The Drive

Coming out the airport terminal, I was hit by those 3 things that always hit you when you go to India: 1. The million people waiting for their relatives; 2. The fabulous wave of heat and 3. That wonderful, indescribable smell. Anyone who has been to India will know what I am talking about, for the rest of you, I have devised a scratch and sniff app......

Palm Trees!

It was a beautiful, sunny morning and my driver was waiting for me which is always a relief. I got in the car and off we went. It took 2 minutes for me to see the first cow wandering down the road, 3 minutes for the first over-taking manoeuvre on a blind bend and 4 minutes to see the first cement advertising hoarding. Nevertheless, Kerala looks very different to everywhere else I have been to in India, it is instantly beautiful with palm trees everywhere and is less built up than the metropolises of Mumbai, Delhi and even Jaipur and Agra. There are no people living on the streets and the traffic is relatively calm, although many drivers are barking mad, especially the drivers of the very funky, colourful buses.

Kerala Bus

The ubiquitous black and yellow tuk tuks are very smart and clean and seeing them brought back memories of previous tuk tuk races on cricket tours down Marine Drive in Mumbai and in Colombo, Sri Lanka amongst others. The men mainly wear cotton sarongs a la Ghandi (where do they put their wallets and phones? In an Indian-style sporran?) with short-sleeved shirts and flip-flops, the women wear saris and the school kids manage to look fabulously smart in their uniforms. The boys and young men go around hand in hand or with their arms around each other, sparking an old Barmy Army song...."Is he really going out with him, is he really going to take him home tonight". One very disappointing and somewhat disheartening thing about everywhere in India is the litter, even beautiful Kerala has rubbish, mainly plastics strewn beside every road. I wish the powers that might be the Government would do something about it.

The land is very rich in consumer products like rubber, pineapples, coconuts, tea, rice and of course, spices. The land definitely provides the people here with their livelihood.

First stop - fresh fruit juice

My driver was a bit boring but there again, I didn't particularly want to him to chat away while he was driving. Keep your eyes on the road! It was a nice touch to stop half an hour into the journey for fresh orange juice from a street stall. Many lekker as us Anglo/Irish Dutchies say. We passed through many towns with mad names like Kunnamangalam, Thamarrassary and

 Puduppadi before starting to climb up the Ghat Road, a 12km stretch of madness, mayhem, breakdowns, accidents and the numbering of hairpin bends. They publicise that there are 9 of them but that's rubbish, there are many more. However, these particular 9 are sponsored by Vodafone, I guess the others weren't scary enough to obtain sponsorship. It's a shame the cement companies don't get involved with the amount of gaping holes in the road there are, not potholes, more like craters.

 At one of hairpins, the traffic was so mental that the only way a complete logjam could be avoided was if all the vehicles just swapped sides of the road. Thankfully there are huge curb stones to prevent vehicles going over the side but I did notice a few of these had been taken out and at one point with people looking over the edge - I dread to think.......

By the time the driver had negotiated the 9 hairy pins and we were at the top of Ghat Road, I had cramp in my feet after continually pressing that imaginary brake pedal. I am the worst back seat driver ever. The view would have been super spectacular if it hadn’t been a bit misty and also if my heart hadn’t momentarily died when I saw the mountains of litter at the look-out point. Shameless.

View from the top

Very misty

Carrying on, we were soon in Wayanad Province. Lots of places trying to sell the Ayurvedic way. This isn’t exactly the place for a 5 star resort, everything looked pretty basic. After driving through Kalpetta, the largest “city” (probably only a population of 30,000) my driver turned into Mr. Nasty the rally driver which was a bit bloody scary. The traffic had got lighter but the road deteriorated badly and dodging the untarmaced parts of the road combined with avoiding the oncoming vehicles, especially the big trucks forced us into some serious evasive action. I wanted to ask, like a small child, “Are we nearly there yet?”. We had been going for 3 ½ hours and he had estimated just less than 4 hours and the traffic had been relatively light, compared to the likes of Mumbai and Delhi.

Wayanad Province - Ayurveda Yoga Villa

Big sigh of relief when I saw a sign for “Ayurveda Yoga Villa” however that was short-lived as the “road” was closed for “re-surfacing”. We had to make a detour which really did take us off-road into just spaces in between trees made up of rocks topped with the occasional, random bits of tarmac. Not a particularly comfortable ride. Finally after another 30 minutes, at 2pm. local time, we arrived in what looked like paradise...................