SOUTH INDIA: Tamil Nadu's Temple Cities, Kerala's Backwaters and Spice Country
with Carol and Martin Noval

10 to 30 January 2009

South India lives in a historical time warp. The Muslim conquest never happened here. So the South, in its art, architecture, literature, styles of dress, manners, public life, the personalities of its people and its cuisine, is an original, edenic India — India the way it “always” was.

In Tamil Nadu there was no iconoclasm and no destruction of temples, and some of them date back to the 7th and 8th centuries, with many of the still active ones dating from the 9th and 10th. They are sacred multi-walled cities with “palaces” housing gods and goddesses, meeting halls, bathing tanks, thousand-pillared dancing halls — forests of stone columns each carved in high relief depicting rearing horses, mythical beasts, celestial beings and jungles of foliage — markets of sweet-scented flowers and religious paraphernalia. Inside such complexes, you are truly in other dimensions of time and space.

These great edifices are architectural wonders containing world-renowned sculpture, and they evoke in worshippers a quality of devotion that is palpable to anyone who shares that space with them.

We visit a small town filled with tropical mansions, the traditional homes of members of one of India's wealthiest business castes, who had in ancient times a virtual monopoly on trade with and investment in southeast Asia. Here we see courtyards surrounded by galleries supported by stout yet graceful pillars of gleaming Burmese teak; massive and intricately carved doors and door frames and locally made floor tiles of marvelous design.

Traveling west, we climb into the Western Ghats, the mountain range dividing the Indian peninsula. Here, in Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, we walk through stunning virgin tropical forest spotting colorful Malabar giant squirrels, bonnet macaque monkeys and birds. Boating on the lake, we are on the lookout for wild elephants bathing along its shores and gaur (the Indian “bison,” Asia's largest ungulate), and perhaps even a tiger.

Kerala is India's most progressive (with a literacy rate of well over 90%) and perhaps most beautiful state; and the only part of the country shaped as much – or even more – by its contacts with the outside world as with the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Trade with the West flourished from at least the first century AD. From Rome, gold poured into Kerala in exchange for equal amounts of black pepper and for cardamom too, both of which are native to this region. (In fact, pepper is the oldest item of trade between Europe and tropical Asia.) The spice plantations of Kerala are world famous and cultivate cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, cocoa, vanilla, all-spice, cashews, areca nuts and coconuts as well as black pepper and cardamom. On a visit to one, we'll see how the spices are grown. Under British domination, tea, coffee and rubber plantations were established. We'll visit a tea factory and wonder at the large number of processes the leaves of those shrubs must be put through in order to obtain a palatable beverage.

Kerala's narrow coastal plain is criss-crossed by almost 2000 miles of “backwaters,” a unique ecosystem of fresh and saline waterways formed as rivers flowing down from the mountains meet the sea. This is an intricate network of innumerable lagoons, lakes, canals, estuaries and the deltas of forty-four rivers. Here villagers live their lives along watery “roads” with boats (from beautifully shaped, hand-carved two-person country crafts to motor-launch public “buses”) as their vehicles.

We travel by boat along the canals passing small villages and paddy fields where farming is done below sea level. Graceful coconut palms are everywhere. Coconut is an integral part of the local cuisine. Coir from the fiber of coconut husks is used to manufacture of rope and doormats, the fronds are used for roofing and fencing material and the trees are tapped for toddy, a lightly fermented “beer.” We travel by boat through the backwaters to a secluded guesthouse set on a riverbank. In small country boats we punt through narrow, shady canals watching traditional life unfold as tropical birds flit through the foliage.

Kerala was not only a hub of international trade in ancient times; it was also a magnet for immigrants from many parts of the world. The first century saw an influx of Syrian Christians and Jews (a few of whose descendents still live in Cochin in what is probably the oldest continuously existing Jewish community on earth). Later, other sects of Christians arrived as did Muslim traders and fishermen who settled throughout the state making Kerala a mélange of ethnicities and cultures, all of which not only accommodated each other but blended together sufficiently to form a local character in which all groups, however disparate, share.

The old fort area of Cochin, with its mansions, spice warehouses, shipping offices, churches and synagogue still retains the scale, charm and flavor of its colonial heritage — it was ruled successively by the Portuguese, the Dutch and British — when from the 16th to the 19th century it was the spice trading capital of the world. We explore by boat and on foot.

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