Beginning my trip at a place called Makulam, a hill station 18km before Munnar, but untouched by tourism commodities, the sheer beauty of forests and tea gardens and waterfalls in the monsoon splendour is breathtaking.
The most interesting aspect though was sitting outside our room at the resort with the verandah lights on and you see dozens and dozens of the rarest of rare moths (I presume moths as it was night and attracted to light, otherwise they could be taken as beautiful butterflies) which is a far greater and rarer experience than watching such at the National Geographic channel (which I doubt has ever known of the existence of these species). ....the sheer variety, sizes, the colours, their eyes, their habits made you get a wee bit closer to the beauty of nature.
Interestingly my friend carried this green one below to his home in Cochin and it seemed oblivious of its new city surroundings.
You can push them, touch them, move them and it hardly matters. Most peaceful of all creatures. Something we need to ape in our bustling city life.
From Makulam to the simplest of simple Malayalee wedding.... my first and that too in Kerala...a temple, few rituals of less than an hour at the temple itself
and then lunch which was quite comic akin to the Mumbai trains... you need to fight to get a seat. There are gates that open... and before you can blink your eyes, the seats are taken up!!!! We got lucky only the third time. But the takeaways were - We are getting married, you are invited to be a part of it and you look after yourself!!!!!! No guest egos of was I welcomed and looked after or host egos of who all came, how they dressed and did they eat.
You wonder then why we don't keep our marriages simple rather than getting it more complicated by the day (Note: The ever increasing dishes in the menu of a city wedding and the ever increasing number of priests at Tamil weddings)
Then there was the trip to Kodamangalam (2 hrs from Cochin city centre), from where we went deep inside the forests to a tribal region. You witness there such stark contrasts of living. People living in concrete houses with all the modern amenities and many provided by the government..... and harmony with them are those who chose not to give up their tribal nature. One such was this 90 plus old man (some say 100 plus) living on a tree with some basic protection against elephants...
the animal to be feared as many stories abound of tribals killed by elephants. An absolutely contented tree man who communicates only with laughter, but yes must add that he too needs his daily peg!!!.. maybe to sleep without fear of the animals.
Walking through the forests, you get bitten by leeches who happily suck your blood without one even realising its bite... salt is the trick to get them off you ....you pick out and eat herbs and different kinds of fruits along the way...you taste pure forest honey ..you let the rain drench you....you meet the tribal people housed atop a hill with the lake and greenery as their view (but also with the risk of leeches inside their homes like our mosquitoes and animals around)....
And then you are in awe of the creativity of these simple uneducated tribesmen who make use of nature's gift to mankind to the fullest. ... bamboo which is used extensively around the house and to make curtains and mats which have a market value.... and coconuts being the most useful product. This man here in the photograph
makes the most interesting of products with mere coconut shells and shows immense creativity that only needs to be tapped and nurtured and encouraged so that he does not lose the nature's touch from his fingers.
I loved the monkey he made out of the coconut shell..a unique piece of art that seems so alive that I had to beg him to part with it and I brought it back to Mumbai.
My brother joked that now I don't need a mirror. All I could say is that it just keeps me connected to my origins!!!