Kumili and the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary

So we left Kochi on February 7th, taking a train to Kottayam. The plan was to use Kottayam as a launching point to get to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary - and we were a little divided on how to go about that. I was hoping it would be possible to rent a motorcycle and drive out there, and Leah wanted to keep it simple. In the end, simplicity won out because it would have been terrifically difficult to ride a cycle out there.

The train to Kottayam went by easily enough and we checked into the Ambassador Hotel. It was insanely hot, and the room at the hotel acted as a pressure cooker. We ate at some arabian restaurant, and here we ate chicken - one of the few times we had meat out there.

The next morning, after handling some administrative bits about flights and train times, we caught the bus to Kumily and were guided to the Jungle View guest house. This was our first home-stay and it was probably one of the nicest places we stayed at in all of India, and definitely not the most expensive at 350 rupees a night. The owner, Ramachandra took us for a night walk around his compound and we sat in the dark for about 20 minutes waiting for animal life to come around. We saw a couple porcupines, but nothing spectacular; at least the night wasn't took cold.

Periyar Nature Walk

The next day, Abbas dropped off a motorcycle for us and we rode it into Periyar to go on the nature walk at 7am. Since Abbas was late dropping off the cycle, we almost didn't make it into a group but we managed to squeeze in at the last minute. The nature walk was really cool - it was 3 hours and because it was quite early in the morning the sun wasn't too hot. We saw two types of monkey, some wild boar, and wild elephants.

India Motorcycles: Cumbum, Tamil Nadu

After the nature walk, we took the motorcycle into the country. I didn't really know how much fuel we would need, so I put in 5L of gas and we roared off into the middle of nowhere. Our first plan was to go to the tea factory - and everyone seemed to have an opinion on how to get there so after a few missed turns we managed to find it. The tea factory was quiet due to a power outage, but the manager was very pleasant and he took us to each of the machines and explained how they worked. Or used hand signals and very simple english really, but we asked clever questions and basically figured it out.

We got some ice cream in town, and the owner of the shop gave us some advice for an alternative way back to Kumily - this time through Tamil Nadu, the neighboring province. This turned out to be a great ride from the highlands where we were, into a hot valley and back out into the mountains again.

Kerala Backwaters

Kerala Backwaters

We took the standard tour from the KTDC office - and headed out into the backwaters with 10 other tourists. We rode in a bus to a little stop where we got into two huge canoes - and sat on plastic deck chairs. Weird. Two men pushed the canoe through narrow waterways and we snapped pictures of whatever looked interesting.

Strangely, the backwaters are heavily populated which meant the canoe passed people doing laundry in the water, and even a man bathing. About 45 minutes into it we get out of the canoes and they walk us inland where a guy climbs a huge coconut tree and hauls down enough coconuts for all of us - then another man chops it open and we savour the sweet freakiness that is coconut juice. Lastly, they crack it open and we eat the coconut goodness inside.

After a bit more canoeing, we switch to a houseboat that cruises around the islands and we got a tour of an island calcium factory, and some info on common medicinal uses for local plants. It was terrifically boring, but they fed us some great Keralan food so we were happy. :)

Here is a map of India that I stole from a website to show you where we've been. I'll do this properly at some point with a map that has all the names of places we stopped at.

You can see the weird roundabout route we're taking - we started in Mumbai, went to Aurangabad first, then darted back to Mumbai so we could go to Jaipur. From there we went west to Pushkar, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer, and then down to Udaipur. From there we went south to Ahmedabad, had that long flight to Bangalore, and then made our way through Mysore, the Nilgiri Blue Mountains (in blue) and then today in Kochi on the southern west coast.

Kochi at last!

At long last, after days and days of insane travelling that now seems so far away, we have made it to Kochi. We're staying at a place called Bijus in Ernakulam - a nice enough hotel close to the waterfront.

Altogether, in the last two days we have done this:

Jan 31: night train from Udaipur to Ahmedabad
Feb 1: flight from Ahmedabad to Bangalore
Feb 1: train from Bangalore to Mysore in the evening
Feb 3: bus from Mysore to Ooty
Feb 3: train from Ooty to Coimbatore
Feb 4: train from Coimbatore to Kochi

Writing it out, it doesn't seem like so much but we sure were beat until that sleepy night in Coimbatore. We had actually tried to change our train into a sleeper that night, but now I'm sure we're both very happy we got some sleep instead of the half-sleep we get on trains.

We walked around Kochi tonight and wandered into a little pavilion that was selling stuff at Indian prices. This was quite neat for us so we snapped up a few souveniers and then went for dinner and ice-cream. That's it for now, I'll flesh out these posts with pictures tomorrow.

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The Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway

Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway

We took a 5 hour bus ride through some crazy mountain jungle between Mysore and Udhagamandalam (Ooty), and then jumped on the Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway which is such a famous rail-line that it has been declared a historic site by UNESCO. It is quite a neat contraption - the engines use a cog-driven system to climb and descent a ladder between the rails, up to gradients of 1 in 12.5. I'm not entirely sure what this should tell us, but I can tell you that the train was definitely on a serious angle going up and down those mountains.

Also, it is a steam engine because of the unique design. The end result of this is hot, humid steam air and the occaisional ember flying into the windows.

I have to say though, that being a tall man on this train was not easy, as the seats are clearly designed for children so I had to sit nearly across the bench seat, not leaving much room for Leah. I tried various positions but eventually I just gave up on comfort for four hours.

The views from the train were indeed tremendous, as the railway clambers through some very high mountain passes, and it goes through something like 16 tunnels which the local boys love screaming and chanting in as we pass through.

Bangalore and Mysore

After the cycle trip we took a night-train to Ahmedabad so we could catch a 2 hour flight to Bangalore, so we could take a 3 hour train to Mysore. It was a hellish journey, made so mostly because Leah's stomach chose the night-train as the right moment to start its inevitatable churning and gurgling.

Our first experience with the famed Delhi Belly, and it left Leah quite wobbly the rest of the day. The problem for me is twofold, first I'm trying to take care of a sick woman who would probably much rather lie in bed than take planes, trains and auto-rickshaws, but also that I forgot to eat all day because Leah wasn't chirping up that we should eat. Strange as it might seem, but I have grown into the habit of using her belly to tell us when to eat because mine is strangely mute here.

It isn't that I don't get hungry, when we eat I'm chowing down. But it just isn't the same as in Vancouver - it might just be the oddly planned days we're having. Anyway by the end of the night I had gone the whole day eating just one samosa, and when I realised this I tried to eat, but couldn't jam anything in.

Sleep restored us both to good spirits the next day, and we stormed Mysore in search of the internet, and sunglasses for Leah; who seems to lose them often. :) In the evening we met her brother's new fiance Katarina - she's lovely and we had coffee with her in the little Mysore suburb she lives in. Katarina is on some kind of a yoga training course, and there certainly seems to be quite a bit of that here!