Two days at Periyar
The last breakfast at The Wind was kind of special: the day before a group of young men had arrived. When they went for breakfast, not enough seats for the other guest were available. As also plates. Or Salt. Or jam-jars. Or… Certainly a hotel with an amazing view, but internal… a bit proces improvement might help 🙂
The drive from Munnar to Thekkady through the different plantations was nice. Lots of green. Nice views. Almost no near-accidents.
In Thekkady a little surprise: our driver dropped us immediately at the ticket counter for the National Park. Was not our plan. Anyway. We asked at the counter what we wanted to know, went for lunch. And in the mood for some adventure, we arranged a jeep safari for us. Jeeps are only allowed outside the park, using the wood and hills at the edge. The driver couldn’t impress us with his attempts for add-in sales. To bad for him. Notice, at a safari in India do not expect to see any animals, wild animals, I mean. The National Parks are to big and the allowed routes are to limited to make it likely you would spot anything. Actually, because of the binoculars we had with us (and even the ranger here are not used to… some we had to explain how it works) we saw a deer up in the mountains. But the drive itself was definitely an experience! Off road, up en down hills. When you saw how beaten up those hills were, you could understand why the jeeps are not allowed in the park! Anyway, we had a dusty and good afternoon. Back at the starting point, our driver brought us to our hotel. Was about 400m from the parking lot. Right. Made sense, we couldn’t go there directly. In the evening we roamed the area of our hotel. Early to bed, because we decided to take the first boat tour in the National Park in the morning. Therefore, we had to be at 5:45 at the ticket counter. We bought our entrance to the park, the valid for the camera and the ticket for the bus. Took almost half an hour before the first bus left to the gate of the park and the dock for the boats. Inside the park we had to buy the ticket for the boat. As always, they wanted al our personal data. Took about an hour to sell the boat tickets. Waiting another half hour for boarding. Good to go! In the morning fog, quite mysterious. One and an half hour at the lake; we saw some cormorants, a wild boar and a tribe in its morning ritual. Not much animal spotting, but certainly worthwhile all the trouble.
Back in the hotel after breakfast the question rises, what else to do. We didn’t want bamboo rafting. We surely do not want to ride on an elephant. Won’t cope with the habits. Thus, we choose to asked the driver to bring us up in the mountains for a walk. Took a while before we could find a suitable path; most of them shortly ended at a house. It was hot, but with some wind and the shadows of the trees it was acceptable. The first part was actually more a plantation than a wood: mango trees, yak fruit, bananas, cardamon, pepper… al together on a plot. The second part seemed more to be natural wood, at least to us… didn’t really recognize any plants, for some we had an idea, maybe, more a guess. On the way back we had a fresh pineapple juice on the road. What a taste!
In the late afternoon I took a second boat trip through National Park. Now, a lot of deer had come out of the woods, even some bison. Still didn’t see any elephants, but is was all good. Loved to watch the deer and bisons in their afternoon habits.
Tomorrow, we start for our houseboat tour at the Backwaters. High expectations! Again.