Hill homes in Wayanad, Kerala

Wayanad is the step between Kerala's coast and the Deccan, a plateau between seven hundred and two thousand metres reached by hairpin ghats from below. The houses are Malabar houses adapted upward. The nalukettu is the type: four ranges built around a nadumuttam, an open central court that takes the rain and gives back light, on a laterite plinth under a steeply pitched tiled roof, with a great deal of carved jackwood inside. Larger families built an ettukettu, the same plan doubled. A homestay in the district is very often exactly that, an old family house with two or three rooms let out. Wayanad also carries Jain temple architecture at Sultan Bathery from a much older trade route, Kuruma and Paniya settlements with their own building habits, and Edakkal, where the carvings in the rock shelter are thousands of years old.

What grows here is coffee, pepper, cardamom and a lot of rice, and the paddy in the valley floors is what the district is named for. Nagarhole, Bandipur and Muthanga meet at its edges, which means elephants on the road and a night traffic ban through the reserve.