Thursday, February 07, 2008

elephant rides

Fresh coffee, growing in a spice garden, can you see the young ladies hands, she is on her honeymoon and has lovely henna patterns all over her hands.


Parveen and I on an elephant ride through a Spice Plantation- she [ the elephant] is so gorgeous!


5.2.08

Back down by the beach, steamy and beautiful with breezes from the Arabian Sea, we are on a narrow spit of land between the ocean and the backwaters, palm trees abound and all is cruisy. The last few days have been up in the Cardamom Hills, so interesting yesterday we visited a Spice garden and were shown around by a most informative young man, we saw cardamom, vanilla, coffee, nutmeg, pepper, tea, many medicinal herbs- Auyvedic Natural Healing is very big here.
Rubber and teak plantations abound- I love growing things and gardens this- was a delightful mountain paradise.
Today we checked out a local art gallery- some interesting things and had a Keralean Mixed plate for lunch in a local diner- all these different bowls of food on your plate that keep get filled up until your eyes start to bulge!
Fish curry- coconut based, a fresh beetroot salad, spicy Sambar- veg stew, pickle, curd and a very tasty deep fried and salted hot chilli rounded the meal out with poppadom and rice and a sweet mung dhal, great stuff.

I am fascinated by the blokes here- I had to quickly explain this one to Parveen ! he was wandering why I am always eyeing off the guys legs- I have my nice guy; really it is not the men that catch my eye rather the ritual they seem to go through with their dhotis- leave it long, pull it up and tie, then loosen it, drop it, then pick it up and flap it around and so on and so on… like peacocks showing their tails off kind of…

Office day to-day- sitting on the veranda by the sea, scratching out lists of prices locations, timings, details, details and details is the back bone of trying to get our tours to run smoothly.

I love the research- oh and we had an elephant ride through a spice plantation as well- that was magical- they have such leathery skin and hair like rubber spikes sticking out over the top of their head- gorgeous animals, I fed our girl a pineapple and she screwed the top off then crushed it in her mouth to drink the juice before chewing up the rest
Ooh here comes Parveen -back to facts and figures… I think we will have to take an evening stroll along the beach as the sun sets behind the sea- just to gage if it will be good for our clients! That is.

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