Beautiful scenery and lots of animals
Trip Start
Jan 23, 2012
1
11
49
Trip End
Jun 09, 2012
Trivandrum, Kerala, India
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Kumily in the western ghats, Kerala
Once at Kumily, we checked in and chilled in our hotel. The next day we booked a nature walk in Periyar Tiger Reserve, which is the main tourist attraction of the area and known in the Lonely Planet as Disneyland-in-the-ghats. Before the walk we had a lovely lunch on the rooftop of Chrissie's restaurant and had a great view of two black macaus/monkeys in their natural habitat enjoying some tree blosoom. The walk started from the boat landing, which was the entrance to a large British made lake in the 1850s. The reserve is over 900 square kms and is home to lots of wildlife including 46 tigers and 1000 elephants. 110km of the reserve is allocated to tourism for visits and a few expensive hotels and restaurants. The walk was through amazing scenery and allowed even the amateur photographer to become a expert wildlife/nature photographer and was led by guide of the reserve. We did the walk with an Indian couple from Delhi and after the expanse scenery we walked into the forest on the search of wildlife. However due to the season there was lots of dry leaves so had to stop often to look out for wildlife, we saw a few monkeys, squirrels, birds, butterflies, elephant dung and tiger scratches. On our way back to the start point we got a bamboo raft across the lake and saw an elephant on the very far bank. By the time we got across though he was long gone. On the way out of the reserve we saw some more monkeys (like the ones at Elephanta island in Mumbai) and deer.
The next day we caught an 8 hour local bus all the way to Trivandrum (furthest southern point in India on this trip and Keralan capital). The least said about it the better, it was hot, stuffy, sweaty, bumpy, etc but at least this driver knew what to do with his gears!
Trivandrum - Keralan capital
Straight away Neill liked Trivandrum, as the main street (Mahatma Gandhi road) had everything you would ever need and Pizza corner. I have to say they did the best cheesy garlic bread! The next day, after Pizza Corner for lunch we headed to the park, which is the location of the main tourist attractions in Trivandrum, a zoo, museums and galleries. We visited the Napier museum, which was housed in an excellent example of Keralan architecture and was built in 1880. The inside was amazing (sorry no pictures as cameras weren't allowed inside) with a grand cavernous wooden roof, wooden carvings, colourful paintings and stained glass windows. The museum held intricate stone, wood and ivory carvings of deities from Kerala and Indonesia. It also housed a coin collection that included coins from the East India Company which was cool. Afterwards we visited the zoo, I had slight apprehension since the last zoo I visited aboard was in Budapest - Kaz and Joe will know what I mean - but it was a small well conceived and laid out zoo with massive enclosures for all the animals. We saw a cobra, who suddenly seemed to spring up and stare at us and really freaked us out. Also we saw some beautiful looking jaguars and jungle cats and watched the deers enjoy dinner of leaves and grain. Tomorrow we grab a flight to Mumbai for our last few days in India.
