it seems there are a lot of catholic schools up here. today i saw some Muslim girls at a catholic school. the buses need to go on the opposite side of the road for the hairpin turns and they honk a lot and everyone waits for them to do their thing.
i was planning on riding to kumily, but after 4 hours of this bus, i decided to i had had enough. my new method of traveling is to listen to what i need rather than stick to my plans. i met a wonderful man in his bicycle shop and he found me a hotel. the first one he said would be 300 rupies and they wanted 1000, hijack the tourist time. it was a dog, and in town, so i went back to my friend. he found me another one which was in the next village over, so much quieter and it was 350 rupies (about 5 dollars). in this village there is internet, great food and a woman at the internet place who speaks english and a place that i could buy some shifts (they use them for nighties) that are cotton and cooler than what i brought.
i went to thekkady on the bus. the tiger preserve is like a national park, you have to pay to get in then i paid for a boat trip where i might see some of the wild animals. the boat was on a lake formed by a dam. they took 5-6 smelly noisy polluting boats in a group around this lake, as a way to see the animals. well i did see a rhino running which was quite a site. the good news is that all of these indian people did not talk on the whole trip. there were signs that said if you want to see the animals silence is needed. the bad news is that there are only 1411 tigers left, guess they do not like to be polluted.
i was expected to wear a life jacket on the boat. it was a warm day and i just told them no. i mean there are these riotous roads, no seat belts anywhere, room for 2 lanes which people treat like 4, everyone goes through red lights, they leave the bus doors wide open and they want me to wear a life jacket on the boat. they said it was an insurance thing. the lake was about 30 feet on each side of the boat and i could easily swim or hitchhike indian style with the next boat. hmmm
i walked in my first food forest in kerala. again ecotourism and i had to pay for a guide. unfortunately the guide talked and talked. finally i told him that i wanted to feel the food forest and could he be quiet. he could not until i asked him to go stand 50 feet away from me. anyway at that point i got to spend some time in the food forest. it was quite magical. i counted at least 60 different plants and i am sure that there were lots more. they are treating the lower story with neem and tobacco for fungus problems. they are putting cow dung and earth worm castings on the ground (it sounded like he said 1 liter per plant). they like the save farm (not buschar save) were using drip irrigation which they said they turned on both morning and evening in the dry season. one of the monsoons is just now over so it was not the dry season yet. the best news from that experience was that he told me about the university program where they were doing research on the plantations that were tended by the local tribes. these have been growing for thousands of year. so that is my project now to get myself to those two tribal plantations.
i worked with nick bottner down in yoncalla, oregon in his orchards and he had a severe fungal problem where he had planted the trees much too close together. his aim was to have as many varieties as possible, so his version of his fungal problem was that he did not have time to prune the trees
at any rate it seems that thinking like buschar save the problem with the cardamon is not the fungus so much as it is not knowing the ratio to plant the trees so they shade the plants but do not block the ventilation. all these things to figure out if you do it by planning and thinking (as opposed to letting the trees and plants tell you). but reminding me that a lot can and does go wrong.
that reminds me, i was reading in the book about buschar save about the huge amount of organic matter he brought in from outside his farm in the first 10 years. he brought in trash from the nearly town until plastic made it unusable and he took out the silt from a community pond for many years. he did not start like he is recommending to us with what he had on the farm. he started more like these organic farmers are doing with a lot of loading up of organic matter. i still believe his theory is a good one, that we can use minimums that we grow on our farm and turn our soil into a golden goose that feeds us for 7 generations (or more) , but it is quite a job to figure out just how to do it. we want some kind of production while we are building our soil. as i said previously he strongly indicates that too much watering is part of the problem or rather that watering a lot increases the need for imports.
i went again yesterday to walk in an organic food forest which they call plantations here. it was the same company, Deepa, although in a different place. this time i got a lot of time to be with the trees. apparently these deepa folks find that it is worth their time to charge the tourists for tours and grow their real outputs somewhere else. i did not see them in either place using the mounds of accumulated debris that i saw at bhuskar save’s place. again there are a lot more plants growing here.
more on the tribal food forests which are still managed in the traditional way: i was told i needed an english translator and to connect with the peechi research station. anyway the english speaking woman is helping me. she also referred me to the cathoic priest of the local church complex and he is referring me to a priest who is working with another tribal folk, other than the one the peechi research station is working with, so hopefully within a few days i will be in that food forest.