Advertisement
Published: October 16th 2008
Edit Blog Post
On the third day of our trip we traveled to scenic Munnar in the Western Ghats for a two day tour. I have never seen anything that so resembled a scene out of a fairytale book. I expected fairies and unicorns to start appearing in the tea fields. But the first stop on our agenda turned out to be a little less than lustrous. Kodanadu Baby Elephants camp was one of the saddest facilities I have seen yet. The elephant’s were supposedly rescued, but no details were ever given. There were three baby elephants and two adult elephants that were close to forty years old. They all had chains on their feet and stood in place with no way to move. I had a lot of mixed feelings on their treatment and my participation in the experience. Of course I could rationalize the situation, but that doesn’t make it right. These elephants were being beaten for “safety” and “training”. The men carried long wooden rods with metal hooks on the ends. A stick was placed in front of the elephant’s right foot and if the stick moved the elephant was hit with the rod. In India’s past elephants have been used
as war animals, as royal pets and in festivals but in today’s reality they are merely tourist attractions. An elephant doesn’t need to be beaten so that I can be amused. One of my friends mentioned that we do the same things with horses, but that in no way made it right in my mind. I suppose at the end of it I was consoling myself with the fact that the elephants weren’t starving or in poor health and even that did not settle well with me. Despite the situation, bathing the elephants in the river was a truly amazing experience. They are the most fascinating creatures! I got to scrub one down with a piece of a coconut while it reached for my face with its trunk. I have no words to describe what their trunks feel like. The babies were making gurgling noises in the water and poking their handlers. Interacting with them was truly something else. I really enjoyed seeing one of the bigger elephants get the upper hand with its handler and escape a ways into the river, but it didn’t do anything. It just needed a moment to breath. What was he gonna do? Run
after it? It made me smile. I did observe the relationship between elephant and handler and I must say that it surprised me in a good way. There were moments of affection and I saw the eldest handler talking to his elephant in long bouts of Malayalam. The connection they had intrigued me and I doubt I will ever know the extent of it. Observing this interaction between man and animal made it seem less demeaning and more mutual, which settled something within me.
Afterwards we headed to our home-stay which was situated on the side of a mountain with a view of the mountainside. It was a little blue British style bungalow with a stairway down the mountain, and a black and white cat who loved affection. After a delicious vegetarian lunch we headed to the Tea Museum that was surrounded by endless tea fields. Instead of watching a 30 minute documentary on how to make tea Leslie and I took a walk up through a tea path and saw a bit of the country side. On the way to the museum we stopped at the Cheeyapara water falls and ate some fresh sliced pineapple. It’s funny how
vendors have no shame and yet so much shame. We bought a pineapple for 50 rupees and as we were eating it a local woman came over and asked the vendor the price of a pineapple. The vendor tried to silently mouth the cost (10 rupees). As if we wouldn't notice! If you are going to rip someone off at least do it with confidence. And after that he tried to charge us for Mike’s pineapple after he had already paid and walked away! I am happy to say his tricks didn’t work the second time.
The waterfalls were surrounded by garbage and were over-hyped. I was more amused by the boy who led us out to the waterfall (about 20 yards) and tried to charge us for him walking us there, haha, sometimes they are too funny. We got back to our place after dark and the mist had settled in the valley. It was starting to rain so Leslie and I decided to dance outside in the light of the doorway when the power went out and we were left fumbling in the night. It was fun to watch the mountain across from us as the lights
went off one by one, in a wave from left to right, leaving only a few specks of white in the dark. The entire time we were in Kerala there were government power cuts at exactly 7:00 that lasted for 30 minutes. We sat by candle light and wrote letters home while the moths dove at the candle flame and landed singed on our papers.
The last day of our tour we were almost in an accident with two motorcycles. The roads were full of tight curves, were extremely bumpy and our driver was a maniac. The next morning we were supposed to tour a park but there was a three hour wait. Conveniently enough, it was free for locals that day. Instead of standing around we opted to go to the dam and rent a paddle boat on the lake. The lake was a beautiful spot surrounded by blue mountains and we thought it would be nice to conclude our trip there. And what an ending it was... It’s not bad enough that we are stared at because we are foreign but when we do something ridiculous we attract a crowd. Here’s the scene: three girls on a
leaky paddle boat who are spinning their legs madly in an attempt to get away from the shore, but only succeed in doing circles for about ten minutes because they can’t steer. There were at least 20 young guys and a few parents with their children standing on the shoreline trying to hide their laughter, but were not succeeding. It took us another five minutes to figure out the steering and in the end I was laughing just as hard as the onlookers. The spot where we were at on the lake was called Echo Point. The entire time we were paddling there were people yelling and letting out strange noises from the shore so they could hear their voices echo across the lake. The contrast of sight and sound was something to experience.
From Munnar we headed back to Kochi in order to catch a bus to Alappuzha.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.132s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.1033s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb