2 January. Manakkavala.
The trek here perfectly illustrated how one should not travel with a small convalescing child. All would have been well had we been able to go at our own pace, devoting the whole day to the six-mile walk, but our unwanted guide arrived three hours late, which meant that when we started Rachel had already expended a considerable amount of her at present meagre store of energy and I was in an occidentally bad temper because I detest unpunctuality. On being asked ‘Why so late?’ the smartly uniformed guide, who was accompanied by a barefooted 14-year-old, replied that he had been looking for a companion as he would be afraid to return alone to Thekkady – an excuse which did nothing to raise him in my estimation. Then it transpired that our guides were in a hurry, and Rachel was not equal to hurrying over the roughest terrain she had ever encountered. In brief, the whole thing was a disaster, not enjoyed by either of us.
However, to be on our own in this remote rest house compensates for the day’s tribulations. It stands near the top of a steep, jungle-covered ridge, overlooking one of the lake’s many narrow arms, and about a hundred yards away, across the still water, is a tree-covered peninsula with a long shore of grassland between forest and lake. There, at sunset, I saw seven gaur (the Indian bison) coming to drink and then quickly melting away into the shadows under the trees. These splendid creatures, with their spreading upcurling horns and massive sleek bodies, are aggressively anti-human and by far the most dangerous animals in the sanctuary; but because of their shyness the visitor is extremely unlikely ever to encounter one at close range. There are said to be sixteen tigers and many leopards here though these are rarely seen.
3 January. Manakkavala.
Today we did some serious convalescing. My original plan had been to trek out from here, but this morning neither of us was up to it. However, as we lay around on the near-by lake shore we probably saw more than if we had been on the move. Scarcely thirty yards away a gaur cow and calf crossed a grassy glade between two patches of jungle: lots of wild pigs and piglets dug vigorously for their lunch during the forenoon: bonnet macaques and lion-tailed macaques swung and screamed in the trees above us: two flying-squirrels played tip and tig for quarter of an hour: a fiercely handsome fish-eagle caught and ate his prey on the opposite shore: darters dived frequently into the water, looking like something out of a fossil museum – and towards sunset eleven elephants, including two young calves, strolled down to bathe in the lake. But alas! – to our great disappointment they turned a corner before submerging, and because of the calves it would have been unwise to follow them.
It feels strange to be the only humans in a world of animals, knowing that every movement and sound is caused not by a member of one’s own species. Periyar must be one of the most satisfying game sanctuaries in the world. It is totally uncommercialised – apart from Thekkady on its fringe: and even Thekkady has not yet been spoiled – and when you walk off to a forest hut there are (pace that sketch-map!) no discernible paths, no tiresome little signposts, no fussy picnic-sites, no concessions of any sort to mankind, until the hut itself is reached. It is just you and the animals, in a setting of incomparable natural loveliness, blessed by silence. But of course silence is the wrong word; what I mean is the absence of artificial noise. Except during a couple of noon hours there is very little silence, day or night, in an area that teems with bird and animal and insect life. Even when one can see nothing, it is fascinating simply to listen to the complex pattern of jungle sounds being woven against the stillness of a region undisturbed by man.
4 January. Thekkady.
The return trek on our own was an unqualified success and when Rachel said, ‘It seems to me you’re a better guide than those other two’ I felt bound immodestly to agree. Not that it was easy to negotiate either the uncomfortable elephant-bogs or the steep, slippery slopes that in places rise straight up from the lake and had been the main cause of Rachel’s alarm on the way out. The latter hazard we avoided today by leaving the lakeside and cautiously following animal paths through the jungle, stopping at intervals for sustenance under a gooseberry tree. The elephant-bogs, however, were another matter. These are swampy stretches of land at lake level, dotted with huge clumps of tough grass which act as stepping-stones, and the penalty for missing one’s footing is partial immersion in gluey black mud. To Rachel’s delight I soon slipped and, being weighted with a rucksack, sank so fast I lost both shoes. (They were falling to bits anyway, so this was not the economic disaster it might have been.)
It was interesting to observe the impact of animals on the environment in an area where man never interferes. (Though the fact that he deliberately never interferes is itself a form of interference with the balance of nature.) Many of the trees had recently had branches and bark ripped off by elephants, whose gigantic droppings were all over the place, and several grassy ridges looked as though newly ploughed by the wild pigs, of whom we saw dozens today, some quite close and not particularly nervous. We also saw fresh gaur droppings and passed a few of their resting-places, where the undergrowth had been trampled down and shaped. And to Rachel went the glory of noticing a tree from which much of the bark had been scraped by feline claws – a leopard, judging by the height of the marks. But to me – luckily – came the shock of seeing a long, thick snake just in time to arrest my bare foot inches from its back as it crossed our path.
‘Why do you look so queer?’ asked Rachel, staring up at me. ‘Is that why you won’t let me go first?’
‘Probably it was harmless,’ I said briskly. (I notice one always tells oneself this immediately afterwards, doubtless by way of counteracting the shock.)
‘How soon would you die if it was harmful?’ asked Rachel, indefatigably athirst for scientific data.
‘I don’t know,’ I said shortly.
All day a strong cool breeze sent small white clouds cruising across the sky and stirred the golden elephant grass; and the warm sun sparkled on the lake – from which we never strayed too far – and glistened on the fresh green grass by the water’s edge; and all around were powder-blue mountains, rising just beyond the splendour of the forest – a pink-brown-green expanse of noble trees, their colours vivid in the clear air, with the fiery flowers of the Giant Salmalias blazing like distant beacons.
We got back here at two-thirty, having made the six-mile walk last for seven hours, and I shall remember this Periyar interlude as one of the highlights of our journey. The feeling of remoteness, the beauty of jungle, lake and grasslands, and the novel awareness of being a mere visitor in a world of animals, add up to something very special.
After a late lunch I left Rachel playing near the hotel and hitched a lift into Kumili to replace my lost shoes. By the time I had walked back the only available pair were lacerating my feet but as they cost less than Rs.6 I can afford to replace them tomorrow. Trying to shop in a tiny place like Kumili – or even in a bigger town like Tisaiyanvilai – reveals how little cash circulates in rural India.
At supper I got into conversation with a family from Delhi – parents, two adolescent sons and paternal grandmother. Despite their staying in this modest hotel the husband must be a government official of some importance, as they have a State car and a retinue of liveried minions who travel in a jeep. The whole family spoke rather patronisingly about South Indians, as North Indians are wont to do, yet they were charming to me and I found myself talking to them with a freedom one does not normally feel amongst South Indians, however fluent their English.
This takes us into a not very savoury labyrinth. How much thicker is blood than water? Why am I aware of being with my own people – in the most basic sense of that phrase – when I am talking to fair-skinned, Aryan, North Indian Hindus, and aware of being with strangers when I am talking to dark-skinned, Dravidian, South Indian Christians? I suppose the short answer is that blood is indeed a lot thicker than water.
Yet this is not simply a shaming confession of racism: something a good deal more complicated is involved. The e
xpressive cliché ‘on the same wavelength’ is needed here. One does not always approve of, like or wish to be with those of one’s own race, but one understands their emotions and thought-processes by some primitive system that seems not to operate with other races. This lack of instinctive understanding must be at the root of racism, though in itself it is not racism; people fear what they cannot understand, and dislike what they fear.
The Hindu caste laws could be described as an elaborate contrivance for making colour prejudice look respectable and the immutability of the Aryans’ disdain for Dravidians is very striking. Whatever anti-discrimination laws may be passed, and however rapidly India may become a genuinely secular state, I cannot see Indian colour prejudice ever being eradicated. Throughout history it has been a dominant factor here and it does make one question the wisdom of having a single, unwieldy, politically united Republic when a number of smaller independent states would be more manageable from a practical point of view and culturally more realistic. Even in this E.E.C. era no one suggests that Italy and Denmark should be parts of the same nation because they both have a Christian tradition and belong to the same land-mass.
However, I must admit that on the whole I find South Indians far more likeable, outgoing and friendly than North Indians. Just as I find the Tibetans and the Ethiopians far more congenial than certain notoriously pure-blooded European Aryans I could mention.
5 January. Munnar.
In Kumili this morning everybody denied the existence of a Munnar bus so we had to stand shivering for over an hour beside a faded little signpost saying ‘Munnar: 110 km.s’ and pointing up a steep, rough road not marked on my map.
‘Why are we standing here?’ asked Rachel, her teeth chattering pathetically. ‘The men said there was no bus.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I replied confidently. ‘There’s a bus to everywhere in India if you wait long enough.’
An Indian street-scene is rarely without entertainment-value and to divert us this morning we had the spectacle of some 200 Alleppy pilgrims doing battle for accommodation on three decrepit forty-seater buses. These men had come up from the coast yesterday, to attend a festival at a famous local shrine, and they looked a wild lot. Despite the bitterly cold morning air most were naked from the waist up, with sandalwood ash streaked across their dark torsos, bulky marigold garlands around their necks and bed-rolls slung over their shoulders. On their heads were balanced sacks of Shiva-knows-what, topped by a couple of cooking-pots and another garland. Their struggles to fit the human quart into the pint vehicle were at last successful, as such struggles normally are in India, and with much chanting of prayers, clapping of hands and blaring of horns the three antique buses swayed slowly off to tackle an extremely tricky ghat road.
Our own bus, when eventually it arrived, looked no less decrepit but was not unduly crowded. It was going most of the way to Munnar and took four and a half hours to cover forty miles through the Travancore Hills – Kerala’s highest mountains. I was so cold for the first two hours that my numbed hands could not find my handkerchief in my pocket and I was unable fully to appreciate the grandly beautiful ranges we crossed, and the dark, densely forested ravines that sometimes dropped away for 500 feet from the edge of our narrow road.
The surface was so rough and the tyres were so worn that we had two convenient punctures, which allowed us to stretch our legs and admire the view. This is such a thinly populated area (by Kerala standards) that we passed only one town and three large villages – each sporting several pairs of nuns and an array of neatly painted hammers and sickles on the walls of huts and houses.
At one-thirty we were deposited outside a tea-house at a crossroads and told the Munnar bus would come soon. It did, but was so crowded I had to stand and therefore missed the approaches to this enchanting town, which lies in a green bowl of tea-plantations, rimmed by soaring blue mountains – including Anaimudi (8,841 feet), the highest peak in India south of the Himalayas.
As we were extricating ourselves from the bus a slim man about 40 years old, who introduced himself as Joseph Iype, stepped out of the crowd and said we must have tea and biscuits in his electrical equipment shop. Soon we had been invited to spend the night with the Iypes and were being escorted to their bungalow by 11-year-old Chuta, at present on holidays from his Ooty school. We went part of the way by bus, as the Iypes live on a steep, tea-green mountainside some three miles from the town, overlooking the river valley and directly opposite the blue, rounded bulk of Anaimudi. There is a little colony of British-built bungalows here but few British residents remain. Yet the tea-plantations are still British-owned – which is fair enough, as our host remarked, since the British were entirely responsible for organising the clearing of the jungly mountainsides and building the local roads.
English is the Iypes’ first language and they are, as our host’s first name indicates, Christians. Their 17-year-old daughter is in her last year at a Coimbatore boarding-school and Mrs Iype laughingly admitted it is no coincidence that so many two-child South Indian families have a five- or six-year gap between children. In this part of the subcontinent there is such a strong boarding-school tradition that even not-very-well-off middle-class families send both sons and daughters away at 5 or 6 years old; and when the adored first-born departs – sometimes to a distance of several hundred miles – his or her heartbroken mamma naturally tends to think in terms of a replacement.
Leaving Rachel with Chuta, I set off after tea to walk along the narrow crest of the 5,000-foot ridge on which these bungalows are built. (Munnar town is at 4,500 feet.) On both sides I was looking straight down into dizzying depths, with fold after fold of soft blue mountains fading away into the southern distance and Anaimudi lying royally against the northern sky, dominating Munnar’s valley – which also holds a swift, tree-lined river and a cricket-pitch where tiny, darting white dots were just visible. I wish we could have accepted the Iypes’ generous invitation to spend a few days here, but the Thimmiahs expect us back on the 10th.
Before dinner the Iypes’ closest friend called. He is a most endearing and prodigiously well-informed Muslim whose wife – unexpectedly – is an Indian Christian. Recently he started a toy-factory on the near-by mountainside and to my horror he presented Rachel with a large, angular, heavy and beautifully finished wooden truck which will not make life any easier for the beast of burden over the next few months. Despite our non-Christmas, Santa somehow managed to function only too efficiently and I am now carrying, as part of our permanent equipment, three elephants, two large dolls, one tiger, one spotted deer, one kangaroo, the dolls’ dinner-service and a sketching-pad accurately described on the cover as ‘Monster!’
6 January. Udumalpet.
Today began badly for poor Rachel, who before breakfast had to have a minute thorn removed from the ball of her right foot. Overnight it had set up quite a nasty infection and I only hope I got it all out.
I spent the forenoon walking – and climbing a little – in the near-by mountains, while Chuta entertained Rachel. When I set out at eight-thirty an improbable light frost was glittering on the grass but the air soon warmed up and by ten o’clock I was sweating, despite the strong breeze that swept the heights. I hope some day to return to that Idukki District of Kerala, where one could spend weeks happily trekking.
By a pleasing coincidence, Mr Iype and the children were also travelling towards Coimbatore today: otherwise I might never have plumbed the mysteries of the regional bus service. Because of the state of the local roads Munnar is ignored by Kerala’s buses and depends on a few privately owned vehicles of infinite whims. Today the Udumalpet bus chose to leave at 2.40 p.m., but tomorrow it may leave at noon, or at dawn. And yesterday it didn’t bother to leave at all so its would-be passengers had to hire a truck.
The drive down to the plain, over an 8,000-foot pass, was magnificent – tremendous peaks, densely forested slopes strewn with colossal boulders, deep green valleys noisy with dashing young rivers and a few spectacular w
aterfalls. Mr Iype had ensured us front seats and as the driver never dared to exceed fifteen miles per hour we had time to appreciate the landscape; yet inevitably I resented being in a motor vehicle.
At the State border we had to endure a forty-minute delay because for some utterly baffling reason an old man was trying to smuggle one live rabbit into Tamil Nadu in a basket of oranges. Having completed our descent to the border by the light of an almost-full moon, the driver went much too quickly for safety over the level road to Udumalpet. It was exactly 8 p.m. when he stopped for our benefit outside the Dak bungalow, so the fifty-four mile journey had taken us five hours and twenty minutes.
We are all sharing the one room that was vacant here, but whereas the Murphys intend to sleep comfortably, stretched out on the floor, the three Iypes have uncomfortably squeezed themselves on to a single bed. I never can understand why most people imagine a bed – some sort of bed: any sort of bed – to be a pre-requisite of sleep.
7 January. Ootacamund.
On the subject of Ooty I am afraid I disagree with Murray’s Handbook to India, which observes that ‘The astonishing charm of its scenery seems likely to survive modern developments, which include extensive hydro-electric projects, a vast new Government factory for the manufacture of cinema film and a population that now tops 50,000. Its climate has long been famous. As early as 1821, Europeans began to build their homes there.’ To my mind, no scenic charm can survive this sort of development.
In 1974 the keynote to the whole Nilgiri region is nostalgia. Around Ooty, in every direction, rise Christian churches of various denominations, and enormous boarding-schools and military barracks, and the innumerable handsome homes of retired Indian Army officers or senior Civil Servants – with neat signposts pointing up steep paths to individual houses and saying ‘Col. and Mrs This,’ ‘Brig. and Mrs That’ or ‘Mr and Mrs T’other’. During the late afternoon many residents may be seen with the naked eye, wearing heavy overcoats over their saris if female and thick tweeds if male, and carrying shooting-sticks or (inexplicably) umbrellas. Those also carrying dog-eared books are obviously on their way to the palatial Ootacamund Public Library, which stands grandly in its own spacious grounds opposite the main church, St Stephen’s. The average age of these senior citizens seems to be eighty and when greeted they usually smile at one a little sadly, a little vaguely. This of course is Ooty’s closed season; when the hot weather comes to the plains there will be an enlivening infusion of children and grandchildren.
On a Shoestring to Coorg Page 19