Western Ghats of Kerala

We are now in Kumily (or Tekkady) in the Western Ghats of the state of Kerala. As you approach this area you notice what look like neatly manicured hills. They are covered with tea plants. This mountanous region is one of several areas in India where tea and spices are grown. The town is full is spice shops and guest houses. It is a very popular place for Indian tourists.

Yesterday we took a tour of the Connemara Tea Plantation factory first. We discovered that most tea plantations have two crops - tea and pepper. Only women pick tea by hand or with a set of shears with a bag attached. (In the picture above you see two women heading out to pick tea with their bags folded on their heads.) Only men pick the pepper corns, also by hand. Pepper is a vine that grows up silver oaks (tall trees that provide shade for the tea plants) so the men scale the tree using a bamboo "ladder"- a single piece of bamboo with spikes for rungs.Above is a photo of two guys up near the top of a tree picking pepper. From now on, I will never take a tea leaf or a pepper corn for granted.
Back to tea - although tea (camelia family) was growing wild in India, it took a Brit to recognize the plant and start growing it for production (you were wondering about the Irish name of the tea company, right?). So, in fact the British introduced tea drinking to India.
It takes two days for tender new light green leaves to travel through what they call CTC: crushing, tearing and curling,to produce 8 grades of tea. However, all grades come from the same plant, folks!!

Next we went to Aroma Organic Spice Garden, run by Sebastian and his wife. That is Sebastian hugging Philip with the same enthusiasm that he explained the cultivation and use of every plant. He had us tasting and sniffing plant after plant. Philip got an A+ for plant identification. I had never seen nutmeg, cloves or cardamom growing on a plant before. Since our private tour took an hour and half, Sebastian's wife split a coconut for us and shredded some of the meat for a snack.


On a 3 hour walk through the Periyar Wildlife Preserve this morning we only ran into langurs, monkeys with a black body and "lion's mane."  There are quite a few wild elephants so we saw lots of elephant poop in varying degrees of decomposition. We also came upon the remains of a male elephant that had lost a fight with another male. The guide said every year the elephant's family comes to visit the bones and mourn the death. Also we saw some tribal people in the Preserve. They are the only ones who have the right to fish and hunt.

Thanks everyone for reading!