Kerala Wayanad home stay Pranavam

When putting my flip flops on by the door, I looked up at the big photo of Mahatma Ghandi on the wall in the living room which caught my eye already when I first entered before dinner. ”We worship Mahatma Ghandi. Like Nelson Mandela, they were very holy people.” Rema answered as if she heard my thoughts.

we wereAfterwards when singing, a 3 cm grasshopper landed on my butt when taking a shower in the morning. When I shared the experience with the others in our group, I got a funny reply. ”n Kerala grasshoppers are a sign of prosperity.” Well, let’s see, I told myself …

We shared breakfast with the family again. First, I ate some raw small bananas, and then tasted long cooked bananas which can be found only in Southern India. And for the first time I tried raw jack fruit (not so easy to spit all the seeds inside but the taste makes it worth it) and white pancakes vellappa (vella means white.)

We were supposed to visit the indigenous tribes but unfortunately, it was a day of strike which meant no private vehicles on the roads 6 am to 6 pm. Meant just one thing, free time! ? I had a lot of work to do on my laptop but the wifi was not working so I decided to join the girls when Anwer offered us a plantation walk around Pranavam.

During an easy walk (I was wearing just flip flops), Anwer taught us the basic information about some plants grown there.

We saw and learned:

• Touch-me-not plants I knew from Costa Rica already – they close the leaves once you touch them, and are applied as a paste for cuts and bruises to heal them.
• In the morning we can hear cicadas and at night crickets.
• The best time for bird watching is at 6.30 or 7 am.
• The white coffee flowers only stay open for 3 to 5 days and then the flowers dry up, fall off and the following 6 to 8 months the coffee beans grow. And when they turn from green to red, they can harvest them. These coffee plants at Pranavam are 35 to 40 years old. They always look the same as they keep them cutting to the same height – the coffee trees are always kept 8 to 10 feet tall so people can get the beans when standing, so they never have to climb up the trees. The way to harvest them is to put a big sack on the ground, pick them and let them fall in the bag. To harvest 1 kg of coffee beans, the picker gets paid 3 to 5 rupees. One person can harvest around 200 to 250 kg per day. To dry coffee beans it takes 6 to 8 days. Harvesting only takes place in December and January, sometimes even in February. Then after drying the beans turn black (still with the skin.) Then they remove the skin and only the beans are roasted so they turn black.
• We saw both Robusta and Arabica coffee – their leaves and shape of plant are different.Anwer also explained us abut other kinds of coffee.
• Civetkat coffee only the best beans from the plants so the outer skin is very sweet but beans very bitter. Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world grown in Malaysia, not as much in India, though. More than 100,000 rupees per 1 kg of this cat poop coffee. It’s a night cat eating it and its poop is collected. This cat has the capacity to eat just the best beans but it’s difficult to collect them then all around the plantation.
• Wild jack is possible to eat. It looks like a small jack fruit but difficult to collect as it grows very high in the trees.
• One jack fruit can weigh more than 30 kg. It is the biggest fruit in the world, indeed.
• Out of known 15 varieties of bamboos, we saw 3. I had no idea some of them have rice! Bamboo sticks get rice every 40 to 50 years. We saw the elephant bamboo which is tall but not thick. Rice grows high on top of the bamboo which makes it dangerous to harvest. So it is not people but rats that collect the rice. The rats bite rice and then store them in their holes so people steal rice from rat holes close to bamboos. It costs around 250 to 300 rupees per 1 kg of bamboo rice because it is not seasonal. It tastes a bit different but has the same use as normal rice. Normal rice costs from 20 rupees up per 1 kg.
• Reed bamboo is not so tall and its used for tribal hats and flute musical instruments. It works as natural air conditioning when walls are made form it. Nature is so powerful!
• One kind of bamboo is called ladder bamboo. You have to cut it when it is green, then put weight on it for one year to make it straight and dry when it becomes less heavy. It turns from green to black when drying up. White marks on the bamboo mean it is mature. We saw a man collecting cloves up in the tree and he got up there using the ladder bamboo.
• Cardamon grows in shade and at the bottom of plantation where it gets plenty of water. Cardamon is called the Queen of spices.
• King of spices is pepper. It was used as money to buy stuff in old times and thus known as black gold.
• Bitter leaves and bitter nut and lime and tobacco is chewn for five minutes.
• We saw holes of yellow crabs. People used to (and some still do) eat these crabs but they disappear very fast when they see any movement. The trick is to insert a coconut leaf inside the hole, the crab holds into it and then it is cooked to be eaten.
• From the thick plantation we walked to the edge of an empty already harvested paddy field. I remembered what our guide Manoj told us already on the bus two days ago ”Wayanad means land of paddy fields. But nowadays very few people still cultivate rice in the area.”
• Huge shacks are used for roofs, cows to eat and to put fruit on it to dry up faster.Cat’s tail is the pink tail plant growing on a small tree. Just for decoration, looks really cool. Tropical soda apple plant with thorns has small yellow fruits which are good for pain relief. Spanish needle plant that sticks to your clothes when you throw it.
• Cupils shaving brush is the feed of wild rabbits -it has small orange flowers. Many wild rabbits in here around eat it.
• Sleeping hibiscus is a sort of hibiscus that never opens up it flowers.
• Very tall fishtail palm with leaves eaten by domestic elephants.
• Other trees we saw were custard apple, sugarnut, cinnamon, two types of basil, thyme, turmeric and ginger. Also sunpeper – rough leaf to clean furniture, two types of cocoa plants – green turns to yellow and brown turns to hard reddish colour. Precious sandal wood is used for oils and smelling sticks.

Once the plantation walk was over, we ended at the beautiful house Rema wanted to show us earlier. The ancestors’ house is more than 200 years old and Rema’s brother, the local Chairman of Congress in Wayanad with his wife live there nowadays.

Rema was not born here but in Chenai where her father was a doctor. Then she grew up here. I could not get enough of the smell of so many spices all around the house. I was surprised by how fresh and cold it was inside the house, you could not feel the heat at all. After the walk, we were dying of thirst.

The sweet family offered us pink water called karingali vellam which is water boiled with karingali bark, sometimes basil as well and so good for digestion before meals; also diuretic.

We could also try the speciality of the house – medicinal coffee with ginger, onion, black tulsi, pepper, coriander, garlic, cumin and jaggery to clear throat. When the water is boiling then you put the grounded spices and jaggery. At first I said no as I don’t drink coffee but then I gave it a go. Wow, so tasty! No taste of coffee at all. I could only taste all the spices and onion.

Afterwards, Rema was kind enough to take us upstairs to their little family Shrine.

”You know, it was mostly just Brahmins who could enter temples in Kerala. But we belong to Naia so we built this shrine here for us.”