Treehouses and colonial charm, fine homey food and lots and lots of greenery. Anurag Mallick & Priya Ganapathy enjoy their Pepper Trail plantation stay in Wayanad
We trudged up the wooden ramp that gently snaked 40ft above the coffee bushes to the Woodpecker Treehouse, on the Pepper Trail plantation retreat. Inspired by Wayanad tribal styles and built on a sturdy jackfruit tree, our lavish perch came with wood-panelled walls, a luxurious bathroom, a wide balcony with easy chairs, besides a country-style four-poster bed next to a tree jutting through the floor. While we’re no strangers to Kerala or treehouses, this was by far the most luxurious perch we had been to. Woodpecker’s twin, the Hornbill Treehouse, was a little further away.
Every morning and evening, we’d sip coffee, watching barbets and sunbirds flit about while racket-tailed drone goes and Malabar grey hornbills competed in vocal calisthenics. We sat watching the rain beat down on the heart-shaped leaves of the pepper plant that quivered in the cool wind. Apparently, when the British were taking the pepper plant back to England, the Zamorin of Calicut had scoffed,
“They may take our pepper vine, but they cannot steal our Thiruvathira Njattuvela (the 15-day assault of the monsoon that triggers the fruiting of the pepper).”
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