Marayur and the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, part one

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I had sort of been expecting southern India to be much like Sri Lanka. Madurai sure wasn't. It was your typical manic filthy Indian town. I got into the city after the sun had gone down though, wandering through the dark crowded streets trying to avoid tuktuks and motorbikes and cows until I found the hotel, so perhaps during the day it would be nicer.

In the early morning I took a tuktuk to one of the bus stations to catch the 8am bus to Munnar, which is up in the highlands of Kerala's Western Ghats (Madurai is in the lowlands of Tamil Nadu). The guy at the hotel desk had said to get there early to be sure of getting a seat, so I arrived at 7am and there was another bus just leaving bound for Theni. I wasn't sure this would actually save any time (I figured the Munnar-bound bus would probably be the one I ended up getting on in Theni) but I took it because it was there. The trip to Theni took two hours, and then indeed I waited there for an hour for a Munnar bus. It wasn't the direct one from Madurai, but we caught up with that one at the border point between Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It is almost four hours between Theni and Munnar, due to most of it being winding mountain roads which the bus was often creeping up at what seemed like a walking pace. Every few bends a car or other vehicle would come screaming downhill round the corner and slam on its brakes to avoid hitting the bus, as if the driver was astounded that there should be any other traffic coming round the blind corners.

I was sitting beside the door, which on the Indian buses are always open for people to jump in and out. I was keeping one hand firmly on my pack - there's nowhere to put larger items of luggage except somewhere on the floor around the seats - but at one point I was momentarily distracted during my conversation with the girl sitting next to me and in the second I took my hand off the pack the bus swept round a sharp bend and the pack shot straight out the door. That's something that has never happened to me before! Luckily on this particular bend the door was on the uphill side of the road and not the downhill side or I would have had a loooooong climb down to find it. I had to run about a hundred metres back up the road to retrieve it, and at least it wasn't my smaller bag which has breakables in it (camera, binoculars, etc) so no damage done.

My plans for Munnar were the Eravikulam National Park (home of Nilgiri tahr) and the Pampadum Shola National Park (home to Nilgiri langurs and Nilgiri martens). There are also lots of endemic Western Ghats birds around here like the Nilgiri flowerpecker, Nilgiri flycatcher, Nilgiri woodpigeon... you get the idea. I also wanted to visit the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary which is in a rain-pocket so has a dry-forest ecosystem rather than a wet hill-country one. A couple of the mammal species there are typical Sri Lankan species (tufted grey langur and grizzled giant squirrel). They were the reason Chinnar was in my plans originally, because I wasn't going to Sri Lanka so this was the only place I'd be able to see them easily. Even though I have already seen them now I kept it in my return plans anyway. The nearest town to Chinnar is Marayur (really barely a village), about 40km from Munnar. I had decided the best order would be to do Chinnar first, going straight to Marayur as soon as I arrived in Munnar. This would save some of a travel day and also I could start off this part of India with seeing some Sri Lankan species again before getting into the "new" mammals. Makes sense.

The tuktuk touts around the Munnar bus stand told me not to go to Marayur because it is too hot and there's nothing there - I do get a bit sick of people constantly telling me that I don't know where I want to go! I tried to get out another 2000 rupees from an ATM in Munnar (a different bank from the one I used successfully in Madurai the night before) but it wouldn't accept the Visa card I got from the airport money exchange. I hoped that wouldn't turn out to be an issue in the rest of Kerala. When I got back to Munnar after visiting Marayur I found another ATM in town and that one gave me money, so worries averted for now.

The road from Munnar to Marayur is horrible. An hour and a half of constant weaving round hairpin bends that had several passengers (not me) throwing up out the windows. The return voyage wasn't nearly as bad because the bus is going uphill, so moving slower. We passed the entrance to the Eravikulam National Park on the way, only a few kilometres from Munnar. Most of the route was through tea plantations - kilometre upon kilometre of tea plantations. They are like the highland version of oil palm plantations, but you never hear anything about the wholesale destruction of the montane forests that continues to happen to produce tea. An unexpected highlight was seeing a pair of Malabar giant squirrels out the bus window, hanging in a tree like overcoats thrown over the branches.

In Munnar, at the restaurant where I'd had lunch, the owner had told me (as had the taxi touts) not to go to Marayur, and added the information that there is nowhere to stay there. Of course that is completely untrue, there are loads of cheap hotels there, most of which are called either "tourist homes" or "lodges". I went first to the Calwin Tourist Home, directly opposite the bus and taxi stand, but they were full, so I chose the Marayoor Holidays a few buildings along the street which is 350 rupees per night (about NZ$7) and perfectly good. It is directly next door to a mosque which at 5am blasts out the morning prayers over a loudspeaker, so that might be a problem for some people. Me, I'm either already getting up or if not I just turn over and go back to sleep. But there was a French couple there on my final night who changed hotels the next morning because of it. French people, eh?

If you're wondering about "Marayoor Holidays" (apart for looking like it's missing a word from its name, or at least needs three dots after it), the spelling of town names in India and Sri Lanka are often pretty fluid. Munnar is also spelled Munnur or Moonar, depending on where you see it written (Moonar is closest to the pronunciation). Marayur is usually spelled Marayur on maps, but in the town itself it is always Marayoor.

Another interesting fact, in Sri Lanka and (at least southern) India "hotel" is the name given to a little roadside restaurant. Some also have rooms available, and then will have a sign outside saying "rooms available". Then, just to be awkward, there are also actual hotels called hotels. So in Colombo I stayed in a hotel called the New Colonial Hotel which was just a hotel, but on either side were several other hotels which were just restaurants. It isn't difficult to see whether an establishment is for sleeping or for eating when you're standing outside, but if you've just got off a bus and are looking down the street for a hotel, all the signs saying "hotel" which aren't hotels is confusing.

After putting my bags in my room I went off to find an ATM. In the hotel's yard was a group of bonnet macaques, which are the Indian version of the Sri Lankan toque macaques (and at one time considered to be conspecific). These were very common here, always hanging around near the bus stand in the hope of hand-outs. The bonnets are actually very different in appearance to toques - the toques are a bright golden-brown in colour with a much more noticeable hairstyle, while the bonnets are drab greyish-brown.

There is only one ATM in Marayur, and it was closed for the day. A guy in a little shop opposite called me over to talk, and then wanted to take my photo in front of the closed ATM. "You look like a bad guy," he said, showing me the photos. Turns out he did the local newspaper and was going to use the photo in a story about the financial situation India is in. I had quite a bit of trouble finding a shop which could change one of the 2000 rupee notes I already had into 100s. The problem with the ATMs now, apart for them having a daily-withdrawal limit and randomly not working, is that they only give out 2000 rupee notes. Because the government got rid of the 500s and 1000s, the currency now has a massive jump from 100 rupees to 2000 rupees. You get out a 2000 rupee note but then can't use it to buy food or transport or anything, because nobody can provide that much change. Even the hotels often can't change it if you try to pay with it.

There's an advert on tv here promoting the government's idiotic demonetisation. It goes something like this: "The demonetisation movement in India will mean less undeclared wealth, which will make the government richer , so they will spend way more on infrastructure, attracting more foreign investment, which will mean booming success, which will create a more bullish world market, which may end global recession." There you go, India is saving the world. Just like when North Korea introduced demonetisation, or when Burma did it, or when the Soviet Union did it. Hmm, maybe those aren't the best examples. But India is different!!

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