Jungle Jaunt

On our way to Kochin, which is an 8 hour journey South West of Bangalore, we stopped in a very local, very dischevelled, and very busy bus station in Trisur. We slipped off the bus for smoke and were trying to decide whether to divert inland and head into the hills before descending on the beaches. Suddenly seeing a bus displaying the name of some place which looked vaguely like somewhere near a wildlife sanctuary we'd read a little something about at some point, wreckless adventure got the better of us, and before we could say Palakkad we'd whipped our bags from the coach and were stood like sore thumbs alone in the bustling station. Thus began 5 hours of tenuous transit on 5 progressively precarious public buses having receiving 'sound' advice from a beneveloent bystander named Thomas, who had happened to hop off happily on the third bus leaving us in the middle of nowhere with no clue and very nebulous directions. A further 3 hours and several agressive altercations with taxi drivers later, we were climbing a huge and unkempt zig zag track etched into the side of a mountinous precipice heading for Parambikulam Wildlife Sactuary in the great Western Ghats

We arrived at the jungle station, having passed from Kerela briefly through a slither the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, only to venture almost instantly back in to Kerela, but of course not before being charged rather unfairly and and extortionately for each of these passes. To add insult to injury, this then resulted in us discovering that a room in the reserve cost a less than breezy 8,000 rupees.

But rather than navigate the hellish journey back into the middle of nowhere, we begrudgingly capitulated and headed on with 5 less than friendly keepers. The stay in Perumbikular Wildlife Sanctuary was not necessarily a vibrant one, due to the severe lack of ebullience and borderline scorn of the entire staff. The few words they mumbled in English were barely legible, almost always impolite and rarely informative or helpful. Yet we cheerfully donned our hiking boots and trundled in to the bush on a bus safari, which was so rapid and rickety, it almost certainly scared off any sign of tigers of leapords in a 5 mile radies. The hikes were more relaxed, however a friendly Indian punter who occasianally did us the honour of translating harrowingly informed us that a tiger had been spotted not 25km away in the next town. Well, more the mangled remains of the poor soul who had spotted it were found. Interestingly this seemed to inspire little reaction from our guide that morning, who plundered stoically around mis-identifying birds, with a small machete having offered no safety training whatsoever and without any adherence to the dawdling Indian children falling alarmingly behind almost out of sight.

Our stay at the Reserve was sort of like watching the whole escapade unfold on screen rather than existing there in the flesh, as no one acknowledged our existence, answered our questions, or bothered to give us the low down on the schedule. 

But we made up for the objectionable cost and lack of service by nailing the buffet meals and made our own fun by drolly dubbing the interactions of the belligerent keepers with various amusing accents and scenarios. It's the little things that help. Except the kinder Indian manifestation of Indian Jones who had showed us to our room in the afternoon. We had noted the horrific scarring to his face as we entered and he managed to convey, having strung together a jumble of 3-4 words of English, that he'd unfortunately come across 2 sparring bears some years back, and was lucky enough to tell the tale. So actually, he managed to escape our jibes. But the safari tent and location we dwelled in were utterly beautiful and we spotted an elephant, plenty of spotted chital deer, samaba deer, water buffalo, crocodiles, monkeys, a very rare jungle owl, birds of paradise, woodpeckers,a malabar giant squirrel, bee catchers, drongos and many more beautiful birds. All to the back drop of the magnificient loping ghats, vast ravines of endless jungle spread out for miles around. Living inside for the night was magical.