Thekkady

Our final Western Ghat mountain town was a wonderful home base for four days. Here we settled into somewhat of a routine. A walk around the town or National Park (See Periyar National Park blog) during the day, and dinner and a show in the evening.

Thekkady was nice. Our homestay was up in the hills a bit. We had to walk to and from the homestay to arrive and leave, as the one road there was under construction during our stay. No worries though, the town wasn’t that big.

Our host, Selvaraj, showed us around the first day. He took us to his favorite restaurant, Gokul Veg, which quickly became our favorite restaurant. We went there every day for dinner, eating some sort of combination of curries, jeera rice and parotta.

Selvaraj wasn’t our only guide for the town. On our way to book the hikes, we ran into a tour operator guy that was camping outside of the government park office. Everyone makes commission off of everyone in Kerala, so he swooped in for his cut from our hike invoice. He also drove us around n the back of his bike to ATM’s and other stores as needed for an hour or so.

Thekkady is a larger domestic tourism hub, so there are lots of souvenir shops. Many spice stores with lots of blends to choose from line she streets, with bags of spices enticing you inside with smells. Lots of chocolate shops with mediocre chocolate as well. Many clothing stores to get all of your shirts, sarees and tablecloths, or any sort of fabric for that matter, were placed in between the rest. We did quite a bit of poking around on our days in the town.

The highlight of Thekkady was the evening show. It was a showcase of a martial art called Kanathanadan. Our first night we were sat up in the top corner, and had a half view of the event. When sword hit shield and sparks flew, we were hooked. The whole thing was so cool that we immidietly bought front row tickets for the next night.

The show is an hour long, and starts with a blessing to the master. After the blessing is the first showcase fight, the sword and shield combat. The athletes move through their choreography very fast, and sparks are flying when the blades hit the shield. There was a sword only fight as well, which featured a lot of grappling and jumping.

Our favorite showcase was that of the flexible stick versus the knife fight. The choreography was unique, and weapons changed hands a couple of times as the athletes tried to gin the upper hand. It all culminated with one athlete wall jumping over the other, and then getting twisted up into the stick, to the point where they needed assistance to free themselves from the knot they were in.

There were a lot of other cool showcases too. The long stick baton twirling was fun. The speed at which the stick rotates around the athletes fingers and wrists is ridiculous. It gets hard to keep track of the sticks. There are flexible swords that they smash across the ground and wrap around themselves, making a crazy sound. They jumped and did flips over each other and the audience (I went down the first night!), up to nine people! And they jump off of the side of the area doing flips as well.

So that’s all the first half of the show. Then comes the petrol, a dimmer switch, and the fire comes out.

The fire show works similar to the batons. There are two lit ends, and the athletes move them circularly around their bodies. One even uses two! The most visually exciting was the hot coal/sparker ends, which gave a Dr. Strange kind of vibe as the athlete whipped it all around themselves.

The finale was the athletes jumping thorugh rings of fire!

The show was amazing, and after our front row seats the second time, we immidietly bought tickets again for a third showing. Three times was a good amount to see the show. The final show we believe had a visiting master, as all of the athletes were putting in extra effort in their performances.

Thekkady was a great place. Kanathanadan is a great show. Good times all around. We will miss this little town. But new adventures are on the horizon. See you there!