Trip to High ranges of Kerala

Kerala is one of the most beautiful places of the earth.It has very long beaches in one side with arabian sea,lots of rivers and lakes flowing down from eastern high ranges to arabian sea and greenery all around.

I have travelled several times earlier to high ranges of Kerala with almost breathtaking beauty of nature all around when I built a house at Nedumgandom near Munnar, a hill station in Kerala.I could not take pictures at that time.That was about five years back when I designed and built a house for a planter Mr.Samuel George at Nedumgandom.At that time I used to take up only Cochin based construction projects.One of the reason for agreeing to take up construction at Nedumgandom was the opportunity to see and experience nature and life at high ranges of Kerala .

Mr.George had about ten acres of plantation with crops of cardomom,pepper and coffee.Seeing cardomom trees growing up ,being nurtured with water,manure and pesticides was quite amusing.Amount of venomous pesticides they were using for cardomom must be making the entire area unhealthy as they simply spray pesticides into the air when trying to kill pesticides partly they are also poisoning inhabitants of the land.

Obviously Mr.George will not even taste cardomom he planted.Once when he came to our Cochin office,we gave him tea with cardomom in it.After taking a gulp of the tea his face showed irritation.He simply freed his mouth from every bit of that tea laced with cardomom and asked for tea without cardomom.At that time price of cardomom was not attractive and he used to lament about it all the time and pray for rains during summer as cardomom trees need wetness all the time.Now price of cardomom has gone up to attractive levels

This time I have gone to see proposed site for construction of house for Mr.Antony at Kattappana in Idukky district.This entire area is famous for cultivation of spices like cardomom,coffee,tea and pepper.You can enjoy the beauty of hilly terrain with thick greenery all around and see plantations of all these spices tucked in the forest area,thickly populated with adventurous people of Kerala.

I have taken several pictures of the nature in this area along with pictures of Idukki Hydro electric project dam and penstock tunnels of another such project.Obviously being an architect I have taken pictures of few good looking houses also.You can see those pictures here.I have purchased few ripe long bananas typically of Kerala called Ethakkai from a place near Kattappana where the best variety is planted

The roads are going by the sides of big hills and hence naturally the driver of the vehicle will have to be very careful while negotiating the way up from the plain land from where I started my journey.Unlike Ootty,these roads are not well kept and maintained thanks to typical lazy nature of Keralites.Public transport buses are driven in a careless rash manner by the drivers.In Ootty,they go through the hilly terrain with much lower speed and with lot more care