On a weekend when most of our group headed off for the delights of Anjuna, a hangout for old hippies & young clubbers, where there's a huge market, we took a day trip to a spice garden with Jane/Sukia & Mira.
It was wonderfully peaceful.
We were greeted with a welcoming cup of ginger & lemongrass tea, not to mention a red bindi in the middle of our foreheads, before being taken on a fascinating & informative tour. There was an abundance of plantlife :- pineapples, peppercorns, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmegs, ginger, turmeric, cumin, aloe vera, sugar cane, lemongrass, breadfruit, jack fruit, mangoes, bird of paradise flowers, hibiscus, Indian basil, stephanotis, cupid's bow, coconuts, bananas & more....... We tasted & smelt our way round. There was a demonstration of how to climb a coconut palm & pick the fruit (no, we didn't try it - the demonstrator made it look incredibly easy but we know that if we had actually managed to get more than a few inches off the ground, things could have got really nasty!) & the tour finished with the cooling experience of having water poured down the back of our necks.
Lunch was served on a dining terrace under the shade of a bamboo roof. We had thali (a platter with a selection of local foods - rice, a selection of curries, chutneys & vegetables, papad, chappati etc.), served up on a flat basket, lined with a banana leaf, followed by water melon & more ginger & lemongrass tea. Mmmm, mmm, mmm......... Other entertainment included a water snake lurking by the edge of a muddy pol, preying on tiddlers & a still for producing the local tipple, "Fenni" - which Fiona tasted too.
It's not all been bad in India!
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