Periyar Tiger Reserve

Staying in the mountain region of Kerela, Luca and I traveled by bus to Kumily, which is just outside of Periyar Tiger Reserve. I had been continuing my meditation practice (twice a day for an hour) and on the 5-hour bus ride had the feeling of most intense happiness and calm (very nice!). Sitting for an hour at a time is getting much easier as well. We were greeted by a super nice Muslim guy named Abbas, who our hotel in Munnar had called ahead about us. Abbas drove his own autorickshaw and was everywhere in town. We'd turn around and he'd be there - it was eery. He drove us to his new homestay, which was rustic, friendly, and at the edge of the jungle. The hot water heater was broken though, so you had to heat water up on the stove to take a hot bucket shower.

Periyar comprises an enormous protected area dedicated to stabilizing the remaining tiger population in the area. At the center a large dam creates a man-made lake, tendrils of which snake throughout the reserve. The latest census puts the number of tigers at 50, so the odds of seeing one is very small. Nevertheless there are tons of other animals in the Reserve to see, so Luca and I booked a 2 day, overnight camping trek.



It was out-and-out pouring when we booked the tickets, and I was a little skeptical. I had a light rainjacket, but that was it. It looked like I should be wearing a dry-suit or something. Luckily the next day, we had only moderate rain, with the more heavy showers happening at night when we were safe in our tents. As we started the trek, they gave us each knee socks, which I had never seen before but they go over your normal socks, inside your shoe and then up your calf. "Great!" I thought, "they are thinking of my dryness." But then they started pouring brown powder on them and it turns out their purpose is to protect us from the numerous leeches that infest parts of the forest floor. Leeches! They make all of the giant spiders, cockroaches, man-eating mosquitoes, snakes and rats seem tame and cute in comparison. Looking like ravenous little worms, they were soon crawling all over my poor Echo walking shoes, which had no idea what they were in for on this trip.



The Periyar program employs local village people who used to earn money poaching tigers or stripping bark from rare trees. Now they lead ecotourism expeditions into the same forest, and they are bad-ass! We had 5 people with us during our trek, complete with one expert tracker who was constantly looking at broken branches and sniffing droppings, and a bear of a man with a rifle who was our "elephant enforcer".

I seem to be toughening up as a result of this trip. There I was, in the rain, with a case of food poisoning from something I ate the night before, throwing up on the trail, and still enjoying myself quite a bit. We saw a ton of wildlife, including wild boar (every time our guide would yell that out all I could think of was that Duran Duran song "Wild Boys"), bison, black monkeys, Sambar deer, fruit bats, giant squirrels (my favorite), kingfisher, cranes, and something called a hawk eagle, which looks like a smaller bald eagle (or a white dove body with huge brown wings).



The highlight, though, was finding some wild elephants the morning we were returning from camp. Our tracker heard some elephant trumpeting in the distance and led us out through the brush on an exciting hour and a half hunt before breakfast. Alas, we never caught up with the beasts, though we did find fresh elephant and tiger tracks (!). He was visibly upset when we came back to camp only to find out that a group of elephants had just walked by on an opposite bank! Luckily he redeemed himself on the way back and we found them, about 7 animals in all, including a little baby elephant and a huge bull. Our gunman made us keep our distance, and we were told stories of other guides getting kicked to death by elephants as tourists got too close. Everybody went bonkers with their cameras, of course. This Polish girl had a Nikon digital SLR, which was the envy of everyone on the trip (you really notice the limits of the point and shoot cameras when you try to zoom in and catch wildlife). It always cracked me up when she would get really worked up about a shot because she would go into continuous shooting mode (kshhhttk kshhhttk kshhhttk), which sounded so serious and was an audible cue to her level of excitement (reminded me of that Duran Duran video, "Girls on Film"). There was a lot of kshhhttk kshhhttk kshhhttk with the elephants.



Luca and I returned to town, completely soaked, tired, and satisfied. Being a little cold and wet, we kinda snuck out of Abbas' place while Abbas was not around (paid up of course), and sought out another guest house that had warm water. Tourism is down right now due to the continued bombings (and I'm sure will fall off a cliff after Mumbai), so we were able to negotiate down these very nice rooms for almost 1/2 off. For the rest of our time in Kumily, whenever I heard an autorickshaw behind us, I expected to turn around see Abbas bearing down on us, but somehow, he disappeared. The next morning, Luca and I took a bus to Kottayam, where we went our separate ways, he going to Varkala and myself to Kochi.

Thinking of all those who lost loved ones in Mumbai...what a tragedy.