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| Kerala - God's Own
Country (Period: 24th - 28th Oct 2001) |
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In Search Of Pachyderms |
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A visit to Periyaar wildlife sanctuary |
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27th October
(morning)
We woke up quite early in the morning. Surprisingly,
we didn't have any hangover of the previous night. After
a quick but heavy breakfast, we went to the Periyar lake and the wildlife
sanctuary.
From Kumily town, the Periyar lake is just four
kilometers. We went there and intended to take a boat
ride in the lake. It is said that one can see a lot of
wild elephants and deers and what not while boating. So
we purchased tickets for boating. The place was very
crowded and everybody wanted a ticket. As a result, we
had to buy tickets from a tout who, quite frankly, made
a good fortune that day from us. We had the feeling that
if we could see what we were supposed to see, then few
extra rupees would not matter! |
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Well, the
trip was uneventful! We saw only few elephants. We
didn't see any deer as fellow tourists claimed or
exclaimed every now and then.
The boat was very uncomfortable. The noisy engine
must have driven even the few pachyderms who came to the
lake to drink! |
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| But we
were not to be frustrated so soon!!! So we purposefully
started doing what others were doing unconsciously. We
started speculating. "Hey there is a kid elephant",
"Wow, did you see the deer? Its up there....",
"That was a very rare bird" etc. It was fun indeed to
see so many people with such powerful binoculars trying to
locate wild animals when there were none. And here we were, with
our naked eyes, finding them in herds! However we didn't overdo
that. Some of us don't know swimming. Incase fellow tourists got
angry and did something silly, we could have been in danger! |
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| Frankly, we were
dejected. We wished to see so many animals but saw only
a few elephants.
With heavy hearts, we started returning to our hotel.
On our way, we saw a big Kerala tourism hotel. It had a
good bar. We decided to sit there and drink a few
bottles of beer. The weather was nice. We sat in the
lawn and had a great time, far better than the visit to
the sanctuary. After that, we also took mouth watering
lunch there.
We returned to our hotel in Kumily and quickly went
to the bus stand to catch a bus to Kottayam. It
would take about four hours.
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| This journey was quite different from the one we
had from Munnar to Thekkady. We were now descending from the
hilly areas of Kerala to its rich plains. The road was very
good. There were many tea and coffee plantations. As we
descended from the hills to the plains, the vista changed. The
rich paddy fields and the coconut trees greeted us. The road
became straighter and wider. We had entered another world - the
plains of Kerala.
We reached Kottayam at around 1800 hours. We got into a hotel
very near to the bus stand. We freshened up and quickly went
sightseeing the city. We found a bar (infact very close to our
hotel). It was amazing. Bose music system, dancing
lights, great wooden furniture - all these for a beer costing us
just fifty rupees! I forget the name now, but it is decidedly
one of the best cheapest bar I have ever been to!
The next day would be our trip's last day. Our plan was to
cruise down the famous backwater to Alleppy (also known as Alappuzha) . From
Alleppy we were to catch the train to Chennai. |
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