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Innovative package tours lure global tourists to Kerala

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

The eco-tourism products of Kerala have attracted international attention.

Two teams of professors and students of the Department of Tourism Studies of Midsweden University in Scandinavia would be visiting the state to study some of the products.

The professors’ team led by the department head Dr Stephan Ohrling would be in Kerala from February 21 to March 7, while the students would undertake the study in June.

Thekkady Tiger Trail, a tourism product of the Kerala Travels Interserve, which won the best eco-friendly tourism product award of the government of India for 1998-99, is the most sought-after product.

Dr Stephan Ohrling had evinced interest in the product when he undertook a trek through the forest in Thekkady under the project last year, said Kerala Travels Interserve managing director K C Chandrahasan.

The product launched a couple of years ago in association with the Kerala forest department, has evoked good response from foreign tourists.

A total of 59 batches, each comprising five tourists, have undertaken the trek in the last one-and-a-half-years, Chandrahasan said.

The tourists included members from the foreign missions in India. The product envisages a 25-30 kilometre trek through the Thekkady Wildflife Sanctuary enabling the tourists to have a close range view of the tropical forest and its flora and fauna including the tiger and 34 other species of mammals.

The two-nights/three days trek programme takes tourists to any of two of the six identified camp sites in the Periyar Tiger Reservoir in one trek.

The forest department, which was vary of exposing the forests to the tourists, has found the tourism exercise helpful in checking the stealing of forest wealth by the poachers. The project is implemented with the active partnership of government bodies, local population and private enterprises.

The tribals, who hitherto used to work in league with poachers and other plunderers of natural wealth, have been recruited as guards and helpers to the tourists. There will be five tribal helpers for each batch of five tourists. They would carry all necessary goods the team requires for the number of days they spend in the forests.

The tourists would be living like those who reach the forest for cultivation or hunting. Any existing huts left by hunters or others would provide the tourists safe shelters. If there are no such huts available, makeshift huts are built.

Another eco-tourism project, which has caught the attention in the international circuit, is a trade travel festival based on pepper, the merchandise of which has a rich and long history. The pepper festival, which concluded at Kozhikde recently, seeks to trace the pepper trail that brought traders from Babylonia, China, Rome, Portugal and Arab countries from time immemorial.

Jointly organised by Silk and Spice, a tour and travel operations company, and the Kerala Tourism Department, the five-day Pepper Fest 2000 coinciding with the harvest season offered guided tours to pepper gardens, reminiscent of the fascinating search for the "black gold" by ancient travelers and explorers.

The organisers say they were inspired by the long history behind the pepper trade to plan for the trade travel festival. Chandramohan, director of the Silk and Spice say the pepper merchandise of Malabar dates back to 1000 BC. There is mention about it in the Old Testament and in the travelogues of Marcopolo and Ibn Batuta, he said.

The travail of Portuguese traveler Vasco da Gama in search of pepper has been well documented. The navigator had undertaken the Cape route and reached Malabar in 1498 and paved the way for the Portuguese domination not only over pepper trade but also on the country’s political territory.

The festival has been lauded by many as a novel idea to espouse the tourism, which enhances trade and natural resources of an entire region.

Gertraud Frenz, famous historian and Indologist, who attended the festival this year, said the product is good to maintain sustainable development and heighten the awareness of the need to preserve nature for posterity.

Pat Chapman, president of International Curry Club, London, who attended the festival last year, said it is an endorsement for the pride of place for the spices of Malabar in today's gourmet scenario and underlines the intricate relationship between the food and tourism.

Another major eco-tourism project in the offing is holidays in plantation offered by the Plantation Corporation, which runs several rubber, coffee and cashew plantations in the state.

The former has chalked out a plan to promote tourism in its sprawling estates in the Malabar region with a view to buttressing its bottomline that has of late been affected by the fall in natural rubber prices.

The PCK would open the Perambara estates in north Kerala to the tourists on an experimental basis. The Perambara property is stunning not only for its sprawling 749-acre rubber plantation and the 336 acres of cashew plantations, but also for the flora and fauna which offer a visual delight for the nature lovers.

The Perambra estate, which is at the foot of the hill trinity of Payyanikotta, Ponnambara and Virimbara, has the additional visual attraction provided by the reservoir of the Kuttiyadi hydro-electric project, which is on the boundary of the estate.

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Kerala