Wayand Wildlife, Farewell to the Beach and a Loooong Train Trip.
We thoroughly enjoyed our two weeks exploring the cool, lush green hill stations, but the time had come to make tracks and put some serious miles under our travel belts. We left the south to make our way towards a totally new destination: the Indian desert!
Here’s Christine and Serge enjoying a final morning breakfast on our lovely veranda before heading out. It would be a long time before we’d need such warm clothes again!
We started our three days of travel on a bus, along with our friends Pete and Serge who were going our way. An evening bus took us down from Ooty into the Wayanad district of Kerala, the state which shares the southern tip of India with Tamil Nadu. Arriving after midnight we strolled the very deserted main street of Sultanbathery looking for lodging. Sultanbathery is a small town to say the least, and at 1 am most hotel clerks were happily snoozing at the desk and not anxious to do the rigerous check-in acrobatics involved with foreigners (made even more paperwork intensive after the recent Mumbai attack). We found a “nice” hotel (read: fancy) but refused their inflated prices, and eventually found a guard further down the road who happily woke up his manager to accomodate us in a small room with two comfy beds at a fraction of the price.
The next day we four took a local bus to the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary where we’d planned on taking a day hike but arrived to find out that the “new” policy was only to allow tourists through the Wildlife Sanctuary via jeep safari. A jeep safari that was, of course, happily (and somewhat expensively) provided by them. Sigh. Well luckily we were four and so the cost, split up, was easier to swallow and so we merrily climbed in the back of the jeep and hoped for some great wildlife to show up in spite of the roar of the vehicle.
Our initial surprise started outside the gate, before we got in the jeep, when Jon spotted what looked like a large fox climbing up in the tree. We looked at it and couldn’t figure out what large tree animal it was, so we asked and learned it to be an Indian giant Malabar squirrel!
This is a picture off the internet so you can see how pretty it is, but it doesn’t do it much justice size-wise. The ones we saw were big like opossums, but frisky like squirrels.
Once we got into the park we enjoyed seeing nature’s diversity. The huge bamboo groves were really impressive as was the diversity of other fauna. Soon we came upon our first friend!
This Mrs. Elephant was having a snack along the side of the trail and she didn’t seem to mind a bit as we all stopped and shoved over to one side of the jeep to reach out with our cameras and do some good old-fashioned gawking. It was the first time Christine had seen an elephant close-up, and the first time any of us had watched an elephant feeding itself and so we all watched, fascinated, for quite awhile. Christine was very excited in the back of the jeep!
On a little further we saw a lovely spotted deer…
…and though the guide said it was a possibility, and though we scanned the horizon with a close eye, we never did get to see an Indian tiger (the guide may have been just humoring us). We did get to see a family of elephants though! Taking a lovely walk through the leaves!
And having some special family bonding time!
We also saw some Languor monkeys with furry gray and white faces and they were awfully cute too. All in all we agreed that it had been a successful safari. We saw some great landscapes, local flora and fauna, elephant families, trotting deer, funny monkeys. Wrap that up with the beautiful weather and it’d been a perfect day indeed.
After those few hours in the jeep we wanted to stretch our legs and decided to walk back towards town taking in the lovely scenery.
At one point along the road we stopped to sample a drink so popular here: sugarcane juice! This man is feeding a lot of fresh sugar cane through his press. He feeds it through once, twice, three times until the cane has been relieved of all traces of moisture.
He then strains it, adds some lemon and hands it over to be enjoyed. Here’s Christine with a fresh glass.
The verdict on the fresh sugar cane juice is (as you might have guessed) it’s SWEET! Too sweet. Our opinion is that it would have been much nicer if cut with some soda water and more lemon, but it was a treat anyhow.
Time to move on. From Sultanbathery we took two more buses until we got to Kannur, which is on the west coast of northern Kerala. Kerala is one of the few (if not the only) democratically elected Communist states in the world. They have the highest literacy rate in India and they also have the highest alcohol consumption per capita (if you believe the statistics). Kannur was “settled” by the Portuguese in the midst of a long period of spice and cashew trade between the Far East and the Middle East – they built Fort St. Angelo in 1505 but trade was eventually taken over by the East India Company.
Although we didn’t have an interest to see the fort, we had an evening to roam the streets after we said goodbye to Serge and Pete. Since Kannur is on the coast the boys decided to continue in that vein and do some beach combing. We couldn’t blame them, south Indian beaches are gorgeous, but we had some desert to see and so we wished them well and sent them on a train to the south. Our train didn’t leave for a few hours and so we walked to the beach to have a nice view of the sunset and see the last of the ocean for our trip in India.
We found the wide welcoming beach and Jonathan took a quick bath in the Arabian Sea while Christine enjoyed the view and a chat with a Spanish woman we’d met along the walk. The beach had a nice cemetery just behind it (a bit odd location perhaps) and we enjoyed a nice sunset over the sea.
This is the tomb of a teacher (note the books).
As is usual in India we found yummy yummy food for dinner including Vegetable Manchurian and Idly or Oothapam (which are made from fermented rice and dhal) and are NOT fried. Little did we know but we were about travel throughout the other half of India where it’s difficult to find fresh food that’s not fried.
We dozed in Kannur Train Station’s upper class waiting room while waiting for our 2 am departure. The train finally arrived and, after settling into our sleeper car, we spent the next day and the next night on the train to Ahmedabad. This was our first real long-haul train ride and it was fun! The compartments sleep nine people and we opt for the top berths always. This meant we could store our bags and sleep whenever we wanted. The other berths turn into seats during the day where we could also sit if we wanted.
Of course we had to be clever with our stowage so we could actually sleep on the bed. Christine’s pack laid across nicely near our heads while Jonathan’s pack stood upright by his feet. The food bag rested by Christine’s feet and we put down sheets or sleeping bags depending on the temperature. Here’s how it worked:
Eventually we arrived at our first transfer, Ahmedabad. After stashing our packs in the cloak room (10 rupees an hour well spent for them to hold our heavy bags) we enjoyed the morning strolling around the streets, visiting a Masjid (mosque), and marveling at the architecture of this very old (1411) city on a river. And of course we were oh so fortunate to find the best masala dosa in India at a restaurant near the station.
A very unique and very beautiful feature of this city is the wood carvings on the building facades…
… but unfortunately the locals seem not to mind so much. This was in an electrical supply shopping district where the aesthetics don’t really matter. But (as so frequently is the case in India) if you look just a little deeper to the next level you see so much beauty.
Just a short afternoon in Ahmedabad left us wanting more and we will enjoy returning to this winding little city one day. But for now we had another train on its way, this one taking us up farther north-west to 80km. outside the Pakistan border. To the desert of Jaisalmer!
Tags: 2009-Feb, Travel, Tag Index
seeingspain
March 7th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Such mouth watering descriptions – vegetable manchurian, Idly, Oothapam (a form of Spam?), masala dosa – I am frantically looking for recipes. However I will definitely pass on the sugar cane juice.
Exciting to be so close to the elephants and wildlife. The beach looks wonderfully refreshing and quite clean compared to what I remember of California beaches.
From looking at the size of the train berths all I can say is it’s a good thing you are both skinny.
February 24th, 2017 at 6:33 pm
Neal – I really enjoyed reading your article. I am a Social Media Enthusiast and Currently I am working for a Social Media Consultancy and intend to start my own soon. Your article was really valuable and I will be waiting to read more from you.
http://allin1panel.com/blog/eight-stunning-examples-beautiful-social-media-marketing/