Moo's Mid Life Crisis: India

Next up we traveled to Kumily, just outside Periyar National Park. It was a 4-5 hour drive, mostly through very flat land, but at the end it was straight up into the mountains. On the way we drove through a large herd of cows, and passed a number of brick making places who use clay gathered from the local hills.

We also stopped at a small local spice farm, which felt mostly like someone's back garden. The climate up in the hills is perfect for a lot of different spices, and it was nice to see them all. I must admit I don't remember exactly which one is which, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

We checked into the hotel and had a late lunch before heading out to do an optional extra of a boat ride in the national park. Unfortunately, it being the last week of holidays, the boat rides were all sold out, which was rather disappointing, particularly for me as I really wanted to see a tiger! Sanna phoned various people and managed to wangle us some tickets for the following morning, which sounded promising as there's often more wildlife about early in the morning.

I had a quiet afternoon snoozing (I was going to sort photos, but couldn't keep my eyes open), and then we all went to a Kalari show. Kalari is an ancient martial art form, originating in Kerala (South India) and is known to date from at least 300 BC. We were told it is the origin/mother of all martial arts (such as Kung Fu and Muy Thai) but, on later reading, that's maybe not quite true. Never believe the hype till you've checked Wikipedia!

The show was pretty good and the performers were undoubtedly skilled, but the production was rather lacking (wildly varying sound level, music stopping and starting halfway through etc). I did like the 'pit' for performing in, I'm sure it let the performers go more all-out without having to worry about accidentally running into the audience!

After Kalari it was time for dinner. Well, time to make dinner! The other 2 guys wanted to do a cooking class, and to make things simpler I went along too. It turned out to be great fun and darn tasty. I did get distracted by the antics of geckos on the walls though. We learned how to make Malabar Paratha, of which I am now a big fan - sooooo much nicer than an naan. The chef was delightfully bonkers and made the whole thing into quite the entertainment, and also the tuk-tuk driver who picked us up.

Next morning we were up early for the trip into the park. The 30 min bus ride there was a little bumpy, there was certainly no chance of catching a few zzz's on the way. At the lake we were entertained by the local monkey troupe playing about on the roof, and one even wanted Jack's cereal bar.

It was all misty and quiet (apart from the horde of Indian tourists, and the monkeys) and looked mysterious enough to provide us with a tiger, but I was to be disappointed in that specific respect. No tiger. Boooooooooo. But there was lots of other stuff. Yay!