The outside air cooled noticeably when our bus climbed the steep hills of The Western Ghats about 4 hours west of Madurai. Stretching all the way from here to Mumbai 600 km to the north-west, The Ghats rise to several thousand feet and contain 30% of all India’s flowering plants and 60% of its medicinal plants. In the colonial era the British built their summer houses in these hills; these days The Ghats are home to leafy, slightly quirky hill retreats popular with Indian and overseas visitors alike.Our bus reached the end of its route at the small village of Kumily near the Thekkady entrance to Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary just on the Kerala side of the border with Tamil Nadu. The Sanctuary encompasses 777 square kilometres and is home to bison, wild boar, over 1,000 elephants (Indian) and an estimated 50 wild tigers. In Kumily we decided to follow a tout who approached us at the bus station and he led us to the home stay owned and operated by Mr Mohammed Salim. Mr Salim and his family live on the ground floor while upstairs are four rooms, each with their own bathroom, hired out to visitors. We liked what we saw and checked in for two nights. As it turned out we had the whole top floor to ourselves.
From our balcony we looked out over Mr Salim’s leafy sub tropical fruit garden and the village centre just a minute’s walk away. For the equivalent of AUD$11 a night it was excellent value. While on the subject of prices, we’ve found travel by local bus to be great value too with the ticket price for a 4 to 5 hour journey around the equivalent of AUD$1. An excellent dinner for two comprising, say, a half tandoori chicken or lamb Hyderabad, a vegetable curry, Indian spiced rice, naan bread, condiments and lime drinks costs around $3.50 each. And the best plump samosas you’re ever likely to taste, serenely spiced including a heavenly hint of star anise, can be had from street stalls for the equivalent of 10 cents each. Two of them make a more than adequate lunch.
As well as the Wildlife Sanctuary, Kumily is close to tea, coffee and cashew nut plantations and spice gardens. We saw many overseas visitors ambling along Kumily’s footpaths and yet it still seemed there was about one delightfully aromatic spice and saffron shop for each visitor. Other shops, strangely, were stocked with Kashmiri goods from the far north of India. We asked a shop owner why; he replied that quite a few Kashmiris have moved to Kumily to leave behind the troubles in Kashmir, sovereignty over which is hotly and occasionally violently disputed between India and Pakistan.
We were up at dawn for an early morning three hour hike in the Sanctuary, along the marsh country between the forest and the lake. We saw plenty of evidence on the ground of elephants and bison but sighted no actual animals apart from many singing marsh birds and large black monkeys foraging in the forest canopy. It was a pleasant enough place but probably not worth visiting unless another reason is bringing you through this region. More interesting are the spice plantations in the hills north of Kumily. Highrange Spices for example has several hectares of pepper, coffee and cardamom, and a myriad of other spice and medicinal plants. When we were there the season’s cardamom harvesting and drying had just been completed and peppercorn picking was underway. As for us, we were ready for another curry.
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