Too Many Cooks is the Best Thing

We signed on for a 10 day walking/camping tour with Explore, a company we liked the look of online. We normally just find a local tour and sign on for any activity we are interested in, but didn't trust that this would be easy in India, and we didn't have a lot of time to spare for visiting local tour offices, if they even existed. Explore hires local guides, drivers, and businesses - in our case camp cooks and helpers, boatmen, and specific guides for the hiking portion, game park, spice plantation, etc. We also liked that the company is carbon neutral and pays its key staff a wage, so that they are not 100% dependent on tips. 

So we found ourselves with 4 other travel companions, all traveling solo - three women from England and one man from Japan. None of us knew each other. Age range: 40-78. What we soon realized is that we were with 4 fantastic travelers who had each traveled throughout the world for decades, 3 of whom had traveled extensively with other Explore trips. Not only well-traveled but well-read, well-lived, interesting, curious, good-natured and easy-going. We could not have been luckier.We got on like a proverbial house on fire.

And we knew we were with kindred spirits when we were asked if we wanted to take a cooking class in Thekkady, where we stayed after our camping portion of the trip. All our arms shot up, but were very clear that we wanted to participate, not just watch a demonstration.

Everywhere we go it is always great to take a cooking class taught by the locals. Here, we were under the tutelage of a married couple, who taught us how to make three different masala mixes (one for meat, one for fish and garam masala, which is just a fancy phrase for mixed spice) and then use them to make Chicken Masala, Kerala Fish Curry, Pineapple Curry, Potato Masala, Green Bean Thoran, Dhal Thadukka, Roast Okra and Parathha bread. The husband reminded us of the actor John Randolph, who played George Costanza's father on the TV show Seinfeld, only a benign version. He was constantly telling us mix or chop with a musical riff "mixing, mix---ing!" "stirring, stirr----ing!"

It was a huge feast and all quite delicious. Ingredients included spices all grown in the area such as cardamom, peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, mustard seeds, turmeric, ginger, chillis, curry leaves, and fennel seeds. Other ingredients were coconut meat (that we learned how to extract manually using a very vicious-looking knife thing attached to tiny wooden seat) and coconut oil, garlic, onion, tomatoes, sugar, salt and lemon. The fish came from the Kerala backwaters and the chicken had been no doubt running around that morning.

raw ingredients

getting ready to chop, chop, chop

so fresh and fragrant

cracking the coconut

everyone....

taking a turn....

getting the coconut

using an extremely sharp implement....

without losing a finger

spices gathered first and then added to the correct dish
in this case potatoes

ready to cook

feeling proud of standing behind seasoned potatoes

mixing, mix-ing!

coconut and spices for the pineapple curry

lots of prep time, but cooking time was at most 30 minutes

those colours!

making papadums took 4 seconds a side

potatoes frying in coconut oil

taking a look at the cooking teachers' daughter's homework
at age 7 she is farther along that students age 12 at home!

flour and a little oil

making bread

lots of kneading 

getting close to eating time!

more spices to more dishes

chicken masala

getting served

the finished meal

tucking in

Air BnB-ing in a School

On our trek through the mountains of Kerala, we camped. Three nights in hill stations above tea plantations and one night in a school. We waiting until school was out and the team pitched tents in the school’s sandy playground. The playground also become a makeshift health centre as two of our group took a tumble on a steep plantation hillside tripping over tea plant stumps. Contents of our well stocked medical kits were pooled to clean, disinfect and protect wounds. 

We were able to use the school’s showers and toilets in the staff room and would sneak peaks in the classrooms. There was actually few rooms, but spaces divided by movable walls if anything. A person could walk the length of the school and pass a half dozen "rooms" with a few wooden tables and benches, posters on the wall for teaching English and maybe a black board. There was a so-called media room, locked, which intrigued me, and a few musical instruments placed above some cupboards at the back of the building. Otherwise there was virtually no equipment or books. A fee was paid to the school. 

In the morning everything was packed up just as the students were arriving in their uniforms to start their day. There were probably 40 students from ages 5-11, shy and sweet, who all said hello in English and some even asked "What is your name? and then answered "My name is...." their first lessons in English no doubt.

setting up at school

on the other side of that fence is a steep, steep cliff!

out cook's tent

classroom

geography lesson

English lesson

another classroom

a rare English/Hindi poster

more English

teachers' attendance book

timetable

Flowers of the Tea Plantations

Not only are the mosaic of tea plants beautiful in Kerala’s tea plantations, they are interspersed with the most beautiful wild flowers, many of which in cultivated versions are found in gardens in the UK and Canada. Wild rhododendrons, fuschia, hydrangea, snapdragons, hibiscus, poinsettia and others we could not identify abound. 

flowering tree

I don't know what these are but I like them!

I think of this as the lucky bean tree flower

poinsettias grown at the end of tea rows

fuschias

hydrangeas

a form of bird in paradise

looks like foxglove, but isn't

poppy

sweet william

gladioli

pretty and unknown - ideas on a postcard please

always nestled among eucalyptus

wild rhododendrons - always red

this here is the flower of a tea plant!