The Hippie Spice Farm
Okay back to tales of india... I wrote this a few weeks back before my tantalizing ( litterally look up Tantalus) trip back to the states.
So Old Goa turned out to take a little more than an hour, no one lives in old goa, it's just a few ruined churches. My driver sugested we go to the spice plantation. Normally I pass on stuff like this because I don't know where it is or what it is, and you know the drivers just taking you there to get the kickback...but with the beach being what it was and not much else to do ( there were a few more churches in Panjim, but the guide said they were nothing compared to old goa)...
So he says spice plantation, and I start thinking of something like I'm going to see 400 people picking chilis or something...
So we dirve through Goa, which is suprisingly well paved, and not too bad to look at. It turns out to be this ayurvedic cooperative thing ( Definition: Ayurveda is the indian word for wholistic hippie medicine) ...they welcome you with a glass of lemongrass tea, and give you this flower necklace with healing herbs...and if you try to take it off they put it back on you.
There's a walk where they describe plants and their healing powers...the guy kept smashing up leaves for me to smell and try to identify...we're just from two different worlds here...
>>"I don't know ...is it cinamon?"
"I give hint...is used for type of nerve gas"
>>"Uh...then should I be sniffing it?"
" Nutmeg!"
I guess I should be excited....nutmeg....We still played guess the plant for another half hour.
"..For upset stomach"
>>"Yeah uh....ginger?"
"No (laughing) Ginger is root..."
>>"Oh right...look I don't know my stomach was royally screwed up a few weeks back, Cipro buddy, I swear by it"
I eventually got him to stop talking about leaves and explain the fenny distillery ( which is way more interesting) and the ingenious irrigation rigging, it was this series of tubes ties to individual trees, so they could regulate each tree individually.
Then there was Apoh.
Apoh (the angry spice elephant)
Apoh the elephant, they don't even use him for logging. Aparently his only job is posing for pictures and making compost. Not a bad deal Apoh...so why are you so angry?
This is the first shot, that's me ( with stupid flower necklace) getting closerto Apoh seeemed to get his attention. There's a mahout (elephant keeper) off to the left of the frame, that's what I'm looking at. He keeps shouting things and waving a stick in the air. You'll also notice I'm starting to walk away from Apoh, because he's kind of stamping and shaking his head.
And as you can see it's a good thing I wasn't looking at the camera, because Apoh
took a swipe at me. (Why's everything gotta try to take me out? He probably wanted the flower neclace...)
The camera guy caught it halfway.
I only caught that out of the corner of my eye, and I was standing far enough away...but it's hard to gauge with a creature the size of a van what exactly 'out of reach' would be.
By the time he swung his head around I was out of the way. I guess he's just not a photo elephant, and there's got to be some reason his pointy tusks were capped with bling.....
Anyway...I'd had enough fun at the hippie spice farm.
