Just outside Munnar, only about four or five kilometres along the road to Marayur, is the entrance for the Eravikulam National Park, which was created in 1978 to protect a kind of mountain goat called the Nilgiri tahr. There are only three species of tahr in the world. One is from the Himalayas (the Himalayan tahr - this is the one introduced to New Zealand and South Africa), one is in Oman and the UAE (the Arabian tahr), and one is in the Western Ghats (the Nilgiri tahr). Because I was going from Marayur to Munnar on a morning bus, and Eravikulam is only about twenty minutes by bus from Munnar, I contemplated going to the park in the afternoon after finding a hotel in Munnar, and then going back again early the next morning (partly
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