After a while, even an idyllic hideaway engenders a certain sense of claustrophobia. I always used to say that the only difference between exile (Napoleon exiled to Elba) and escapism (escaping to your own estate on Elba ) was the ability to purchase a ticket to get away and travel on to somewhere else. So while this feels somewhat like being exiled from civilisation (civilisation as we know it, Scotty) it is the luxury of sheer escapism. I sit here on my verandah with my laptop, listening to the birds in the trees and the river splashing in the valley below and it is truly idyllic; but after a while I want a bit of noise and bustle, or simply a change of scenery. So most guests here head off occasionally to the nearest large village or small town to buy a bar of soap or a bottle of shampoo.
My neighbours (the gentlemen from Holland and Iceland
In essence, Kartikullam (I think that’s right) is a street stretching over a couple of hundred metres, with shops each side opening onto a dusty road. Most of the shops fall into one of three basic categories: fabrics and tailoring, food and kitchen, and hardware, house and garden. The latter is – of course – not net curtains and patio furniture but more shower heads, spades and hoes, and these shops advertise their presence with mountains of multicoloured plastic buckets and bowls spilling over the pavement. I had hoped that somewhere on the main drag I would find some fabric for shirts and lounging trousers but I faced an immediate problem.
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| Typical shop in the High Street |
While all the haberdashers were well-stocked with “shirt lengths” of 2 metre pieces of fabric, there is a serious discrepancy between a shirt length to make a short-sleeved shirt for a small Indian and a shirt length to make a long-sleeved shirt for a large Englishman. 
The answer, of course, would be to buy 2 lengths of the same fabric, but in their search for maximum stock range, nearly all the shops had only one piece of each pattern or colour. In the end I found 2 lengths of the same fabric – sadly, a rather bland pattern, and a 4-metre length of genuine hand-loom, vegetable-dyed fabric that was guaranteed to fade over the years (don’t we all!)
The answer, of course, would be to buy 2 lengths of the same fabric, but in their search for maximum stock range, nearly all the shops had only one piece of each pattern or colour. In the end I found 2 lengths of the same fabric – sadly, a rather bland pattern, and a 4-metre length of genuine hand-loom, vegetable-dyed fabric that was guaranteed to fade over the years (don’t we all!)As I write this now on the verandah, 4 days after my first trip to town, and having made 2 further trips to collect my goods, (sorry, sir, seamstress will finish tomorrow,) I am now waiting for a salesman to arrive in the capacity of delivery boy, with my two new shirts. They probably won’t have been a great bargain at the end of the day, by the time I’ve taken 2 taxi fares into account, but they will carry a story and a host of memories. Where else would I have purchased hand-made gardening tools, a hand-printed hessian shopping bag and bars of medicated Ayurvedic soap?
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| Kerala jungle - elephants, tigers, the works! |
The road there and back goes through the nearest thing I’ve ever experienced to real jungle. Clumps of giant bamboo fallen in clusters then overgrown with creepers and populated with monkeys. Then plantations of coffee interspersed with pepper vines. Then there’s the wildlife, with elephants roaming at night towards the town so that the end of the main road is closed off with a barrier pole. Hence the title of today’s blog – the response to my question when I asked why the end of the main road was blocked off.
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| Coffee bushes in blossom |
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