The southwestern tip of India is bursting with life, but it has yet to be over-run with tourists, discovers a smitten SANDRA O'CONNELL
MY BOSS SPEAKS beautifully. But when she left a message on my voicemail asking me to go on a trip, I thought she said to Carlow. Even as I agreed my heart sank. What was I going to do in Carlow for 10 days? (And Carlow, as my kids add every time they insult me, no offence.) Oh, joy, it was Kerala; the southwesternmost part of India, along whose coasts the Indian Ocean becomes the Arabian Sea.
As it happened I was interviewing a businessman from Mumbai that day. Kerala, I asked him. Paradise, he said. In fact the locals call it God’s Own Country, and it’s easy to see why. Driving through the foothills of the Western Ghats mountain range, past jungle forest, cardamom farms and tea plantations, it’s a land straight out of Kipling – the Disney version.
More remarkable still is the fact that no matter how high the mountain pass, nor how remote the boreen, there are people everywhere. Even knowing you’re in a country of 1.2 billion doesn’t prepare you for the reality of a continuous trail of people along every roadside.
If, however, you are tempted to visit India but worried about the distress of witnessing extreme poverty, Kerala is a perfect introduction. It is the wealthiest region in India and a place where, we were told often and with pride, disease and poverty have been conquered and where every child, female as well as male, is educated.
Evidence of this last point is everywhere. There are schools in almost every town, and spilling out of each are droves of immaculately uniformed children.
More remarkable still is the sight, as you drive through the emerald hills surrounding the Connemara Tea plantation in Kumily, of early-morning convoys of schoolchildren snaking their way over mountain tops and along valley floors as they walk to school.
Their starched, very English school uniforms are even more incongruous given the fact that one of the revelations of Kerala is the almost total absence of western-style clothing.
If you thought jeans were ubiquitous, come here. Even in darkest Peru you’ll meet come across someone in a baseball cap or a Man Utd T-shirt. Not in Kerala.
Here the men wear the traditional dhoti, a rectangular cloth wrapped around the waist and tied in a knot. Where he ties it typically denotes whether a man is Hindu, Muslim or Christian in this famously tolerant multicultural region.
Dhotis are typically worn with nothing more than flip-flops and a moustache. Occasionally in towns you’ll see a professional with shirt and briefcase, but they’ll still be teamed with dhoti and sandals.
As for the women, they wear saris of colours so brilliant it doesn’t seem possible that they could be washed in rivers. Yet Kerala is full of waterways, and everywhere you go you’ll catch glimpses of women bashing brightly coloured garments off rocks.
Because of the sheer elegance of the sari, Kerala’s women seem as if they are permanently in their Sunday best, even when picking tea, tending animals or going to market. Their colours light up an already dazzling landscape and seem to be living proof that our sense of colour is informed by the landscape around us.
Indeed, locals tell us they don’t understand why western women always dress in drab colours such as creams and beige. And there we were, thinking we looked like a subcontinental version of Meryl Streep in Out of Africa.
It is the colours of Kerala that sear the brain deepest, the luminescent greens of the foliage – why we think 40 shades are worth singing about is beyond me now – and the Ayers Rock- orange of the soil.
For a native of a grey outcrop on the edge of the Atlantic, the sheer intensity of colour in Kerala keeps you in a state of sensory overload. Just looking is exhausting.
Yet we soaked it up, touring the countryside in a minibus Scooby and Shaggy would have been proud of, gleaming white with bright-yellow curtains tied back with ribbons.
Our driver, Pramod, kindly stopped for us each time we saw an elephant at work, rubber being tapped from a tree or simply a view too spectacular to miss. We stopped a lot.
Unfortunately, a predawn trip over the border to the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, to take a 6am bullock-cart ride, was taken by car. I say unfortunately because in this part of the world, when it comes to vehicles, size matters.
It quickly became apparent that there is no common consensus about which side of the road a vehicle should travel on. To navigate the hairpin bends of the region, the driver of the bigger vehicle gets to bag the side of the road he wants.
But the decision is made in some tacit, split-second way as unfathomable as a flock of birds changing direction all at once. And it’s done without braking.
Meanwhile, early-morning tuk-tuks weave through the mayhem kamikaze style, vying for gaps in the traffic with motorbikes transporting entire families – Dad driving, Mum sideways with a baby on her lap and a toddler up on the handlebars.
As a spectator sport it must be great fun, and sure enough groups of monkeys sit on each corner, cheering on the chaos. For novice taxi passengers it’s truly terrifying.
Never before did animal-drawn transport seem quite so appealing, and we collapsed out of the taxi at the bullock-cart enclosure, kissing the ground Pope style. Quite possibly by dint of contrast alone, the next three hours proved unexpectedly blissful.
Checking through the packed itinerary in advance, if you had told me the bullock-cart ride would be the highlight, I’d have said bullocks to that. But it so was.
Once the heart had dropped back to its normal rate and the adrenalin receded, we adjusted to a pace I normally reserve for wandering supermarket aisles trying to remember what I came in for.
We also got used to the bullocks’ irritatingly halting gait – two were pulling the cart, and it seemed as if they were always on the brink of stopping. In this way we ambled slowly down lanes and through coconut groves, our guide pointing out kingfishers and tiny Hindu shrines, some the size of shoeboxes, in fields and woods.
Across the riverbank came the chatter of women heading into fields for the day. Farther into the middle of nowhere we came across a group of workers taking a break under some vines. They called out something to us, and we waved stiffly back, asking our guide what they were saying, fully expecting it to be something along the lines of: “What are you looking at?”
“They want to know if you would like to share their breakfast,” he explained. And that was the other thing about Kerala, the amazing friendliness of the people. Even in a crowded city such as Cochin, where you might expect an edge to the atmosphere, there was none.
Along the riverbank of the old city, historically known as the Queen of the Arabian Sea, teams of fishermen spend all day hauling enormous Chinese fishing nets from the bottom of the delta.
Lifting the boulders that sink the nets is back-breaking work, and they’d be entitled to be a bit grumpy. Yet all they want is for you to try your hand at lifting a net yourself, and to cheer on your efforts.
And as you sail down the languid Kerala backwaters, by ferry or on a traditional houseboat, children run to the water’s edge to say hi and bathers wave in benediction.
It could be that they just don’t get many tourists around here – certainly the tourist industry is still in its infancy. Or it could simply be that Keralans are a genuinely friendly people. When you live in God’s Own Country, maybe you can afford to be magnanimous.
** Sandra O’Connell was a guest of Sunway Travel, CGH Earth Hotels and Incredible India
Where to stay
Spice Village Resort. Thekkady, 00-91-484-3011711, www.cghearth.com. High in the Western Ghats, this resort consists of 52 cottages in more than three hectares of tamed forest. The architecture is inspired by the jungle dwellings of the area. Deliberately, there is no air-conditioning or television, furniture is simple pine and floors plain terracotta.
Coconut Lagoon. Kumrakom, 00-91-484-3011711, www.cghearth.com. Idyllic location on the Kerala backwaters, reachable via a short ride on one of the hotel’s barges. Accommodation is in traditional plantation cottages called tharawads. One of the nicest things to do is to canoe around the irrigation channels on the hotel island.
Raheem Residency. Alleppey, 00-91-477-2230767, www.raheemresidency.com. Small but perfectly formed, this 10-room boutique hotel, owned by Bibi Baskin, is worth a detour just to see how much the TV presenter has achieved with the crumbling ruin she bought and transformed in 2003.
Chittoor Palace. Cochin, 00-91-484-2431380, www.chittoorpalace.com. The former summer home of Cochin's maharaja is located in a secluded backwater. The beautifully restored 15th-century palace can be rented by the night, with a chef cooking Keralan cuisine.
Where to go
Safari in Periyar. The centrepiece of Periyar National Park is a 5,500 hectare man-made lake. It is famous for its tigers, yet they are so few (just 24 in 777sq km) and so shy that even safari guides with decades under their belts have rarely glimpsed them. Still, it’s a pristine wilderness with 60 other species of mammal to look for, including elephants, Indian bison and sloths.
Cruise the Kerala backwaters. Rent a traditional Kerala houseboat and lounge on a royal barge as waiters attend to your every whim and paddy fields and coconut groves drift past. There are more than 900km of backwaters, made up of lakes, lagoons and canals, to explore.
Take in a Kathakali show. The traditional dance of the region tells tales of Hindu mythology in costumes of mythic proportions – it takes up to two hours for a dancer to get his kit on. But that’s nothing compared to the time it takes to train as a Kathakali dancer – 10 years. The main teaching school is in Cochin, and shows are performed routinely in the city’s main hotels.
Book an Ayurveda treatment. Ayurveda clinics are everywhere in Kerala, and controlled by the government to ensure high standards. The best way for visitors to tap into this ancient form of healthcare is to look for the green leaf certificate symbol at clinics. It assures you of qualified staff, good facilities and quality medicines and equipment.
Go there
Etihad Airways (www. etihadairways.com) flies to Cochin, aka Kochi, from Dublin via Abu Dhabi.