Spice & Tea Country
Choosing a homestay in spice country, from Kumily to the estates
Town, estate or forest edge: how to pick a homestay around Thekkady, Kumily and Vandanmedu, what to ask before you pay, and how to be a good guest.
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The trail
Everything we have written, newest first: animals and birds, forests and rivers, spice country and the practical side of visiting.
Visiting Responsibly
Ethical wildlife viewing in Indian forests
Plain rules of thumb for watching wildlife in Indian forests and reserves: distance, noise, food, night lights, bird calls, geotags and elephants on the road.
Forests, Rivers & Hills
What decades of research tell us about Periyar
A plain-language tour of published research on Periyar: its plants, fish, elephants and tigers, the people at the forest edge and the weeds creeping into its edges.
Field Notebook
Photographing wildlife in rainforest light
Camera settings, focus habits and lens care for photographing birds and animals under a dark evergreen canopy and from a boat on a humid Western Ghats lake.
Spice & Tea Country
Munnar or Vagamon: choosing a hill-town side trip from Thekkady
Tea slopes and Nilgiri tahr in busy Munnar, or pine woods and open meadows in quieter Vagamon. How to choose, with two-day plans and a side-by-side table.
Wildlife
Tigers of Periyar and what the monitoring shows
How camera traps and India's four-yearly tiger estimate work, what they say about Periyar's tigers, and why most visitors never see one and still come home happy.
Birds & Butterflies
A starter list of butterflies in the southern Western Ghats
Ten butterflies to learn first in Kerala, from the southern birdwing to the rare Travancore evening brown, with families, puddling and gentle photography tips.
Visiting Responsibly
What to pack for the Western Ghats
Muted clothes, leech socks, a rain shell, 8x42 binoculars and a dry bag for everything: a practical packing list for four days in the Kerala hills and forests.
Wildlife
Nilgiri tahr and the shola grasslands of the high hills
The Nilgiri tahr lives only on the grassy cliffs of the southern Western Ghats. What research says about the animal, its shola-grassland home and how to watch it.
Spice & Tea Country
Cardamom, pepper and tea around Kumily: how to read the plantations
How small cardamom grows under shade trees, why pepper climbs them, where tea takes over, and what to look for and ask on a plantation walk around Kumily.
Wildlife
Watching elephants at Periyar, from the lake shore to the forest edge
Why the Periyar lake shore is such a good place to see Asian elephants, how to read a herd's body language, and how people at the forest edge live beside them.
Visiting Responsibly
Travelling the Cardamom Hills in the south-west monsoon
Green ridges, full waterfalls and quiet towns, but also leeches, wet ghat roads and sudden closures. How to plan a monsoon trip around Thekkady that works.