By R. W. APPLE Jr.

THE road twisted up into the hills, smooth one minute, potholed the next, taking us away from the clamor of Kochi, the biggest city in Kerala, which occupies the southwestern corner of the vast Indian subcontinent.

By my count, Ramesh, our driver on that fine morning last spring, hit the horn 10.7 times as often as he hit the brakes. His technique worked; most of the rice and fuel trucks stayed out of our way, as did gaudily painted buses named St. George and St. Thomas. There in the heartland of Christian Kerala, schools are dedicated to the Infant Jesus instead of Mahatma Gandhi, and white-clad nuns stroll in the markets.

We came across a cow and an egret, strolling along like old friends, which they no doubt were. We saw herds of domesticated buffalo and cattle, their horns painted green, blue and red, on the final lap of their long journey across the mountains, known as the Western Ghats, to the coastal markets. And we started our game-watching a bit earlier than expected when we rounded a corner and came face to face - well, more like face to ankle - with a reasonably tame elephant and his mahout.

As we climbed, bound eventually for the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, we got a cram course in the local economy. After an hour or so, the forest gave way to ordered rows of rubber trees, with rough beige sheets of rubber hanging like laundry on ropes outside roomy, modern houses. Roadside stands sold sweet, locally grown pineapples and their juices. We began to notice pepper vines snaking up betel palms, and farther along, my wife, Betsey, spotted two men raking drying peppercorns in a courtyard. Still higher up, meticulously trimmed mint-green tea bushes quilted hillsides and terraces as far as we could see.

For us, this was a new and different India, an India that Rousseau might well have imagined, utterly unlike the sere, dusty north of the maharajahs.

The Periyar reserve encompasses 300 square miles of wilderness, most easily reached by boat on the lake at its northwest corner, which was created by a dam the British built in 1895. (The dam is in rainy Kerala, but the water in the lake is desperately needed by arid Tamil Nadu next door, which naturally causes political tensions.)

I had been warned that we had no real prospect of seeing much game from the small blue motorboats that ply Lake Periyar, packed with tourists who shout with every sighting, sending all but the most blasé animals scurrying for cover. Hire your own, I was advised. Not possible, Mr. Kumar said repeatedly. I pressed him; it worked. The shouters had their boats, we had ours, and we spent our time headed wherever they weren't.

Although the park has been designated as a tiger preserve, we saw no tigers, which seldom show themselves. Yet from the moment we arrived at the lake, well before dawn, with mist still rising from its surface, we witnessed a mesmerizing tableau of animal life: rare monkeys like lion-tailed macaques frolicking in the bamboo above the jetty, a magnificently colored kingfisher - turquoise, crimson and white, with an orange beak - sitting on a dead tree, herds of ugly wild boar grazing on the grassy verges, and snake-necked cormorants spreading their wings to dry as the sun came up in a pink sky.

A forbidding black shadow in the high grass turned out to be "our" first buffalo. When we drifted into one of the lake's many fingerlike bays, we saw a dozen more outlined ominously against the sky, and then, suddenly, we saw a big brute, easily 2,000 pounds, with shiny horns and a huge dewlap, slowly munching his breakfast of tender waterside shoots. When we were no more than five or six yards away, he turned his head, shot us a baleful glance and ambled off.

At one point, Bhaskaran, the boatman, cut the engine so we could hear the fish jumping and the birds warbling. A sambar deer with dramatic, scimitar-shaped horns stood on a hillside, as if posing for our nonexistent cameras; I was reminded of Landseer's painting of a Scottish stag, "The Monarch of the Glen."

Birds escorted us home - a black-and-white jungle mynah, egrets, a pied kingfisher, a common mynah and a white-necked stork. I was resigning myself to a day without elephants, happy enough with all that we had seen, even with no Babar, no Queen Celeste. As we passed a mountain of pink hibiscus, I put my pen away. "Don't close your notebook yet," Betsey said, and then there they were, just to the left, strolling along an inlet, two big tuskers and two babies.

We headed over for a close look, fascinated by the elephants' little ears, which are only about a third the size of the unwieldy flaps of their African cousins. The grown-ups lowered their trunks into the water and gave themselves and the kids a shower. We took that as a signal to head back for a hearty breakfast of fluffy poori bread, homemade mango preserves and exquisite local tea, and a bath of our own.

THE rest of our stay in the Ghats might have been an anticlimax, but not with Maria Angela Fernhof around. We met her - a striking black-haired Italian woman in a white robe, with silver bracelets on her wrists - when we went to her hotel, Shalimar Spice Garden, for lunch. The trip entailed a short, rather bumpy drive from the Spice Village and a walk along a swaying foot bridge that crosses a hidden valley.

"Bliss," the hotel brochure promised. Bliss it delivered, in the form of a beautiful white horse grazing near a lotus pond, brugsmania bushes with peach-colored, bell-shaped flowers, geese milling about nearby, an antique Buddha in the welcoming posture in an old, open-sided wooden pavilion, and a pervasive sense of serenity. Small, square windows here and there were glazed with shards of stained glass, in the manner of Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp, in eastern France. In short, a tropical dreamscape, European in sensibility, Indian in detail, chic yet unspoiled.

In addition to seven rooms in the main building, thatched cottages are scattered around the grounds, with whitewashed walls, old Keralan clothes presses, spare modern furniture and outdoor showers. A handsome swimming pool is tucked into a terrace. Yoga classes and ayurvedic treatments are offered for those who are so inclined. We had to settle for lunch, our first non-Asian meal in many days (although Indian food was offered, too).

At our places at a stone table, we found napkins tied with banana leaves. The food was a study in simplicity: homemade tagliatelli dressed with oil and fresh, wonderfully mild local garlic; a salad of sliced tomatoes with basil leaves from the hotel garden to scatter over them; roast chicken scented with rosemary and roast potatoes.

A Maugham heroine come to life, Ms. Fernhof told us she had first come to that part of the world when she was 19 and had returned every winter for years. In 1995, she said with more than a hint of mystery, she decided that "it was time for a change" and moved to India. Last year she sold her corner of paradise and left for Europe, promising to return someday soon. Her staff carries on, and the beauty of the place is immutable.