Sample the real India in homes tour
A COLOURFUL crowd pressed against the barriers at Calicut airport. In front, a smiling man called Muncham held up a card with the words: "Welcome to Kerala Mr Katie Fenton."
We laughed, pointing to the very feminine form of our tour leader and he, with an apologetic grin, covered the offending Mr with his hand.
Welcome indeed to Kerala, land of coconuts, the coastal state on the southwest tip of India.
Compared to Goa further north, tourists have still to explore this very green state full of tea and coffee plantations, pepper and spices.
The air is perfumed with the faintly medicated scent of the coffee blossoms, plump white flowers yet to turn into beans.
Munsham proudly led us to our transport, a battered minibus with dodgy suspension and air conditioning like a freezer, called, somewhat grandly, the Moving Palace.
Through its windows impressions of Kerala spilled as often as the Moving Palace hit yet another pothole.
We see: ten little schoolboys tucked up in a tuk-tuk, or auto rickshaw, as the Reliant Robin of South Asia is called in India; a monkey jaywalking and a cow walking itself home through town; tea plantations flowing over hills like sculpted privet; and a decaying Jain temple full of bat droppings. And litter everywhere. Names of shops flash by: Pants House, Nighty Shop and, honestly, Hilda Bakers.
Mustafa, our driver, who will later get a tip for not killing us, drives like a madman playing dodgems on the Wall of Death, but then everyone in India drives like a madman except the learner we overtake in the Scud Driving School car.
Mustafa ignores homilies on road signs advising "A danger seen is half avoided," weaving through traffic, constantly sounding his horn. Everyone does. It means "I am here" rather than aggression. I mentally clock up penalty points – going into double figures when he overtakes on a blind bend on a mountainside in a mist at night.
Instead of hotelling it round the state, we are seeing it closer at hand, staying bed and breakfast courtesy of Mahindra Homestays.
Some, like Cherian Ninan, at the Coffee Vista homestay in Wayanad, the northern part of the state in the Western Ghat mountains, are farmers.
He runs a 140-acre coffee plantation and homestay adds another income – he also works in finance in the nearby city.
Accommodation is good – a room with a massive bed and a wet room with toilet and shower.
He'll take you on a tour of the estate which is full of wildlife – including monkeys. "They're a big problem. They destroy the coffee because they like the sweet taste but we're not allowed to shoot them as they're a protected species," he tells us.
That night he leaves for a wedding and his father entertains us with Johnny Walker black label whisky under the stars on the family's deep pile lawn. Mr Ninan Senior has not yet reconciled himself to charging visitors.
"It's part of our culture to entertain guests for free," he says. But his investments have not done so well and his son has persuaded him.
The food, cooked by Cherian's mother Achamma, is lovely – pomfret in coconut, chicken curry, beef cutlets and ghee rice. And that's just lunch.
The Ninas are Christians, like our next host Jossey Thomas, who runs Kaits Home, a homestay on the banks of the river Pampa in the village of Champakulam, near Aleppy, several hundred kilometres further south.
My accommodation is basic - a sort of Butlins 1950s chalet but with a great view. I awake to the sounds of women washing clothes in the river and people bathing, dipping toothbrushes in the muddy brown water. It could be a bend on the river Amazon.
Jossey hires a boatman and we paddle across the Pampa to the other side of the river to see the rest of the village, its famous snakeboat – the people of this network of lakes and rivers called the Backwaters have their own version of the boat race – and the paddy fields, still harvested by hand.
The winnowed rice is put on canvas sheets on the roads – vehicles drive round them – to dry before it is husked.
In Champakulam we explore St Mary's Church, founded in 427AD. When Vasco da Gama arrived in Kerala he was amazed to find Christians, originally converted by St Thomas who came in 52AD. Today the state is half Hindu and a quarter each Christian and Moslem. The town has a thriving market.
Now we're off to our third and last stop, driving east to Pepper County homestay at Thekkady, near the Periyar wildlife sanctuary and tiger reserve. Our hosts, Mr Cyriac and his wife Dolly, have a magnificent house on a small hillside spice plantation of seven acres.
He is a lovely man with a mournful hangdog expression, perhaps because the bottom has dropped out of the vanilla market. But then when have you ever met a happy farmer?
She cooks like a dream and, as before in each of our stays, it's assisted eating. Don't reach out to a dish – they'll be hovering to do it for you. We have some of the best food of our trip here.
Later we pad through his acres to smell cardamom, pepper and mace and be instructed in the mysteries of vanilla sex. Each blossom has to be hand fertilised before the sun is at its height or it dies, a life unconsummated.
"How on earth did it cope before people?" I ask.
Mr Cyriac gives a hangdog smile: "Only God knows."Sweetness and light
n AS I walked on to the verandah of my hut at Kaits Home to admire the river view a little girl aged no more than five said hello.
I thought how charming and exchanged a few words. It was a one-sided conversation.
I went back in but five minutes later she was still there. "You have gift?" she said and the penny dropped.
Children expect things from Europeans.
Luckily I had been warned and brought ample stocks of pencils and sweets.
She skipped with delight at getting three pencils.
Ten minutes later she was back again, with a boy and a girl on either side of her, gazing at me expectantly.
It was time for the sweets.
FACTFILE
Martin travelled to India courtesy of Mahindra Homestays.
For full details of their accommodation in Kerala and the rest of India, visit www.mahindrahomestays.com
Reservations can be made on 0203 140 8422 or e-mail: reservations@mahindrahomestays.com
Prices: Coffee Vista from 56 per room per night; Kaits Home, 36; Pepper County, 56. All include breakfast.
You cannot buy rupees in the UK, only on arrival in India.
The best time to stay in Kerala is October to May.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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