We left our amazing hillside hotel in Munnar and headed to our next location which was Thekkady. The travel agency itinerary makes it sound easy, “after breakfast, drive to Thekkady (4 hours) and check into your hotel before lunch”. In reality it took FIVE HOURS TO DO 55 MILES!!!!
What it doesn’t say is that the road between the two towns is running right across several mountain ranges, with massive gorges below, so we went up one side, over the top, down the other side, up again, along the ridge, and down again. 90 kilometres, about 55 miles of road that had straight stretches no more than 200 metres long – it gave us bum ache from sliding across our seats, and neck ache from looking over the driver at oncoming traffic, behind us at the narrow roads and below us at the rivers/waterfalls/ power stations and tiny villages.
And we often felt nauseous from all the tight twists and turns in the road, however, Jo was a fantastic careful driver and we felt very safe with him at the wheel. Jo kept us entertained with information on the farms we were going through, the hydro electric plants we saw, he told us more about his traditions and the fact that he was in a “break-up hangover” because he couldn’t marry his girlfriend of ten years as she was a different caste to him. His mother was actively on the lookout for a wife for him. Jo even sang us songs to keep us going!!!
On route, we stopped several times to stretch our legs and rebalanced the equilibrium. We stopped briefly at a Temple, where Jo took us around the grounds to explain their traditions and we passed quite a few more decorative temples.
We stopped for a coffee at Kalvari Mount, 1300m above sea level, a viewpoint over Idukki Dam, and again, it was a WOW moment!!! So high up, misty mountains, peace and tranquility (despite the bus load of schoolkids that had just arrived) and such beautiful colours!! The lake was stunning, clean and calm and the mountains so lush and green. We were duly rebalanced!
We passed through a very affluent area, full of stunning large houses all with huge sweeping driveways and manicured gardens.
We finally arrived at our next hotel just in time for a very quick lunch then back out to try to catch the last scheduled boat trip up a river in the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. We missed it! Fully booked. Gone was our (slim) chance of seeing tigers. But instead, we took a Jeep safari!! Another first experience for Graham and Di.
The driver Shibu took us off road to the edge of the nature reserve and then up the sides of a mountain to the very top, where we overlooked a military airstrip, but was surrounded by nothing but beautiful mountains, trees and wildlife. It felt like we were on the top of the world!
The roads were steep, rutted and potholed, we negotiated some small streams and hung on extremely tightly at all times, necessary to stay inside the Jeep, such good fun!
We stopped on the way up at a small viewpoint where we looked across the lake and caught sight of several cute Nilgiri Langur monkeys in the trees (only 5000 in the World) and giant tadpoles in the water, giant as in as big as your hand!
On the way down we passed through another tea plantation, small villages, saw wild silk worms and eventually arrived back in the Reserve’s car park in time to see some elephants being fed and put to rest for the night. So despite not going into the Reserve, we managed to see monkeys, fish, silk worms and finally, elephants!!!
Dirty, wind swept and happy, we returned to our hotel and after going out to dinner we all slept well that night!!!
Recent Comments