Mama Seetha

Our 2 night stay in Wayanad, at Enteveedu, a lovely homestay run by Seetha and her husband who is a local landowner/grower of coffee, betel nut, ginger, pepper and formerly rubber and vanilla, was truly idyllic.  Craig started to describe how terrifying (and fun) our bus ride up the coast to this mountainy area was, with a busdriver who maniacally passed everyone on our road and stopped only milliseconds in each of the many small towns we came through, to discharge and take on local passengers. (This reminds me a lot of  theHarry Potter "Night Bus")  At the end of the ride we were in one of the main towns in Wayanad which is an area settled for many thousands of years but isolated due to having hill tribes keep control of it. now they are in the minority and it's a lovely rolling countryside full of small farm holdings, small country homes, and small towns, with lots of variety - granite domes that we'd call half dome and they call elephant rock, areas of preserved forests with wild elephants, working elephants, deer, bison and apparently tigers, rice paddies, rubber plantations, ginger fields and palm groves. there are elements of history that you wouldn't believe -- 'caves' which are really giant rock formations you can climb up into and through, which have ancient carvings from 5000 bc, and old Jain temples which are mystical, based on the 'square in the square', were an alternative to hinduism that was anti-caste, and have beautiful carvings. Somehow they made me think of masonic temples. and there is a history here of muslim sultans battling hindu rajas. and then probably english planters but they are long gone.

during our stay here, we had a great time because of both Seetha, and her guests.  She is a lovely tall lady with great presence and she made this homestay because about 5 years ago, the coffee and other crop markets completely tanked, her children were grown and she thought she could start the tourism business but only if she catered to families with kids. so the broad paved areas which surround her lovely house, which is way out in the country, these areas that were used to dry coffee and pepper, got little gardens and an outdoor firepit and have tricycles and kids toys. and some of her current visitors were 3 young professional couples traveling up from bangelore and chennai with kids. they were SO friendly.  Seetha's house has about six places to just sit and chill out, hanging swings, hammocks and coffee areas. you drink cofee they grow or tea that grows nearby and eat delicious food.  In the mornings she finds you a driver if you need one, to drive you an hour over to one of the two nearby wilderness preserves, where you go on jeep trips to see animals (though it's the wet season now and the wild elephants were not choosing to show themselves). there are lots of waterfalls to hike to, wet islands to hike on, caves to climb up to.  we had fun.

unfortunately we got an achy breaky stomach flu, really nasty fatigue and achiness, (which looking back on things we probably got from our nighttime visit 2 nights before to the country toddy shop which was a little dicey on the cleanness of the glassware and goods) and so we spent one afternoon down for the count. but our room was a great one. most of her rooms are normal ones but two are rooms with normal walls but the ceiling just bamboo, with enough openness to the outside world that all night long you could hear the lovely sounds of the woods, crickets and so forth, and hear birds in the morning.

Seetha took such great care of us when we were sick with tender concern, we rechristened her in our minds, 'mamacita' which is the tender term mexicans use for their moms (and for lovely little girls too).

The morning we left, her husband took us on this WONDERFUL walk showing us all the things they grow, and his brother still works with rubber so we helped press out some rubber sheets, and then in the woods we happened on an elephant hauling logs out to the one lane country road they live on, and we followed here into the woods to see her mahouts guide her in her work. Fabulous! and then, he showed us a truly lovely Jain temple in near ruins, very cool (we had seen a lovely still working one the day before but this one, with its tumbledown status, was extremely captivating), and took us to the local hindu temple which is a Ganesh temple and the priest gave us all a little blessing, before we went on to see his coffee plantations.

He told us that in the jackfruit season, actually their very own wild elephant makes a beeline to their property and at times, people have come back from not seeing wild elephants in the preserve and 3 have been active at the house.

then Friday morning, recovered, we went off to Mysore, were driven by the really nice driver she hired for us, Shidu, gently down through the forest preserve (again no more wild elephants, but there are really beautiful trees - HUGE clumps of bamboos, I mean really huge, like giant oaks or something, tall and feathery, and other trees, and monkeys) and then through some type of grain fields where the grain is spread on the highway for us drivers to help grind it to flour, then an open area still green but with a pattern of fields and windbreaks and cactus dividing fields and wide wide open valleys that made me think of the main Mexico plateau, and then into an area with sugar cane fields and very temperate plants and trees and then to Mysore.