Wayanad, Kerela – Travelling Cooks

The drive to this hill station was very long. It also didn’t help that our taxi driver wasn’t patient as soon as we hit traffic, so we think he took us on an even longer route to not sit in traffic but the roads were so windy we ended up feeling a tad unwell when we arrived late that evening.

Our Christmas plans had deviated slightly from the original itinerary. Following our fantastic time at Naddi hill station, we had high expectations for Wayanad. My family were very generous with our Christmas present, gifting us the accommodation for our stay in Wayanad, meaning we could upgrade our originally booked accommodation.

On the first full day in Wayanad we literally just rested and didn’t do that much. We still needed laundry doing but the hotel were charging a small fortune so we looked for other launderettes close-by but ended up stumbling upon one of many chocolate shops where we found chocolate almonds for a decent price, so we bought a pack to enjoy – no luck on the laundry though so it was back to hand-washing.

On Christmas Eve, we decided to go for a run around Pookode Lake. The only problem was the park was very busy with locals who were also on their holidays. We then realised you had to pay an entrance fee to the lake which we were quite taken aback for – all we wanted to do was go for a run in the great outdoors! At the lake, you could hire pedal boats, so we did that for half an hour (we wanted to make the most of our entrance fee) and then started our run. This run was meant to be my first interval run – James paced me, and golly gosh it was a hard one. One of the local young boys, probably about eight years old, challenged James to a race around the lake. James politely declined as we had just done an 8km. I always like it when locals make an effort with us so part of me wanted to engage with this boy, so I nearly said yes until James pointed out he is only asking us because he knew he could win; this changed my mind quite quickly.

We then found out that the hotel had a gym, so we started to make use of that. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the area. It was difficult to get around anywhere, even on foot, as the driving was even wilder than normal, with multiple overtakes, additional makeshift lanes from people continually overtaking, and no pavements.

The hotel mentioned there would be a small party in the evening to celebrate Christmas Eve – Santa was wearing a face mask as well as the usual attire of a hat and beard. They also had a bonfire which was lit using petrol, and then fireworks adjacent to it – it resembled a mini Diwali but with Christmas music blaring out. The hotel manager invited us to Christmas midnight mass at 10pm and gave us a lift to the local church just down the road. We were the only foreigners and couldn’t understand the sermon but we felt very welcome. The men and women seemed to sit separately so James and I departed ways for what ended up being two hours; some people chose to sit on the seats at the front, while others sat at the back behind the chairs. Mass finished just after midnight and concluded with some of the young men doing a drumming performance and singing Christmas music. It was very entertaining. There was also cake and coffee provided.

On Christmas Day, we took turns to use the treadmill in the gym. We checked with the hotel staff what would be open, and they said everything, including one of the tea plantations and its factory. The hotel organised a tuk-tuk to take us there, but when we got there there was a sign saying it was closed as it was Christmas. We made do with what was available in the area, which was the tea museum – it was pretty interesting, and it had a little activity park attached to it, so we went and did some kayaking. However, the person we hired the kayak from didn’t want us to go that far, so we had to do quite a few laps of the same small section – perhaps it was because he didn’t want us going out of sight in case we couldn’t swim..? We got the tuk-tuk to take us back to a restaurant, as by this point, we were very hungry. This was where we had our Indian Christmas meal.

On Boxing Day, we moved to another accommodation about 30 minutes away. Here, we were completely out of the hustle and bustle of Wayanad. We were at the top of a hill with no noise or people at all. We were staying at a homestay which was based in/around their coffee plantations so we explored those a few afternoons. It was run by very kind people; they even let us use their washing machine and detergent to clean our clothes. Once we were all checked in, we decided to head down to the town to get some lunch – it was about an hour’s walk downhill. We wandered the high street and found a little burger place to eat at, then picked up some bananas and more chocolate almonds before messaging the host to help arrange a tuk-tuk to collect us.

As the homestay was so far out of the way, the hosts would give us takeaway menus and help us order. So, for the entirety of our stay, we had takeaways for dinner, but some of them were so tasty – my favourite was the mango vegetable curry.

A few mornings, we managed to get in some runs. It involved running down the hill to some flatter areas, and then we would walk back up the big hill. We made sure to bring enough money for a post run cold bottle of water, sometimes we would go all out and get a Mirinda (the Indian version of Fanta).

We had such a lovely spacious room we decided to kick start the end of the year with starting some Pilates. So we tried to start this habit with the help of some YouTube videos.

We’d been wanting to get massages for a little while, but each place that is highly rated on Google Maps has never seemed like somewhere we wanted to go into. We thought we would check out another, but this was also a no-go. We came across this fairly large supermarket while in town, so we phoned up our hosts who agreed for us to use their kitchen. Our first self-cooked dinner in 2 months was an aubergine and tomato pasta. Whilst we were cooking, we felt as if we were being supervised, and they also really wanted to help us with the cooking. At some points, they were taking the knives out of our hands to chop the vegetables. It wasn’t the best pasta we’ve cooked in our lives, but it was a fairly good outcome considering.

We purposely made a bit too much pasta so we could re-use some of the previous nights takeaway containers to make a packed lunch for our 8-hour car journey to Kochi. Yes, another private driver! – After we worked out how much it would cost to get a driver to the closest train station, it was only £20 more to go the entire way to Kochi, and was a lot less hassle and time for us. We did feel like we were cheating, but also, we wanted to be in good form as we were meeting Sam and Dan in Kochi.

India