Welcome to the Jungle

Some friends of ours from Belfast are in the stages of moving to India, and they plan to run a little eco-tourism business alongside the locals when they get out here. We mentioned that we were going to India and it was decided that we would be the ‘guinea-pig’ first customers!

So we headed to the province of Kerala, to a small town on top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle. The bus journey up there was wild, up a narrow road with a sheer drop on one side and nine hairpin bends along the way.

We stayed with a local family, a man named Angelo who was a total legend. He would wake us up every morning with this crazy homemade apple milkshake and then his mother would cook up an absolute storm for breakfast. The first morning we came down to a plate laid with toast, eggs, fruit, tea, and then a huge pot of mutton stew with rice! We ate until we were about to explode and then ate some more, food just kept appearing on our plate!

Seemly if a local family cooks you a meal, the more you eat the more you show your appreciation. Me and Josh are hardly the biggest guys, but over those three days we did our best and had to physically lie down after every meal.

Angelo owned a farm, and one morning he showed us round. It was amazing, literally in a field behind in house he grew everything a man could want! Coconuts, mangos, bananas, pineapples, oranges, coffee, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom and rice. Pretty much everything they eat is taken straight from the fields! So different from farming at home, to be a farmer here you need some serious tree climbing skills!

Our guide for the stay in Kerala was a man named Joy. He took this hilarious picture of himself by accident. He drove us round and showed us the sites and then at night we would hang out with his family, which was awesome. His daughter Josie had just got married and so we saw the photos and heard what it’s like to have an arranged marriage. It is still very much the norm in India and by the end of the night Josh and me were pretty sold on the whole thing!

Picking some tea, could be Nambarrie or Tetley!

Craziest meal of trip so far. A pile of rice and twelve curries to eat it with, all served on a banana leaf and eaten with your hands!

This is the traditional dress of the Kerala man, a cool skirt called a ‘Dohti’. It is worn in the hot weather to give more of a ‘breeze’ around the downstairs area, and yes we both invested in one!

We also went to a huge nature reserve and did a safari to see some elephants and tigers. It turned out to be a bumpy, dusty, hour long Landrover ride where we saw one single Bison and Josh almost re-popped his Hernia. I suppose for a fiver each we couldn’t really complain.

Some advice on Safaris: if you ever go on one, just convince yourself that you won’t see any animals at all, this way you won’t be disappointed! Animals are smart, an elephant is not going to sit in the middle of the road waiting for you to come and take a picture!

A huge thanks to the guys at Common Grounds for giving us such a great experience of the real India. We wish them well in the business and hope to be back someday!