Kumily - Periyar National Park

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We caught a rough looking ferry from Alleppey to Kottayam before changing to a rough looking bus to get to Kumily - the main town in the mountains leading to the Periyar National Park. Riding these uncomfortable buses can be challenging at the best of times, but it was really hot, crowded and took 5 hours. Just as we got underway our bus driver hit an auto rickshaw - he did not seem worried at all, but the owner of the rickshaw, pretty much dragged him out of the bus! There was much yelling before a policeman came and a group of men became involved (none of which had anything to do with it or were there to witness it!) and with much yelling and hand waving by all we were finally on our way again.

Kumily is a nice place, once again we have a great place to stay which means we stayed longer than originally planned. We met an English couple on the bus, Patrick and Natasha who we met every night for dinner and had a beer, this time from a teapot (beer is often served in restaurants under this disguise to avoid the expensive liquor licence and tax)!

We visited a spice plantation - fresh cinnamon (we had no idea this was just the bark off a cinnamon tree!), pepper, cardamom, turmeric, cocoa beans, coffee beans, tea, pineapple (grows as a plant not on a tree as we had thought), giant lemons and a variety of ayurvedic herbs to cure every aliment.

The following morning, before dawn we headed out for a jungle safari, our final attempt at seeing a tiger. Needless to say our trip fared worse than in Chitwan - we did not even see footprints or any tiger markings at all! We now suspect there are actually no tigers on the sub-continent! The jungle was beautiful - dense forest with a variety of greens and reds, but unfortunately it was so dense that we have no idea how you would ever see any wildlife! Apart from deer, monkeys, giant squirrels and wild dog, we lucked out on the wildlife front - no tigers, leopards or wild elephants but we did go for a great walk through the jungle and have a relaxing afternoon on the side of the lake and boat ride. Best place to see tigers - a zoo! They do offer a tiger trail which is the best chance, where you camp in the park for a few nights and track them but this tour was booked out for the next 3 months so we will have to wait till next time.

We are off to Kochi next just for one night before catching a 13 hour train to the east coast, back to Chennai for a night before flying out to Sri Lanka.

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