Periyar Wildlife Banter

The next stop of my trip was the town of Kumily and the Periyar Wildlife resort, the town is up in hills and as such there was the obligatory white knuckle bus ride up to get there including about 7 near death experiences.

Periyar is the most popular of the Indian wildlife parks and it’s easy to see why, the town Kumily is a relaxing stop with lots of nice restaurant and lots of jewellery stores. It does also have the standard collection of rug salesmen and tat shops. The most refreshing aspect of Kumily however is the temperature at night, or lack of it, as it is up in the hills it is not muggy at night and there are no mosquitoes!!

I had 3 relaxing days in Kumily which included; an elephant ride, standard banter up in these parts; a full day trekking where I saw wild elephants, bison and a couple of snakes. The wild elephants really are amazing and so different to the elephants that they let you ride. I had also been scheduled to go on a sunset trek however this wasn't quite what it said on the tin, I was driven up a steep, bumpy hill in a dodgy old rickshaw and told to walk about for a bit on my own until the sun set.. I wasn't really up for that so instead I found a rooftop bar and sat reading my book with a couple of beers, job done.

As some of you may know Kerala is a communist state, and as such there are hammer & stickle flags, posters, etc everything.. However in Kumily there was a van that drove round everyday covered with communist signs and posters with a loud attached spouting all sorts of communist propaganda, probably the weirdest thing I have ever seen.. photos to come shortly.

N.B. - Thanks Spewen for bring the spelling error to my attention, however your mistake was assuming that it was accidental, I say bring it on... but seriously please don't.

x

written by  Michael Russell on February 10, 2009 from Thekkadi, India
from the travel blog: Escape from Blighty
tagged Kumily
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