India IV: Kumily

After a long and exhausting bus ride we reached the final stop on our India trip: the town of Kumily, located high up in the mountains of eastern Kerala. The region is known as the Cardamom Hills, which was a very fitting name.

Everywhere we went there was a faint and pleasant scent of cardamom in the air.

I assume this came from the numerous cardamom plantations scattered liberally throughout the area, and from the way people make their coffee there; with loads of sugar, milk and cardamom.
There was many other types of plantations though: tea, with fluffy and pillowy green tea bushes, spices, pepper.

And coffee.

And it probably goes without saying that we really wanted to see a coffee plantation. Being the coffee nerds that we are it was great to see where our daily crack cup of joe comes from.

We also got to ride and wash an elephant. And we went to a wild life reserve hoping to see tigers, or any wild animals, but all we got to see was some very cheeky monkeys that tried to steal our ice cream. They did not succeed.

We very much liked Kumily.

And then it was time to go home. We ended up having a great time in India- the initial culture shock quickly turned into a real appreciation of India's vibrant colourfulness and slight craziness.

Namaste, India.

Coffee berries, with the green beans inside.

We also went to a hulling mill, where the beans where hulled, dried and roasted. It was a lot of fun to watch the process.

I can't honestly say that the coffee tasted that good- the beans weren't very high quality and they were roasted very dark, almost to the point of burning. We still bought some beans to take home though.

These ladies were working in a warehouse full of cardamom sorting the pods by size. It smelled amazing in there.

Cocoa beans and rice

Bees are an essential part of running a plantation, as they are required for pollinating the plants.

The wildlife reserve.

That's right. No one gets between me and my ice cream.