Tyger, tyger......and the spice of life

Our visit to the Periyar National Park (where everyone secretly hoped to be the one to spot the elusive and retiring Bengal Tiger) was unfortunately stymied at the last minute by a General Workers Strike. Kerala has traditionally had communist governance and a history of union unrest and strikes. While we perhaps would sympathise with the strikers, if we knew what the strike was about, we were disappointed to miss our only chance at a visit to the Park and maybe that tiger sighting....However the silver lining was a nice quiet day in a country town with no vehicles honking and hustling, no open shops, and a slightly party cum holiday atmosphere. Our hotel was a strange kind of Swiss chalet/English country house/Indian mixture which was bemusedly looking out on a typical street of stalls and shops Indian style.

In the evening we went to a local Spice Garden. This was a mini-highlight of the trip, and another reason why we are glad we chose a guided tour. This would have been impossible for solo travellers.

'Mr Abraham' is a third generation gardener with an immense passion for plants. In what looked like an overgrown tangle of flowering shrubs and trees, he knew every plant, local and botanical names, seasons, uses and favourite growth requirements. He acts as a nursery for rare plants and grows prize winning specimens, produces medicines and spices and teas, a veritable Garden of Eden. At dusk the scents and sounds were intense, as were the flavours - try chewing an unripe clove straight from the tree! goodbye oral sensation for ten minutes! Mr Abraham has several claims to fame; his garden featured in the BBC program 'Around the World in 80 Gardens' and appeared in other gardening specialty books and, most notably (or perhaps most noticeably) he sports the most astounding ear tufts you have ever seen. Below his pepper and salt hair emerges two inches at least of soft curly black ear hair. Hard to keep your eyes off.

Unripe cloves in Mr Abraham's garden

Picking tea with clippers with a bag attached.
This is not "two leaves and a bud" but just plain everyday tea.

His wife is also a fabulous cook who produced a fantastic meal for us all, mostly from the garden and richly spiced but not hot spicy at all, the way Indian food traditionally was until the Portuguese introduced chillis from South/Central America and changed the cuisine for ever. We ate in the Indian style, with our fingers and used banana leaves in lieu of plates.
Food has been a constant source of wonder and challenge throughout India. After the first two weeks or so we were very ready for something bland and Western, but, naturally, the Indian take on bland and Western includes spices and interpretations we would never have imagined possible!
Salad and raw food was another craved item of course, lots of cucumber and tomato and red onion available but,oh for a lettuce leaf and a splash of oil and vinegar! The other issue that eventually surfaced for most of us was that the Indian diet lacked something (maybe those greens) that we need for oomph and energy. Also there is nothing crunchy or chewy, surprising what you miss. Rarely has the food been too hot. Whether they are simply good at judging our palate or that is the norm with the hottest stuff as a condiment. In general all the food has been excellent and very filling.
Mind you it will maybe be a while before we do an Indian night ......

Such extravagance.

Just been to visit the Palace at Mysore (I'm sure you can google it and get some pictures). This was a replacement for the old palace which burnt down in 1897. Rebuilding started 8 months later and took 15 years. The place is a huge extravagance of Indo- Sarasenic (  a synthesis of Muslim designs and Indian materials developed by British architects in India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) architecture all mirrors, marble, stained glass, magnificent murals, gold, blue and glass everywhere. It is hard to imagine this being built in a country with such poverty and even though it gave employment this would have been to skilled workers which still leaves a lot of people paying taxes to support the lifestyle of the very few. Altogether another magnificent and shocking example of the discrepancies between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.

Antiquated manufacturing

Mysore also provided an interesting opportunity to visit a silk factory and a sandalwood oil factory, both Government facilities.
The silk factory visit was disconcerting in that there was no guide or even guidance so we basically wandered around the rather dangerous and very noisy factory on our own. The silkworms/cocoons are elsewhere so the process in this place was from skeins of unspun silk to saree. First it is soaked, apparently in ordinary water and then it is spun onto spools according to the thread thickness required so some were simple two strands others up to four. All this was in a huge room full of mechanical spinning machines all non-automated so needing constant loading and reloading.
From there we wandered into the deafening weaving room. I don't know how many looms there were but it was a big place and each loom was attended by a man- no women in sight. These looms were all manually set up with gold or silver thread patterns at the edge of the cloth, each one different and fairly complex. It looked like very skilled labour and each man seemed to have his own specialty design. The shuttle had to be constantly attended as the spools of thread were quite small and so ran out regularly. All fairly archaic. At one corner were slightly more modern looms with what appeared to be more automation and producing patterns (gold again)across the entire width of the fabric. We all managed to get out of there with our fingers in our ears and our limbs still attached - dodging between flying shuttles and spinning wheels.
The dyeing was next. Basically 4 vats each a different colour and the cloth dunked repeatedly then popped into a big spin dryer then manually ironed and cut into 7m lengths and the process was complete. A simple process that hasn't needed to be improved for years and the end product was magnificent. At the factory outlet a saree sold for $300 and up depending on the complexity of the border patterns. Like the jewellery, silk sarees are highly valued.

On to the sandalwood oil factory. Built in 1927 and completely original still. Again no cameras were allowed, not even of the outside of the rather nice building, ridiculous, don't know what they were protecting. Anyway, all sandalwood trees are owned by the government, even if they sprout in a private garden. They are slow growing and unassuming and only come into their own when cut. The smell in this factory was fabulous. The process, oh so closely guarded even though there was nothing going on here at the time, involves pulverising the wood using small wood chippers and grinder/graters and putting this fragrant dust into big boilers where they apply steam to 100lbs of pressure and condense the resulting moisture.
We saw two guys shovelling the used dust out of one of these boilers, very hot and sweaty work involving climbing inside and shovelling the steaming mess out a hatch. They took it in turns a few mins each, it looked like hellish work but smelt great! The distillate was further condensed and distilled and then the oil was skimmed off all behind carefully guarded doors which we could look through but not step in at all (??)so officious. Unfortunately there was no oil for sale as they only process a batch irregularly. Apparently we could have bought it there for $40/oz versus at least $200/oz on the open market. I did get some Mysore Sandalwood soaps for friends though I suspect even in this signature product the quantity is tiny.

These factories were another one of those steps back in time.
India does this. From cell phones to cooking with concrete stoves made in 5 gallon oil containers and fuelled with cow dung, from magnificent new airport terminals to ox-carts and hand planted rice, from Bollywood to dust collecting neglected museums, old train stock on fast modern rails, clothes washed in rivers and schools with no desks or technology, motorbikes and cows on the road with fast cars and women with roadbuilding material on their heads, its a wild and crazy mix.

Love Mary