Friday 28 February 2014

Kerala Trip - Part 3


Thankfully the entire week did not involve camp-fire cooking and instant noodles. Since we weren't too far from a small village we started walking the short distance mainly for meals. The closest place for tea and breakfast was Pushpa Chechi's hut. We were there before the idlis were ready and mostly amused ourselves each day watching a mother hen and her brood clucking about busily. Some of those chicks were really feather-brained! If they had disappeared a family of goats entertained us with two frisky young ones and a bunch of beligerent billies.
Sleeping in the outdoors we were waking up pretty early and we were starving by seven. Idlis got ready around 8 and we were all there, ready and waiting each day to gobble them up. Workers from the fields and quarries near-by would steadily come in ones and twos and it was a busy place. Idlis were served with a delicious idli-podi and a watery coconut chutney.

A short walk from the tea shop - probably a kilometer from the farm in total - was the chuliyar dam. This became our favourite sunset hang-out spot once we discovered it on the second day. You could see only the edge of the waterbody if you sat on the doorstep of Pushpa Chechi's hut but if you walked to the dam and went down to the water it was quite a large serene expanse of fresh-water with a lot of birds. Some villagers would fish in coracles in the evening and some people would come to bathe and wash their clothes. This sketch done now is the low water line. All this and the rock I sat on would be under water in the monsoon.

4 comments:

  1. From your comments it looks as though Chuliyar Dam may be a nice palce to visit soon after the monsoon. Your sketches are lovely and the variety of subjects that you have covered is really nice.

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  2. Thanks so much for always visiting and leaving such nice comments :) Its certainly worth a visit in the monsoon. I hope I can do that soon.

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  3. Hey KB, lovely sketvhes ...absolutely inspiring to move - - - and start sketching...

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  4. Thanks lakshmi! you should! it all comes back quite quickly. join me one of these weekends.

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