India: Thekkady, Kerala: Periyar and Beyond

🌿 Thekkady: From Spices to Spectacle

We’d been on the road from Alleppey for a few hours when it became clear that Kerala had decided to show off. The flat, languid backwater country — all palm trees, rice paddies and slow-moving canals — gradually gave way to something altogether more dramatic as we climbed into the Western Ghats. The air, which had been thick and tropical down on the coast, began to thin out and cool down as we gained altitude, and the smell changed too — from the damp earthiness of the lowlands to something sharper and greener, laced with cardamom and pepper. Spice plantations lined the roadside, their vines scrambling up wooden poles, and small roadside stalls sold coconuts, bananas and heaps of fresh produce in brilliant colours. Every bend in the road opened up a new view — ridges of forested hills rolling away into the distance, cloud drifting across the peaks, the odd waterfall catching the afternoon light. It was the kind of scenery that makes you forget you’ve been sitting in a car for three hours. By the time we rolled into Thekkady, it was mid-afternoon, and the place felt genuinely wild — a proper hill town on the edge of one of Kerala’s most important wildlife sanctuaries. We could see why travellers bother making the effort to get up here.

Thekkady sits on the border of the Periyar Tiger Reserve, a protected area covering around 925 square kilometres of forest, grassland and lake. The reserve was established in 1978 under Project Tiger, though the area had been a hunting reserve under the Travancore royal family long before that. The dam that created Periyar Lake was built by the British in 1895 — the Mullaperiyar Dam — which flooded the valley and formed the lake that now sits at the heart of the reserve. That bit of Victorian engineering turned out to be rather fortunate for wildlife. The lake attracts animals from miles around, which is why a boat trip on it remains one of the better ways to see the local fauna without crashing through the jungle. The town of Kumily serves as the main gateway, and the whole area is known in equal measure for its wildlife and its spice trade — Kerala produces more cardamom than anywhere else in India, and a good deal of it comes from these hills. We were well placed for an interesting couple of days.

🌸 Our Exploration of Thekkady

It was Prakash, our driver and by this point a man we’d come to rely on completely, who set the agenda for our first evening. He’d been making calls as we drove — a habit of his — and had tracked down a Kathakali performance and a Kalaripayattu show through a contact in Thekkady. Both would be on that evening, within walking distance of our hotel. Brilliant. That was the evening sorted. But before any of that, Prakash had one further suggestion: an Ayurvedic massage. He knew a place just down the road. We agreed without too much thought, which, in hindsight, was perhaps a little rash.

Ayurveda is one of the world’s oldest medical systems, with roots going back more than three thousand years in India. The word itself comes from Sanskrit — ayur meaning life, and veda meaning knowledge — and the tradition encompasses diet, herbal medicine, yoga and, crucially for our purposes, massage. Kerala is considered the home of Ayurvedic treatment, partly because of its climate and the abundance of medicinal plants in the region, and partly because the tradition has been kept alive here far more rigorously than elsewhere. Properly done, an Ayurvedic massage involves warm herbal oils, specific pressure points and techniques designed to improve circulation, relieve tension and balance what the tradition refers to as the three doshas — vata, pitta and kapha. Whether you believe in the doshas or not, a good massage is a good massage. Ours, however, was an experience somewhat removed from the leafy spa photographs you find in travel magazines.

The place was a short walk from the hotel, tucked down a side street that smelled faintly of camphor. On the way in, we descended a steep flight of stairs and found ourselves observed by a troupe of monkeys, who were sprawled across the bannisters with the relaxed authority of regular patrons. Inside, I was shown to a small, dimly lit room and handed what I can only describe as a paper G-string. The masseur — a compact, muscular fellow who looked more than capable of picking up the massage table, never mind the person on it — indicated that I should lie down. What followed was roughly sixty minutes of intensive oiling and kneading of a kind that I suspect bordered on physiotherapy. At various points, I genuinely couldn’t tell whether he was using his hands, his elbows or, on one remarkable occasion involving my scalp, something that felt suspiciously like his chest. The herbal oil was applied in industrial quantities. I emerged smelling powerfully of sesame and something I associate with Deep Heat, but I had to admit my back felt considerably better than it had in weeks. Karen’s assessment of her session was considerably less positive, and she was disinclined to elaborate.

🎭 The Art of Kathakali

Kathakali has been performed in Kerala for roughly four hundred years, though its roots stretch back further into the temple theatre traditions of the region. The name means something like “story-play,” and it is a classical dance-drama form that tells stories drawn from the great Hindu epics — the Ramayana and the Mahabharata — through an extraordinarily codified system of gesture, expression and movement. There are twenty-four principal mudras, or hand gestures, and the actor’s face is capable of expressing nine distinct emotional states — the navarasas — through precise control of muscles that most of us never knowingly use. Training begins in childhood and takes a minimum of eight to ten years before a performer is considered ready. It is, in short, a serious business.

The makeup alone is an art form. The elaborate face painting — called chutti — involves layering rice paste, pigments and occasionally small pieces of paper to build up the stylised masks that identify each character type. Heroes are painted green, villains wear red and black, women and noble characters wear yellow. The costumes are equally elaborate: enormous skirts, towering headdresses and bells on the ankles that ring with every step. By the time an actor is ready to perform, the preparation has taken two to three hours and he is barely recognisable as a human being in any conventional sense.

We’d seen a Kathakali performance in Kochi earlier in the trip, so we knew roughly what to expect. The theatre near our hotel was already filling up as we arrived — a mix of tourists and local visitors settling into rows of chairs facing a small, brightly lit stage. The actor who appeared first was already mid-makeup — the performance was shorter here than in Kochi, and the preparation had been done backstage. But once the performance began, it was clear that this was a more energetic and dynamic show than the one we’d seen before. The drumming was sharper, the movements more emphatic, and the performer’s facial expressions were astonishing — eyebrows travelling independently across his forehead, eyes rolling and widening in ways that seem anatomically ambitious. The mythological story itself we’d encountered before, but the telling of it here felt rawer and more urgent, as though the performer was genuinely inhabited by the character rather than simply going through well-rehearsed motions. When it ended, the audience was noticeably quiet for a moment before the applause arrived, which always seems like the best sign.