Spice & Something Nice

The name of Thekkady in Kerala is literally derived from nature—from the word thekku (teak), and it lives up to its reputation. Whether it’s the call of the wild, the sight of the plantations, or the smell of spices— expect a sense of pure bliss to be engendered in each of your senses.

- Gayatri Moodliar

It’s It's to think about how a cardamom seed or a peppercorn has had a deep impact on the course of world history and that trajectory was flagged off right here in Kerala, a place where everyone is a veteran of the spices that seem to grow endlessly and where the fragrances of the spices battle and beg to be the first to envelop you as you enter the region.

And nowhere is this fight more fragrant than in Thekkady, a quiet town that lives and breathes according to the harvesting schedule, but where cardamom truly earns its title of ‘Queen of Spices.’ But before these spices began to struggle against each other, battles between more corporeal bodies were fought.

A tale of many spices

It started a little more than 500 years ago when a relatively well-known figure in Indian history, Vasco da Gama, navigated past the Cape of Good Hope and landed on Kerala’s coastline. His arrival and success in reaching the Indian subcontinent led to a sequence of historic events that opened India to the Western world. But the quest for these spices witnessed a flavourful history even before the advent of the West, as it is believed that Kerala had trade contacts with the outside world as far back as 3000 BCE, starting with the Babylonians. Today, Kerala’s ‘sugar, spice, and everything nice’ can be found sitting innocently in cupboards and on windowsills, understandably oblivious to the role they unwittingly played.