THE WAY DOWN SOUTH

Brown Owl would never have forgiven me for this lack of preparedness: I was in India with a pair of flip-flops as my only footwear.

Prakash leaned over the wheel of his ancient gold Ambassador cab as he negotiated a series of switchback turns through Kerala’s spindly rubber plantations and through coffee blossom country until we broke into tea-shrub territory. He assured me that it was “very recommendable” that we make a shoe shop our next stop.

 

“But I’ve climbed Himalayan foothills in sandals less robust than these!” I assured him.

Prakash shrugged, jauntily tooting his horn as he swerved out from behind a public bus. The beaten-tin bus crawled its wheezing way up the Western Ghats, Lush forests, cool highlands, colonial gems and peaceful backwaters lure Annie Dare to taste the relaxed pace of India’s southern states prow and stern brightly emblazoned with the immortal creed ‘prayer is power: time is money’ in curlicue fluorescent paints. Mists closed in ominously on Thekaddy in great cotton-wool swirlings; the atmosphere, and something in Prakash’s knowing laugh, made me capitulate.

Next morning, now properly shod in a shiny pair of 200-rupee Indian brand training shoes, I was ferried to the gates of Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. Clattering Indian holidaymakers flooded towards pleasure boats charging up and down the dam whose quenching waters were designed to draw parched elephants from the surrounding thickets of primary forest.

 Prakash zoomed off, smirking and pointing me towards the Wildlife Officers’ booth where I was handed two stiff sleeves of khaki resembling the cut-offs from a monk’s cassock. I was told to insert these between my shoe and sock, tying a big loopy bow above my knee. Feeling decidedly ridiculous, I was led to the water’s edge to hop aboard a bamboo raft. My guide Vinodh and I reached the opposite shore, ignoring the whoops emanating from the boats. I felt rather important as we headed through the wilds, every inch the David Attenborough – albeit in rather unattractive taupe socks.

Periyar is famous for its wildlife. While it would be disingenuous to offer high odds of seeing a tiger, a profusion of other animal life thrives here. Outsized butterflies as big as bats thudded their wings under the canopies of prehistoric jack and teak  trees, branches slung with heavy bee sacks; spiders’ webs of enormous proportions stretched across boughs; mynah birds and parakeets gossiped in the enormous boughs of ficus  trees; and the thud and thwack of leaves and twigs up above announced the arrival of a swooping gang of Nilgiri langur monkeys swinging along at the penthouse height of the forest. They paused to size up their human cousins – who were feeling distinctly unevolved at floor level in their comical socks.

With the excitement of tracking macaques, spotting glad-eye bush brown butterflies, wandering among trees with roots at headheight and peering at a tiger’s fresh pugmarks, I had plum forgotten about my socks until Vinodh pointed at them. They now boasted a thick, black trim – which was writhing and wriggling. For three hours leeches had been hopping from the forest floor onto my Indian sneakers, which – thank heavens – were proving impenetrable. Suddenly unable to lift my gaze above leech level, I danced along the rest of the forest trail, ducking the straining leech torsos, mindless of wandering elephants. Safely back in the village at Thekkady, I was hit by a peculiar urge to marry that wise man, Prakash.

Further into the mountains, swabs of cloud shifted and eddied across hillsides glistening with fresh rain. Springs burst through banks and streams surged across pathways where villagers, darkskinned tribal peoples in ski jackets and woolly hats, swung past on Enfield motorbikes on their way home from the tea plantations. I was heading to ‘snooty Ooty’, the Raj-era hill station where the Britishers of the Madras Presidency fled the brick-oven summer heat of the plains. The landscape was almost Alpine – I half expected to spot Julie Andrews lifting up her skirts to gallop, trilling, down the hills.

Ooty has changed a lot since the early 19th-century, when sahibs and memsahibs kept their upper lips stiff away from the summer heat. But even if the town itself has modernised, the surrounding hills still offer delightful walking and the chance to visit Toda villages. It’s been said that travelling is better than arriving; certainly, the ride up to Ooty on the miniature railway is a highlight of a visit.

Wildlife reserves and cool hill stations aren’t unique to South India, but one of the abiding natural treasures of the region is one-off – and reassuringly free from bloodsuckers or Von Trapp warblers: the slowflowing calm of the backwaters. Back at sea level around Alleppey, to the west of the Ghats, everything grows in profusion: lillies tangle on the river banks, dragonflies hang like black cloud carpets over the lotus leaves, and pot-bellied Keralan farmers shimmy up coconut trees to tap tangy sap, a bittersweet tipple called toddy.

I took to the water on a small local boat at dawn, as the mists drifted through canopies of mango and teak trees. Farmers stealthily steered their dugouts through the cool silent blue daybreak; geese, ducks and goats started to stir and wriggle along banks; plumes from breakfast fires floated out from the river banks; and smartly turned-out schoolchildren with vivid pink bows in their jet-black hair swung their way to class. You could sit in idle contemplation on the lush banks alongside villages for a lifetime, as rural life is played out before your eyes: coir-makers paddle past, boys practise for boat races, paddy fields rustle in the breeze – it’s like a slowmoving painting.

A short drive north took me through  a landscape of tapioca, cashew and coconut smallholdings to Fort Cochin, the charmingly ramshackle port city that was the first European possession in India. I discovered a town of sheer historic romanticism, where wizened traders sifted rice into tasting trays at the entrances of huge, derelict go-downs; I passed churches glowing lime-white, lit up by kitsch fairy lights; and reached the famous Jewish synagogue through a warren of medieval-style streets lined with antique bric-a-brac.

Come dusk, I watched cantilevered Chinese fishing nets swoop to scoop up a fresh catch of silvery sprats – perfect for supper, grilled at one of the nearby stalls. I sat munching under ancient trees as the Indian sun sank into the harbour’s waters, contemplating the ships ploughs out into the Arabian Sea, a reminder of the trade that’s continued since the heyday of Roman, Arab and Chinese commerce, and which has shaped South India for thousands of years.

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