Travel
We’ve been busy during the summer months, firstly with a visit to the Spice Islands within the Banda Sea of Indonesia. Tiny islands, such as Run, Ternate, Tidore, Saparua and Ai, were once the only places in the world to have clove and nutmeg trees, and spice-growing is still the major industry of there. In this active volcanic area, most of the islands are the conical tips of volcanoes: on Ternate, the volcano steaming gently is a good sign for locals, as there is less chance of a built-up that could lead to an eruption. The hillsides of the island of Obi are covered with the distinctive shapes of clove trees, and the air is aromatic with spice. In the villages, the small nutmeg and clove harvest from each household dries in the sun outside the front door.
It is with mixed feelings that we have returned from our recent, and final, Spice Discovery Tour to India. Our group of travelers was a delight – everyone was positive, cheerful and great company – and the experience was a great success for everyone. We were lucky to see a family of many elephants in the wild at Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, and we had the unexpected delight of finding that the mother of all traffic jams was caused not by an accident but by a brightly-caparisoned elephant and sparkling dancers taking part in a religious festival. Who can complain about a slow bus trip when the cause has such charm? None-the-less, it is time to move on, and it will always be a pleasure to us that our final Spice Discovery Tour was such a good experience for us all.