Thekkady & Kumily

The boat ride from Allapuzha was stunning - green and violet lillies turned the river into a vast, undulating carpet, closing up behind us as we cut a swathe through. We transferred to an SUV and began a four hour jaunt up the mountains to Thekkady. We managed to avoid half a dozen head on collisions with increasingly larger vehicles, the Christ figurine and Crucifix on the dashboard perhaps explaining our drivers faith in his fellow road users to stop. Thekkady is about 1000m above sea level, around thin winding roads framed by vast precipices. Needless to say my sense of vertigo made an unwelcome appearance, but the views of the tea and spice plantations were amazing.

In the evening we visited a spice garden (jungle is perhaps more accurate), owned and run by a chap called Abraham. It's funny how when you're a kid you're told not to eat with your hands, or eat stuff off of trees - not so on this trip. We eat cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, grapefruit and pineapple right off the tree. Abraham also grows coffee, bamboo (which grows at a foot a day !) and rubber trees here. Sue, one of our travelling companions, was in her element sampling the different varieties of chili. The evening meal consisted of a variety of curry and vegetable dishes, needless to say there was a wide variety of flavours and spices - served on a banana leaf and eaten with the right hand. I shall be importing this style of dining to the UK soon ...

In the morning we set of for Periyar national park (sadly Dan couldn't come with us - a dodgy stomach still wreaking havoc). The park is about 77km square, and we barely scratched the surface with a three hour trek. Taking a bamboo raft across the lake we soon came across a family of elephants ... who took an exception to our presence and chased us off. It is incredibly rare to see a tiger in the park (though there are a great many of them there), but there was evidence enough in the form of some giant scratches on the trees' bark.