Spices and Sarees
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2005
1
140
156
Trip End
Mar 01, 2006
Kumily, India
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
I forgot to do that to anyone on the actual day so I'm playing catch up now...
First thing in the morning after breakfast (which happened to be an identical version of the meal i had had the previous night, but called a different name...) we were taken out by jeep to a spice plantation.
We were guided around the spices and fruits and were able to roam around and take copious pictures of the workers and also pick our ownto take away with us. Their was planty of cardamon, which I have never seen growing before, black and green pepper, papaya, herbs, cloves and vanilla. I was quite shocked at one point, when after telling us how much an individual vanilla pod can fetch (about a quid) to see our guide wrenching half grown pods from the tree to show us, and picking the flowers - each pod takes about 11months to grow! Lets just hope the plantation owner didn't see eh?
After all that excitement (and believe me, I really enjoyed it!) we went for a stroll around town, ostensibly with the aim of finding a Lungi for Kit (a sarong which is worn by the men and tied in a particular way). We went into one fabric shop, and before I knew it we were learning how to tie a saree, and then I ended up buying not one, but THREE! I had intended to buy one, but three?? I'll have to do the housework in them or something, I can't see myself parading down Basingstoke high street in them thats for sure!
We had dinner at a weird little place out of town run by an american and his indian wife. we ordered 3 pizzas (despite the propaganda, that was pretty much all there was on the menu!) and the whole thing ended up taking three hours! 2.5 of that were just waiting. It was all a little more presssured as we had to get back to the saree shop for a late night fitting of the blouses that were being made for us. We made it though, only just!
