Spice Village

State : kerala
Destination : Periyar

Property Description :

At Spice Village, its easy to think that you're in the middle of wild nature. Not so. These trees were born out of one man's passion.
His name was A. W. Woods. An Anglo-Indian, he worked for the Government of the British Raj in the 1930s. Woods was a remarkable man, nearly illiterate, given charge of the forests solely on the basis of his passion for nature and his love and understanding of the local Ooralie culture.
Woods also had the greenest of thumbs. And on the grounds surrounding his home (now the Woodhouse Bar), he created a remarkable arborarium.
You can still take a deck chair out to his verandah, sip (what else?) a gin-and-tonic and say hello to its denizens. A kingfisher dives low out of a clear blue sky, hunting vainly for its fish lunch. Bees hum around teak trees, and Colombian coffee bushes. Guinea fowls and ducks chatter about (amazingly tame, because they're used to guests.) Bamboos burst in tilting spires. Cascades of trumpet flowers, pepper vines and honeysuckle wash down the hillsides. And everywhere, the structures of Spice Village peep out of the woods, as if growing naturally from the surroundings.