Diary. While my copy was loaned to Q (who is now in America, wonder of wonders), I remember the book even more distinctly because that was the time in which he wrote The Guide, and I like his reminiscing, dwelling-on-societal-disparities style. It helps that 1950s America was very different, the way he tells it, from India – quite understandably so. While he lived to see the dawn of the twenty-first century, I doubt the technological advancements that had taken place in the intervening half-century were looked upon with fondness by the author.

The pool at Sterling Thekkady was kidney bean-shaped, and one edge had a triangular board like the one that says “Richard Chesler” in Fight Club, with “No Diving” written on it. I had asked the friendly guy at the front desk (barely ten feet away from the pool) if it was okay to ignore it, and he was quite nonchalant about it, so I went ahead and back-somersaulted into the water.

A staff member in the background of my slo-mo seems peeved, but that was short-lived. I practiced a few strokes and then we were off towards Alleppey on the Arabian Sea coast, passing the Pattumalay Tea Factory.

Saji was our new driver, and we reached the launch point of our houseboat in good time.