Starting out on the cycling tour of Kerala, I had a nagging little question at the back of my mind: why is this coastal state in the south of India called ‘God’s Own Country’?
‘Because of its natural beauty,’ seemed the obvious answer to me. I’m in no mood to throw the geography book at you, but I’m sure many of the readers know about the Western Ghats or the Sahyadri (Benevolent) mountains that run along the length of Kerala and do the benevolent job of trapping the south-westerly monsoon winds blowing in from the Arabian Sea to cause heavy downpour for five to six months every year. Good rain coupled with coastal and hilly topography creates a fertile region, a biodiversity hotspot of flora and fauna, a verdant heaven of forests and backwaters – in short, God’s Own Country.
As good as this answer was, the guide of our Kerala cycling tour had something to add to it. The title God’s Own Country, he said, comes from mythology. Legend has it that Lord Parasuram, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, created Kerala by throwing his mighty axe in the sea, thereby conjuring the land meant exclusively for his devotees.
‘Pooh!’ said one of the cyclists on our Kerala biking trip. His name is Alex and he is an avowed atheist. The title God’s Own Country, according to Alex, is a clever tagline coined by the Kerala tourism board to attract the dollar-loaded backpackers on the holiday tours of South India. Alex is tall, slim, athletic, and apparently loaded with dollars. He carries the latest gizmos and wears his atheism on his sleeve.
His atheism was put to the test when the very first day of the Kerala holiday trip turned out to be a whirlwind tour of the religious places of the heritage town of Fort Kochi. We started off with St. Francis Church, a 16th-century monument where the Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama, who discovered the sea route from Europe to India, was initially buried before his remains were exhumed and shifted to Lisbon. We then moved to the Jewish Synagogue, which was built in 1568 by the Spanish-speaking Jews. The trip to Santa Cruz Basilica excited everyone but Alex, and by the time we got to the grounds of the Jain Temple, our atheist friend looked like he wanted nothing more than to cut and run. Luckily for him, things didn’t come to a head and he cheered up a lot on the next pit stop of our day tour of Kochi: the Dutch cemetery.
The Dutch, the Portuguese, the Brits, the Chinese, the Jews – they all have had something to do with Fort Kochi in the past. The Jews arrived here to escape persecution. The Chinese came down to trade. The Portuguese, Dutch and Brits landed here to rule – and rule they each did for very long time until Fort Kochi fell back into the hands of the natives during India’s Independence. Today, the town is a collage of overlapping cultures. The European influence is particularly strong in the architecture, arts and cuisine of Kochi. The pre-colonial Chinese fishing nets still face the waterfront and are a big draw among the tourists on Kerala holiday trip.
Our busy day in Kochi ended with a live performance of the traditional Kathakali dance, most of whose subtle nuances were lost on us, though we didn’t let it show. We nodded in appreciation when everyone else nodded. We clapped when others clapped. And we laughed when others laughed.
It was when we all mounted our cycles and hit the road to Thattekad on the second day of the Kerala cycling trip that pretense was shed and we returned to being who we were: bikers. We made light work of the first 30 km and scorched our way through paddy fields and coconut groves to reach Cherukunnam, a village with a network of canals spreading out in different directions.
Here, during our lunch at a roadside eatery, tucking into masala dosa and sipping filter coffee, our atheist friend Alex got talking excitedly about the birds we might get to see at Thattekad, our destination for the day and a prime birding hotspot of Kerala. Priming us up, he spoke of several birds that had tongue-twisting names like Stoliczka’s Bushchat, Ceylon Frogmouth, Large Billed Leaf Warbler, Drongo Cuckoo, and Kerala Laughing Thrush. But the bird he was most dying to see was the Great Hornbill, the state bird of Kerala.
Again, Alex’s patience was put to the test when we arrived at our lodge in Thattekad a little too late for a birding tour. We all had to sleep on it. But I doubt Alex got any sleep because he woke us up before sunrise and was already pacing about the lobby when we came down for our morning Kerala birding trip.
Not a moment to lose, guys!’ he chastised us and took on the role of the birding guide. Armed with a camera, a pair of binoculars, and a birding field guide, he pushed everyone deeper and deeper into the woods to find out the Great Hornbill, but to no avail. We saw a lot of birds with beautiful plumages, beaks, and tails, but not our atheist friend’s holy grail. Alex, however, wasn’t the one to give up. If not for the polite reminder that we had to get going with our Kerala biking expedition, he would have had us spend the entire day in the Thattekad forest, looking for the Great Hornbill.
Breakfast time, we returned to our lodge after what I would call a satisfying birding tour of Thattekad, but Alex’s eyes were still roving all over the place to sight his bird. We ate and then hit the road on our bikes and hadn’t ridden more than a few kilometres when we heard a loud shout from the rear of our Kerala cycling group.
‘It’s the Great Hornbill,’ Alex squealed joyously and pointed to a big bird in the high branches of trees. We all looked and the bird took flight, perhaps aware of too many human eyes on it.
‘Oh, no! It’s not the Great Hornbill. It’s just a Malabar Grey Hornbill,’ Alex squealed again, his smile scrunching up into a frown.
‘Worry not, sir,’ our Kerala biking tour guide said to Alex. ‘A hornbill is a hornbill. Grey or Great. Not much difference.’
We all had a good laugh at that and got going with our biking adventure of God’s Own Country, Kerala. The joy had only just begun.
