Last Of The Paliyan Tribes
The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
Mother Masala Tours
Meet The Kadukuthadi Tribe - Palani Hills
The Paliyan tribes have inhabited the Palani Hills since at least 2000-1500 BCE, with ancient Tamil texts from 800 BCE referring to them as Palaiyakkarars, the original forest dwellers and honey collectors of the Western Ghats. For the Adivasi - 1st indigenous tribes, life has long been tied to shola forests, seasonal movement, and forest produce such as wild honey. Written accounts focused on the hills often describe the Paliyan/Paliyar as among the earliest forest-dwelling groups, living in small bands and moving through the landscape over generations. In the last century, the region also became home to many other communities through work, trade, resettlement, and hill-station growth; an INTACH cultural-mapping project lists multiple resident groups (for example Paliyans, Puliyans, Telugu and others). There are currently 14 tribes left. The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
From left to right- Kariymal, Kannan, Mathan, Mahalashmi, Pallanisamy, Kuruvammal, Poovangi, Perumai, Rajalashmi, Murugeshwari, Mariyammal, Danalashmi, Boommi.
The Journey to Wild Honey: The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
It starts with the walk into the forest, a small group of men, travelling up to 15 km through forest terrain. That distance is the first challenge: rough ground increases the chance of slips and falls, and wild animals are a real and proven risk. After reaching the hive area - in branch hives or hollow trees -the work becomes methodical. First, the group scouts quietly to confirm the exact spot: which branch carries the hive, which hollow has activity, and what the safest approach looks like. They check the for stable footing, choose a strong trunk and branch to anchor the rope, and clear a small working space so nothing trips them when they move fast. One person holds the rope steady from the ground while the climber goes up - sometimes as high as 15 meters. Once at the hive, the climber directs smoke into the entrance to calm the bees. After the colony settles, the collector cuts sections of honeycomb from the branch or hollow and places them into a tin or bag. That container is then tied to the rope and lowered down to the team on the ground, so the honeycomb stays intact and clean.
Beyond Assumptions: Meeting the Families Behind the Honey
I had heard about the Honey Collectors from my friend Sixton Albion - helping the tribes sell their honey for years. I went to meet them to see them for myself, ready for a new initiative. I have learnt that the most effective help starts by speaking directly with villages: it cuts out the middle man, removes delays and hurdles, and ensures we respond to what people need, not what outsiders assume. Kannan is the village representative for us to liaison with. These indigenous families across Tamil Nadu's Western Ghats endure chronic food insecurity and unsuitable living conditions with 73% of children showing severe malnutrition.
Honey Collectors Under Pressure
The Kadukuthadhi men collect wild honey and the women sort cacao beans, yet their earnings are painfully low. During harvest months, honey collection may bring only 48 rupees-0.90 AUD a day, while cacao sorting pays around forty-two rupees-0.78 AUD for a six-hour shift. When money runs out, meals can reduce to rice water, and even when there are vegetables, portions are small and inconsistent. Mothers often have to walk to distant work sites and leave children with elderly grandparents. Their living conditions reflect the same struggle. Many families are sheltering in huts that have been repaired over and over again - patched walls, uneven dirt floors, and thatched roofs that leak rainwater during the wet months. A few homes are fully constructed out of cement, yet even these can be bare and cramped, without proper sanitation or privacy. Most striking is how small the rooms are: very tight spaces accommodating anywhere from 2 to 9 people, sleeping side by side, with little separation from cooking smoke, damp bedding, and the cold that settles in at night. The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
New Realities, Old Roots: Securing the Foundations of Forest Life
The migration of youth to cities for stable wages provides a vital lifeline, yet it leaves elders balancing the need for family stability against the challenge of managing harvests and self-care alone. This shift alters the traditional family structure, making it harder to maintain the labor-intensive rhythm of the forest. We support the community with dignity at the centre: private toilets, critical home repairs, and practical help that respects autonomy and security. Our approach keeps people in control of their own decisions and shows them in a positive, accurate light - never as subjects of charity, only as partners in building stronger, safer homes and daily life.
Shola Forest Risks, Daily
Honey gathering in the Palani Hills is a multi-day journey deep into Shola forest, characterized by total isolation, reliance on traditional skills for protection, and complete independence from outside assistance. Wildlife encounters are a very real part of the route. Indian gaur are a constant threat in thick undergrowth, where visibility is short and a surprised animal can charge without warning. Elephants move through active corridors that collectors must cross on foot, sometimes in narrow valleys where escape routes are limited. Sloth bears, drawn by the scent of honey, can appear at the same trees and hives the collectors are tracking, turning a harvest into a stand-off. The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
Risk For Survival
The work is inherently dangerous, as honey is harvested from slick trees using hand-cut notches or vine ropes without harnesses. A single slip on mossy, monsoon-damp bark can result in a fall of fifty to one hundred feet. While smoke quiets the hive, a sudden swarm can cause a collector to lose their grip and fall. The forest itself adds hazards: altitude-driven cold, leeches, and streams that turn violent in minutes. If a collector is bitten by a snake or breaks a limb, survival depends on companions carrying them out on foot.
Wildlife conflict remains a constant threat. Reports from 2025 and early 2026 highlight Indian gaur goring people near the Kodaikanal hills and settlement edges. Elephant charges are frequently noted along the Palani–Kodaikanal belt, including a widely reported November 2025 incident where a wild elephant charged travelers - an encounter far more perilous for collectors on foot. Broadly, Tamil Nadu forest department data for 2016–2025 cites over 690 human deaths statewide from animal attacks, with the Dindigul and Theni districts frequently referenced. For the honey gatherers, these statistics represent the daily reality of navigating a landscape where the stakes are life and death, with many instances never recorded.
Ancient Mountain Trade Sustains Generations
The Paliyan tribes sustain themselves through an intricate system of intergenerational knowledge transfer, where fathers teach sons the ancient art of wild honey collection. Some collectors specialize in scaling sheer cliff faces where rock bees build their hives, while others harvest from forest canopy trees and hollows. Their survival depends on sustainable harvesting practices -they carefully leave enough honeycomb in each hive to ensure bee colonies thrive for future seasons. Young collectors learn not just climbing techniques for cliffs and trees, but forest ecology, bee behavior, and seasonal patterns. This living knowledge, combined with partnerships like Allen's chocolate shop, which packages and sells their honey while providing generous compensation, ensures both cultural preservation and economic viability across generations.
Healing Plants Protect the Harvesters
Bee stings are treated with Adhatoda vasica leaf paste mixed with turmeric, applied after removing the sting. Vaidyar healers also prepare preventive tonics of neem oil, eucalyptus extract, and wild ginger, taken for fourteen days before the harvest. Women processing cacao drink Sida cordifolia root decoctions to ease breathing problems linked to fermentation vapours. Falls and fractures are handled with bone-setting methods kept by healing families such as the Arumugathas, who recorded 340 harvest injuries treated from 1950 to 2020. Healers grow Centella asiatica for wounds and Bacopa monnieri for stamina, preparing stores in Margazhi. The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
Forest Spirits Guide the Climb
Paliyan honey collectors worship Ayyanar, the forest guardian, performing rituals before ascending sixty-meter cliffs. Harvesting peaks during Chithirai (April–May) and Aippasi (October–November), when Apis dorsata bees nest beneath granite overhangs. To sedate colonies, harvesters burn dried Lantana camara and neem leaves. Carrying woven bamboo baskets that hold up to twenty kilograms, they climb barefoot using hemp ropes anchored to ancestral iron stakes. The Muthuvan lineage, with oral histories dating to 600 BCE, maintains hereditary rights to cliffs near Perumal Peak.
Marriage Bonds Strengthen Harvest Teams
Paliyan marriages often link honey-collecting lineages with farming families, shaping work roles recorded since 1200 CE. Brides from the Sadayan clan, known for cacao processing, commonly marry into Muthuvan honey-collecting families through arrangements made during Aadi (July–August). Ceremonies at forest shrines include exchanges: grooms present wild honey combs and brides offer fermented cacao beans wrapped in silk. Village records from 1923 note marriage settlements that assign access to specific cliff faces and cacao groves. Women keep independent cacao income, with seventy-three percent using separate accounts via cooperatives formed in 1967. Divorce is rare. The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
Women Alchemists Transform Bitter Seeds
Cacao processing stations operate in seven designated forest clearings where Paliyan women ferment harvested pods within forty-eight hours of collection. The Kannagi method, named after a legendary sorter from 1889, requires splitting pods with curved knives, extracting beans with pulp intact, then fermenting in banana leaf-lined pits for six days. Women rotate beans every twelve hours, maintaining temperatures between thirty-two and forty-five degrees Celsius. Senior sorters from the Vellalar bloodline train daughters and daughters-in-law in detecting fermentation completion through scent analysis and color assessment.
Each woman processes eighteen to twenty-three kilograms daily during harvest season spanning December through March. Approximately 840 kilograms of wet cacao passes through their hands weekly across all processing stations combined.
Festival Cycles Mark Harvest Rhythms
Madhu Pongal, the honey harvest festival, is held on the Chithirai full moon, when families offer the season’s first honey at Ayyanar shrines before any sale. Households cook rice sweetened with fresh honey, with about 340 kilograms shared across the community. In January, Kakao Thiruvizha marks cacao season, when women present their best fermented, sorted beans during temple rites. Both festivals include drumming, dances, wrestling, and shared meals such as honey-glazed dumplings and cacao pod curry.
Battle Scars Mark Territory Claims
In 1892, colonial forest restrictions triggered the Palani Forest Resistance when 240 Paliyan men blocked British surveyors marking reserved boundaries. Police fired at Pannaikadu on August 14, 1892, killing seven collectors and wounding nineteen, recorded in Madurai District files. The community continued harvesting despite arrests, leading to 1897 compromise zones for collection. After independence, tea estate expansion renewed conflict. In 1964, when cacao groves faced clearing, women sorters held a forty-three-day sit-in until rights were acknowledged. Court decisions in 1972 and 1988 confirmed access to 1,840 hectares. The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
Daily Rhythms Follow Forest Clocks
Honey collecting families rise at 4:30 AM, taking rice gruel with jaggery before men leave by 5:45 AM for cliff and tree sites. After sunrise prayers, climbs begin and harvesting continues until about 11:00 AM, when heat increases bee aggression. Women start cacao sorting around 6:00 AM in shaded stations, working until 12:30 PM, then break for a midday meal. From 2:00 to 5:00 PM they monitor fermentation, turn beans, and manage drying. Evenings bring rice with sambar, honey-sweetened curd, and seasonal vegetables. After dinner, elders teach through stories. Most sleep by 9:00 PM.
Monsoon Preparations Secure Annual Yields
From February to April, families prepare for harvest by repairing tools, weaving baskets, and maintaining climbing ropes. Men replace ropes yearly and test them by suspending stones weighing about twice their body weight. Women ready cacao fermentation pits, lining them with fresh banana leaves from designated groves replanted every three years. Storage containers are treated with neem smoke to deter insects from dried beans. Households buy rice and lentils with advance payments. When the June monsoon arrives, honey work slows, cacao pods swell, and women shift to cotton spinning and basket making for extra income. The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
Heritage Faces Modern Pressures
Honey yields have fallen as bee populations decline, linked to pesticide drift from surrounding farms and disrupted weather patterns. Flowering seasons now shift by several weeks, throwing off timing that families once relied on. Many younger adults leave the hills for wage work in towns and cities, creating labour gaps at home and fewer apprentices for dangerous harvest work. Cacao income is also unstable, with sharp price drops pushing some women to look for other jobs.
Local Support - Sixton Albion
I've known Sixton for over 20 years, collaborating on several projects together during that time. Today, he serves as a team leader for DLT's tours, however his most profound work has been his lifelong dedication to supporting the Kadukuhadi tribes. Through Sixton, I met Mr. Allen, owner of the Elite chocolate shop. Allen packages and sells the tribe's honey, ensuring they receive generous compensation - a partnership that embodies Sixton's commitment to creating sustainable opportunities for the communities he serves. Beyond his professional work, Sixton is a devoted family man and a well respected member of the Kodaikanal community. His wife Shanti works as a dialysis nurse, and together they're raising their eight-year-old daughter, Joanna.
How Our Tours Give Back
We here at Discover Life Travel set aside a generous portion of our tour sales to support the villages we work with, while also keeping the business sustainable so the support can continue long term. It is often complex. Some villages take hours to reach on foot across harsh terrain, on narrow tracks through steep hills and forest edges, so getting materials in and projects finished can require planning, patience, and repeated visits. We work one village at a time to keep the process clear, direct, and guided by what the community says they need. This is an information brief for those curious about how our tours contribute to Indian communities and why we prioritize practical, village-led support. The villagers know why we visit with guests, and its a happy engagement. They feel seen, respected and supported - they gain dignity - and we show that they matter, just by simply being there! The Honey Collectors Of Tamil Nadu
We visit Kannan and his tribe - The Kadukuthadi near Kodaikanal district on the "Spirit of South India Tour".