Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2006
Edit Blog Post
We´re time traveling again. Realizing we haven´t put up photos from a few months ago here are some from our trip through Kerala.
Who would have thought looking for an elephant in the Western Ghats would be como buscar un aguya en un pagar? (We´re collecting Spanish phrases). But it was. The elephants eluded us that day. Not even one came out to greet us, but we were glad that there was an element of surprise that hadn´t been with us before.
We arrived in Thekkady after a relaxing week on the beach near Trivandrum. Fishing village of Puthen Thope. Rich´s Birthday. Copper Sand. Dense Palm Trees. Grilled Prawns and Lemon Rice.
We took the train from Trivandrum to Kottayam and from Kottayam we took a car to Thekkady. As we wound higher up into the mountains, tea plantations spiraled around and above us, cool air blew through the windows. We passed one disturbing bus crash from a few days earlier, and felt lucky to be taking the sharp curves of the road in a small car rather than an enormous bus.
Spice Plantation Tour: Rubber Trees, Vanilla Flowers, Nutmeg, Cardamom, Coffee Beans, Tea Leaves, Ayurvedic Medicine,
Egyptian Spice Trade. Elephant Ride through Cardamom Plantation. Mangos and Pineapples for her snack.
We booked a jeep safari into the Periyar Tiger Reserve for the next day. We thought this would be an all day jeep safari, as the description said, with a guide from the reserve. We requested a 5:00 AM wake up call for our 5:30 AM departure. Everything was all set. We had ayurvedic massages, buttermilk dripped on our foreheads, a nice dinner, a round or two of badminton, and went to sleep. The next morning we got a call at 5:30 AM asking us where we were because the jeep was waiting. No wake up call, no big deal. We jumped in the back of the jeep, still a bit sleepy and confused, and headed out through the morning fog with the driver. The driver said virtually nothing to us and after some time we realized he was also our guide. We were stopped several times on the road into the reserve. Once the guide got out of the jeep and left us in the middle of a crowd of striking road workers. Their boss, the surveyor, appeared to not be bothered at all
Anjali
Girl we met on backwaters trip while in Tiruvalla,Kerala. Her father prepared fresh tender coconuts for us. Their home was a simple hut on a small stretch of land. They couldn´t have been more welcoming to us. The backwaters is an interesting network of canals and waterways feeding off of the Arabian Sea. The villages are built up on the smallest strips of land at times no more than 30 feet in depth, transportation is via foot or canoe. by the striking, and made small talk with us about our outing and the usual, where are you from? how long you stay? At the second stop Rich was asked to enter an office and sign our names in ledger. He asks,¨Is this in case we don´t make it out of the reserve today?¨ The response: a non-chalant ¨Yes.¨We continue deeper into the reserve. Along the way the guide points out a few black monkeys and a malabar jain squirrel, a few parrots flying above us, an eagle. We meet up with another jeep and the guides disappear a few times into the forest searching for the elephant whose dung is freshly laid in the road.
After a few hours we arrive at the Gavi Dam. The guides disappear. We walk around the lovely gardens, spot a few more monkeys, and wait for what we´re not exactly sure. We meet a few other tourists over breakfast. After some time, another guide appears and hands us leech guards and instructs us to put them on under our shoes. We learn we´ll be trekking further into the reserve. Great. We begin to trek away from the dam, dressed in our leech
guards, though our guide only had a simple pair of flip flops. At the first juncture, he poses a question to us - if we want to go for a ¨deep jungle trek¨or a ¨normal jungle trek.¨What´s the difference? ¨Well, on the deep jungle trek you won´t be able to really see anything, because you´ll have to pick leeches off yourself the whole time.¨And we ask what the leech situation is on the normal jungle trek? ¨not as many,¨ he replies. We get into a little discussion about which way to go. We want a crazy experience, but have no idea what either entails. We choose the ¨normal jungle trek¨. In the end it turned out to be a good choice, because we had more than enough leeches to contend with and had an amazing time hiking up and over the western ghats. We might never have made it out of the ¨deep jungle trek,¨we´d still be lost in the mountains, our names in a ledger book in the office.
The first hour or so of the trek was over the hilltops. The guide pointed out all the spots where he´d seen elephants yesterday. We were excited at the
prospect of seeing elephants for the first time in the wild and not in a controlled environment. There was a beautiful low fog over the hills. We played with touch-me-nots. We entered a small valley and the guide pulled out a plastic baggy of salt and sprinkled it on his bare feet in flip flops, and on our shoes and leech guards. Suddenly our path became quite dense, the leeches came out to greet us. Frankincense on tree roots. We cross a stream and the jungle gets quite dense, we´re climbing straight up through thick brush. The guide points out where there is a village of 20 people in a valley below. The path opens to cardamom bushes and flowers. We finally ask him, how long is this trek? ¨Oh, 18 and one half km.¨What?? We should have asked this question at the start. No worries, no question anymore if this is hardcore. It is. We´re about half way through, and about to collapse. We push on and make our way through dense jungle, steep climbs, and breathtaking views of the mountains and valleys. We make it back to the dam and pick all the leeches out of our shoes.
It was an amazing trek.
After our de-leeching, we went to sit for lunch in the garden. On the garden patio, we see blood all over the floor. Then we see two other girls, med students from the UK, who´d just completed their trek. One of them hadn´t been so lucky with the leeches. They got in her belly button, all over her feet. Crazy.
After lunch we had a boat ride on the lake. Rich had to row. We were so tired. The guide told us stories of running from tigers with German tourists, and how he just got married in Madurai. From the water Rich spotted a Malabar Hornbill fly right over our little boat. We could here the powerful flapping of it´s wings, and spotted the bright orange and yellow head and beak. The most interesting bird we ever saw.
After tea we woke up the jeep guides and headed back to Thekkady through the reserve. We saw a Mongoose and Sambar Deer.
The next day we got a car to Kochi. Pouring Rain. Tea Plantations unspiraling around and below us. Headed for Chinese Fishing Nets and Thrissur Pooram.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.038s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 21; dbt: 0.0164s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Brenda Flaherty
non-member comment
Leeches
Reminded me of the African Queen with Humphrey Bogart pulling leeches off himself! Thank goodness for leech guards! You're very brave, adventurous, and maybe a little bit insane, too! Glad you got out of the reserve in one piece. The pictures are amazing! This is like National Geographic come alive!