Kerala Vacations

The Glamour of Travel!

We often get looks of envy when people find out what we do. The long hours in front of a computer recede in the light of our total of five weeks in India or other destinations per year, testing hotels sounding like a
glamorous way to spend your holiday time. It has its moments, but I came across my notebook the other day and was reminded of a recent trip:
Get up 7am and drive to airport, queue for 2 hours. Spend 14 hours on flight and land at 4am GMT- note to self, check Indian time. Queue for an hour and a half at immigration and to get bags- lovely to see Mathew!
Drive to Cochin and go for walk whilst waiting for the rest of the party to arrive, then go sightseeing. Back to
hotel at 5pm. (12.30 GMT) Go for coffee- no-one else wants to eat as they ate on plane. I don't eat when flying. Then out to dinner for business meeting, get to eat at 9pm, (4pm GMT) first food for 20 hours, apart from emergency biscuit bar.
Have now been awake for 29 hours and am beginning to halucinate, as usual, hear strange music and see people who are not there. However, not too fuddled to spot the way the "magician" in the restaurant was palming coins.
Bed at 11pm. It now seems as though several days have passed- a good way to extend one's holiday.
Up early to drive to mountains- takes 9 hours because of stops for breakfast, snacks, forays into rubber and spice plantations- mandatory when being driven by Mathew, who wants you to see everything. Have business meeting and dinner at 9pm. Fall under mosquito nets in gruesome homestay- the result of some plea-bargaining somewhere along the line after a vehicle theft, as rooms owned by local police inspector.
Up very early for boat trip... and so it goes on!
Trips like these allow us to persuade clients not to do the same thing. Arriving in India in the early morning
allows you to chill out in a hotel not too far from the airport and adjust to local time, the heat and the
bustle, have a short dose of culture-shock, if it is the first time in India, and then go on your way refreshed
and ready to enjoy the sensory feast.

Rubbish!

Anyone travelling to the Western Ghats is probably amused by the notices which pepper the highways and towns exhorting people to behave in various ways; my favourite is a road safety message which reads "Impatient - Inpatient!" Pithy! In the usual Indian way, the spelling often approaches the bizzarre. We would probably do worse if we were writing in Malayalam, but startling spellings sometimes occur and not only on menus. Hurricane Lambs gave me a momentary vision of the poor creatures shivering in the cold. One which everyone spells correctly, and which is repeated at every turn is "Say no to plastic!"
This seems to embody a typical mind set, blame the plastic, not the litter which gathers in every crevice, reinforcing the idea that India is a dirty place through its ubiquity and refusal to vanish in the rains. Every verge, public space, field edge and area where there are people, that is nearly everywhere you go, is festooned with the stuff. Logic would say blame the people for throwing litter everywhere, but without the bins and regular rubbish collection we have at home an alternative will need a great deal of infrastructure and education to build. Not so long ago you threw your rubbish over your wall and a passing cow or goat would remove it and turn it nicely into fuel or fertiliser. Now the plastic damages the poor creatures, so the logic would appear to be to take the plastic from the rubbish.
Pausing a while to read and think about the message makes me frustrated. There are effective attempts to recycle plastic water bottles in some places- a literal life-line where clean water is not available- and rubbish collection in towns is improving fast. I wonder how many people pause to think where they would be without plastic, the plastic water pipes, the blue plastic sheets which form a large amount of poor housing, the light plastic water containers which make trips to the well daily. "Say no to plastic", rather than "say no to litter" might remind people not to discard their rubbish all over the place, but it obviously doesn't have any effect whatsoever!

Happy New Year!

It has been quite an interesting year at Keralavacations. From frantic inactivity, deciding how to cope with the turndown and difficult financial times, to the frantic activity we sometimes experience at this time of the year, the year has given us an opportunity to reflect on how we position ourselves in an increasingly competitive market.

What have been the high spots? The feedback we have received from our clients telling us what a great time they have had whilst travelling with us. The low spots? The difficult market conditions in the first part of the year made it a bit of a bumpy ride sometimes. However we are moving into the new year with a stronger client base and the confidence that we are emerging as a really significant player in this market sector.

In India we have a new driver, the houseboat goes from strength to strength and our continental customers are providing everyone with interesting language challenges.

Some of our concusions when thinking about the last year have been reassuring. We are clear what our market is and where our strengths and weaknesses lie. The strengths we can build on and the weaknesses can be tackled. We are still determined to offer our clients the highest levels of service and care we can. This, coupled with our experience of South India and the changes it is going through, make us confident that we are well-fitted to go ahead growing the business and company through the coming year.

We should like to send all of our friends and clients, current, past and prospective a very happy and prosperous New Year and Happy Travelling!

Discovering Chettinad

Discovering Chettinad

Once again we visited Visalam, CGH Earth's hotel in Kanadukaithan, near Karaikuddi in Chettinad. This is fast becoming my favourite hotel in the whole of India, not only because of the huge, sparkling rooms, large pool, frie

ndly service and passion for good food, but because the management of Mr Jonny is truly inspirational. If you want something, they will do their best to provide it, and even arrange a surprise. One of the nights we stayed was my birthday and I was presented with a cake, complete with a candle, and a  rendition of "Happy Birthday" by staff who looked as though they were performing in the West End in terms of their seriousness and desire to get it all right. The extra surprise came when Mr Jonny called and sang Happy Birthday to me over the telephone, all co-ordinated by Ramu, the under-manager. This was not a put-up job. The reception staff had seen my date of birth in my passport and it was all done without giving my partner any clue.

A bicycle ride around the village reminded us that this is indeed a land of rare treasures.
Ramu took us to see his family home and we were awed by the richness of the carving, all the pillars round the atrium being carved Burmese teak. There are over 30,000 palaces remaining in Chettinad, most of them in dire need of renovation and preservation. A similar building in another village is being converted into another CGH Hotel, with the usual care and attention to detail. The famous egg-white plaster will take 18 months to complete. 
Chettinad is only beginning to reveal itself as a fascinating and beautiful area. The landscape is flat, and  what looked barren last April was now under water as the rains begin.
The most beguiling part of the journey was the discovery of a very old temple at the end of a long avenue of terracotta figures, put there by worshippers for the protection of their village. Anywhere else and this would have been a major tourist attraction. Here it was simply part of the village, and it was the villagers who showed us round, a small child appearing at the right moment to translate for us. We barely had enough small change to give everyone their share! The journey to the temple was through a traditional village where the ancient buildings, chicken coops and granaries begged for us to stop and find out how it all worked. Alas, we had to move on. We are sure that we will be sharing this experience with customers very soon as Chettinad develops.

Cochin Airport- Update

The International Terminal  at Cochin Airport has reincarnated itself into a modern facility a far cry from the
old area, with its upholstered chairs, one coffee stall and a meagre duty-free section. Some of the tatty chairs remain, but the new, expanded terminal with its increased number of gates, is clean and bright and the plastic chairs are actually comfortable. The duty-free and gift shop are now adequate, and there are a number of places to buy a drink or snack. There are still no restaurant facilities, but a least it is possible to survive flight
delays without hunger pangs!
The toilets have not undergone the same upgrade, the gents being still unpleasant and wet, but the ladies is
spotless.
After only four years the exterior of the building is beginning to degrade and Cochin still has the feel of a
very small local airport rather than an international terminal. There are still few direct flights, most international flights originating from the gulf states, but given the overstaffed and paper-based nature of security it is generally a pain-free experience.

The benefits, or otherwise, of tourism

Ramakrishnan Korakandy writes in "The State of the Environment in Kerala: What Price the Development Model?":
"Kerala has achieved remarkable progress in the fields of health, literacy, housing, etc, and earned worldwide praise for the quality of life of its people. It is now considered a model for people in other parts of the world to follow. The pattern of development achieved by Kerala has been christened the 'Kerala model' of development in certain academic circles. Kerala's achievements have been attributed to progressive policies adopted by successive state governments. The state is now poised for a quantum leap in its accomplishments with greater involvement of the common people through what is now called as the people's campaign for the ninth plan. It has identified sectors like tourism, aquaculture, power production and software production as priority areas for people's participation."
On brief trips to Kerala one only gets an impression of what is happening, and what one sees is both good and bad. Tourism development appears to be well-regulated, for instance in the way that the beach zoning laws, brought in after the Tsunami of 2004 are preventing the beachfront from becoming a concrete canyon. Homestays are everywhere, and there is a lack of large, international resorts serving both the domestic and international mass tourism market, as demonstrated by the near-impossibility of finding a room over Christmas if it is not booked months in advance. Local people are benefiting from tourism in a way that is not happening in other countries, in that the larger resorts are not isolated behind high walls and that if you have the money, as many people who have worked in the Gulf States have, you can join the expansion and rent out one or two rooms with an infrastructure there to make it happen. Some hotels have a positive policy to buy locally, work with rural communities to develop education, employment and health care.

Whether tourism has been the engine for generating economic growth on the scale envisaged is doubtful, and it inevitably has its price. Policies to preserve forest environments and the fragile ecosystems of the coastal areas often fall prey to expediency, and sometimes corruption.

However, we can see where improvements are being made. The houseboats on the backwaters are more tightly regulated, some illegal resorts in Munnar have been demolished to make the point, and although Thekkaddy is growing like a mushroom, the forest boundaries are respected.

Sometimes we are asked to provide eco-holidays for clients who are aware of the dangers of mass tourism to sensitive areas, but understand that there are benefits to both sides of the experience of travel. We have met many committed people in the South of India who know that if the environment and culture are destroyed the tourists will go elsewhere and that a balance has to be found both for locals and visitors.

See also http://web.centre.edu/lorihm/sreekumar.pdf

About our latest visit to Kerala

We are just returned from a flying visit to Kerala, where our feet don't seem to have hit the ground! We have visited some familiar hotels, looked at some new ones and updated ourselves on what is happening out there.

Overseas visitors to Kerala have dropped by 20% over the last year, although domestic tourism is strong. This means that, other than during the peak season, when every hotel room is now taken, there may be good deals to be had.

Our itinerary on this trip was an interesting one. We started in Cochin, went up to Periyar, across to Madurai and then to Chettinad. We had to retrace our journey to Madurai before going back to Kerala at Munnar, to the backwaters and then to Cochin. On the way we took in some new routes, the drive from Madurai to Munnar being spectacular, up a sheer cliff 2,000 meters high, fortunately on a good road without too much traffic. This road is not for the nervous. This is the new National Highway from Cochin to Madurai, and although narrow, is tarmac on the Tamil Nadu side. There have been improvements on the roads, but they are still difficult in places. A repeat visit to Chettinad revealed new and fascinating aspects of this area.

On the way back we had a brief stop in Dubai, where the recession is biting. This does not seem to be making much difference to the average tourist, and, apart from the culture shock of travelling from the chaos and colour of India to the clean, organised roads of the UAE, it remains a great place to enjoy the beach and shop till you drop. A two-centre break gives you the best of both worlds.

Picking up the pieces!

We are getting enquiries from clients whose tours booked with other companies are being cancelled, sometimes at short notice, with increasing frequency. In a difficult market during difficult times this is not surprising, but sometimes we find disturbing indications that some tour operators are not as experienced in arranging trips to India as we would hope.
I think it was Mark Twain who said the "a tourist is someone who sees everything and looks at nothing", and with some of the itineraries we have looked at, it would not be possible to look at anything! A recent enquiry came from a potential client whose holiday with an adventure travel company had been cancelled after the flights were booked, as they no longer offered that tour. I suspect that if they had tried it, they would not have offered it in the first place! In 17 days the poor customer covered many miles, most days involving hours of driving with brief stops at some of the most important sites across South India. The highlight was the night spent at Hampi, as after an 8 hour drive from Bangalore, the customer was whisked off the next day for another 8 hour drive to Goa. Presumably the visit to the World Heritage Site took place at night. The tour finished on the beach at Goa, where the exhausted traveller could finally get some sleep! 'Adventure' travel is a specific market, and these trips do often involve some discomfort and long journeys, but this tour was, in our opinion, not viable.
It makes us angry on behalf of the customer who books the trip in good faith and is then put at risk or has a perfectly miserable time, often unprepared for the heat and condition of the roads. We try to offer equivalent alternatives, but having been promised an itinerary customers are often reluctant to believe that it is not advisable to try it. In those cases, we lose the customer, but we would rather do that than torture them and our drivers.

Boat safety

A recent tragic accident on a wildlife reserve lake did not make the national press in England, but it will have repercussions for all travelling to Kerala. A boat, run by the government, overturned with the loss of about 50 people, most of whom were on the lower deck. It is not clear what caused the accident, and the true story will be hard to come by, but we do know that health and safety precautions are not taken as seriously as they could be where large numbers of people are concerned. We wait to see what extra measures will be put into place to prevent an accident like this happening again, but it is not the first time that a tourist boat has sunk.

Over the last year safety measures on the houseboats have been tightened considerably, but there is no requirement for the crew to be trained for emergencies. This is partly why we run our own boat. In general the safety record of houseboats has been good, but passengers have been lost, usually drunk and falling overboard at night. We make sure that our boat is fully equipped for emrgencies and well maintained and are happy that it is as safe as any boat which spends its time with passengers on board overnight as well as during the day can be. Water can be dangerous, and it is also up to our clients to make sure that they take care of themselves and especially their children. Any concerns should be reported immediately for the well-being of everyone.

News for Autumn 2009

There is some good news for travellers to Kerala this Autumn, in that the hotels are extending their low and medium rate seasons. This will mean that travel in November and March will be cheaper than in the past.
There are some indicators that hotels are being more realistic in their pricing, many pegging their rates at last year's prices.
As far as we are concerned, the news is exciting! The houseboat has been very successful and we hope to build on this with the changes which were made when it was overhauled to make cruises even more comfortable. Recent feedback has been very good.
Saving the best until last, the company in Cochin has signed a lease on a very small resort in the backwaters, an ideal place to hide away and relax. The building is not quite ready yet - the rain has been unremitting this year- but we hope to open in October, ready for the dry, pleasant season. Combining a few days at the resort with a cruise on the boat is a wonderful way to get the most out of the backwaters.
Until we open, it is all systems go!