Elephant Valley, Vilpatti 20km from Kodaicanal

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Geo: 11.3557, 77.4059

26th - 30th May Elephant Valley, Vilpatti

Got a taxi 20km down to the mountain to a valley village Vilpatti to a jungle farm resort called Elephant Valley (not in guide book www.elephantvalleyhotel.com), which is in the middle of nowhere and has no other form of tourism or no phone coverage or internet (which I forgot to tell my family who were a bit worried as to where we were by the 9 texts I had when we got coverage) and millions of bugs especially if it doesn't rain. On our river walks we saw leopard tracks, a dead rat & porcupine, loads of monkeys and I got attacked by leeches (twice), yucky blood drawing tenacious little buggers. At the night there's loads of gloworms and fire flies and something small and furry visited our room and dumped on our bed on the last night! Our room 'the honeymoon cottage' was nice but rustic to say the least. A bit little like the mountain cottage in 'The Evil Dead' complete with scuttling when the lights went out - or if you don't know that movie think any American movie where teens stay in mountain cottage and get slayed... But we were fine.

We had a very rudiemtary tour of the EV organic farm and coffee plantation and we could have gone horse riding but we passed - peak season ends in Feb. so it was quiet enough activity wise. Although there was a wedding festival in the village with loudest tinniest P.A. of Bollywood music for all of the 1st day and started again at 5am the 2nd day but we found out later someone complained so they toned it down between 6-8am as they had no permit. Made friends with a nice German-Canadian family living in Mumbai who gave us their number to call next week.

Stupidly we took our chances with lunch the last day in KK in a local eat-with-your-hands kinda place and didn't drink bottled water just accepted the jugged filter water so by the end of day one in our elephant valley C. was violently ill and I followed suit the next night, nice. So a lot of time spent (apart from puking) reading, sleeping and watching DVD's - V for Vendetta, The Gods are Crazy I & II, Syriana and The Keeper. So that was it for the pukey and leechy show but was a nice break from the sun and good place to be ill in the cool (even with the scuttling).

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