Before we left Thekkady, Gabe put a SamStone in the pond at Spice gardens.

The folks at Spice Garden were so attentive and so sweet. It took a half an hour to say goodbye to them !. Many of them had come to us to talk about Sam.. I’ll never forget their kindness.

Here’s Deepestra and Jobin, the guy who helped us get our charger back.. Thank you !

They all lined up to wave goodbye .. it felt like a family send-off !

The rains last night flooded the streets even more.. it was nearly to the doors of the car.

We got out on the road about 9:15.. I realized that my camera was now broken (my backpack fell on the floor).. We switched to Gabe’s camera.   Here are some sights from the road.

We caught and passed Patrick Linda and Raj.. Ha !

We stopped at a tea processing factory . Here are the houses where soem of the pickers live.

Today was a Keralan Hindu holiday. This car was on a pilgrimage. You can tell by the flowers. 

Here come Patrick and Linda again !

This is strong communist country. They say it was he first deomcraticlly elected communist government in the world. It’s pretty cool.

Here’s the tea factory.. we got there about 10 minutes before it opened.

Here are the leaves in a washing hopper

This machine takes out the sticks and stems..  The tea then goes through a grinder, fermentor  and dryer. 

The dried tea is graded by grain size. This factory only makes powedered teas.. not leaf teas.  Tea dust was everywhere.. they had broom to keep cleaning the wall. Everyone had face masks on.. except us !

We took off from the tea place and started decending from 1000 meters towards sea level. Lots of twists and turns. Small towns, big towns, crazy drivers.. etc.

We came across this beautiful church on top of a hill. The setting was unbelievably gorgeous

We passed our friends Freida, David and Roddy  from Scotland. Everyone is doing about the same things so we keep bumping into one another. They’re great !

Another (!) beautiful waterfall

We stopped for tea and Linda and Patrick, Frieda, David and Roddy stopped too.. they hadn’t met so that was fun. We ate fried bananas and Chilli-graham fritters and drank masala tea.

Hey Chai.. this picture is for you !  (We miss you doggy !)..(You too Scott !)

We came across a cattle market.. Too bad the camera doesn’t capture smells ! Some of these things looked more like water buffalo’s than cows.. They’re horns were painted beautiful colors.. They could all stand to gain a bit of weight too.. We still haven’t  figured out which cows are holy and free and which ones are for meat.. 

Here’s a truck being loaded with raw rubber from one of the many rubber plantations.

We came across a working elephant on our travels.. he must have been working in the forest.

Shortly after that we turned down one of the small tracks that lead along the canals. Our houseboat was moored there.

Here’s our boat and it’s friendly crew !

The place is crisscrossed with canals instead of roads.

Bye Manooj.. see you tomorrow !

Mathew guides us out of the canal and we’re on our way.

Here’s our room.. nice !

There are tons of small boats in this lake… most being poled or paddled, but a few under sail.

Nothling we had to do now except watch the beautiful scenery roll by.

Fisherman kept approaching the boat asking if we wanted to by tiger prawns. None for us..

The first of several meals ..  they were all delicious.

We’d moored for lunch.. we got off on this concrete peer in the middle of nowhere.. water on all sides. No people. We’d thought about hiding from the crew as a joke.. but the prospect of getting left there wasn’t very fun. Gabe found a great place for a samstone..  High on the trunk of a tree.

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Linda and Patrick again !

They let Gabe steer for a good long while. His second boat piloting experience for the trip.

We saw so many cool things.. Like this beautiful 400 year old church out on the jetty.. accessible only by boat.

The boats are so nicely built. Ours is one of 650 that are working the backwaters of kerala. 

Here are some more of the crazy houses perched on these narrow jetties. These houses may be remote.. but they are not without creature comforts.

Here’s why we didn’t want to eat the prawn’s… Sanitation is not priority number 1 here.

Here’s a bunch more scenes from inside and outside of the boat.

Diane caught the sun just right so it gave her green stars in her eyes.

We came up to this power pole just moments after it fell into the water. Even though the power was out, everyone was pretty nervous about crossing it with the motor running.. so they backed up…took a run at it.. and killed the motors and coasted over

The law says they have to stop moving by 5:30.. so we docked on a jetty in the middle of nowhere.  There was a great subtle sunset beginning. 

Patrick and Linda again !. They parked a few meters up from us.

We all took a walk up the jetty to near the end. There was a boat taxi stop there even though there was only about 3 houses in walking distance.

We got back on the boat and started in on the beer/soda with our  friends.

The boat guys worked it out so that Linda and Patrick could eat with us.. Both sets of cooks did their stuff and we shared all the dishes. It was fantastic.. chapatti, okra curry, dahl, mixed veggie curry, pickle, kerala rice, chicken curry and papadoms. Yum

After dinner, Gabe did some more work on his homework… He’s really doing his work on this trip. I’m proud of him.

Around 8:30 our friends headed home and we went into our room. We watched a few parts of some ‘Bollywood’ Indian musicals then  put in one of our videos.. I lasted about 5 minutes… then was fast asleep.   I woke around 4:30 as I’ve been doing every day for a while.. I lay in bed until about 6AM.. then went out on the deck to watch the sunrise.. which is where this blog began..

We got to watch the dancers suiting up. It’s an elaborate process.. Everything about the figures is exaggerated. The ‘good guys’ have their faces expanded by wearing glued on paper ‘cheeks’. They all wear bustles of rice bags tied at their waste. The colored make up is made from local minerals and  oils only..   . There is a strict vocabulary of hand gestures that allow the story to be told  while the dance is going on.

One of the most remarkable things is the ‘vocabulary’ of exaggerated facial gestures. I have a great movie of this.. but I’ll have to upload it later.

The dance production lasted about an hour. It was amazing. One guy chanted the text while accompanying the dance with tiny cymbals. Two other guys kept a beat with a high pitched drum. The characters didn’t talk.. but the ‘bad’ guy (actually Lord Shiva dressed up as a bad guy) made these wild ‘whooping sounds..   I’ve got some  great video of the dance.. but again.. you’ll  have to wait on seeing that until I can upload .  We got a chance to go up and be photographed with the dancers afterwards.. Which one is me ?

We met Manooj at 9 and hurried into the wildlife preserve, eager o see what nature would offer. The preserve is a huge and busy place.. not the idyllic isolate spot that I’d imagined. We got tickets for a 2 hour boat cruise and climbed aboard. Frankly, the cruise was a bit of a disappointment.. the boat was full of expatriate Indians with their families. There was  so much talking that it was hard to hear anything. The wildlife take during our run was pretty low.  We saw a kingfisher. A large buck dear, a  wild pig and some big water birds.. An earlier group had spotted elephants.. but no such luck for us. 

Here’s a beautiful Kingfisher

Here is a large deer of some sort

We saw many of these big birds that acted like a cross between a Loon and an Eagle . We called them ‘legals’ :

We also saw a wild pig of some sort.

The boat ride was too noisy, too crowded and too slow.. that said.. it did have nice if unexciting scenery. Diane, Gabe and I hung out in the back and made up our own commentary… “look.. there’s another rock !” ..  

We were pretty happy to be back on shore.. We felt like telling all the folks waiting to take the boat to do something else instead.

The parking lot was full of white monkeys when we got back. There were 10 or so of them hanging around the loading dock. We never get tired of watching them. They are so clever and funny… finding, begging, stealing food. I’m not sure they have the best diet..

We met up with Manooj and tried to figure out what was next. We talked ourselves into taking a short trek in the woods.. We knew that midday would not be a great time to see animals, but we wanted a more outdoorsy experience than the crowded boat… So we went inside and hired a guide.. Inside wee finally got a glimpse of a tiger.. albeit on a poster ?

Our guide, Raju, first helped us slither into ‘leech socks’ to keep the suckers at bay..

We then boarded a rope towed bamboo raft to cross over an arm of the lake  to the trekking path.  Gabe helped pull us across while we waved goodbye to Manooj. The raft was the best part of the Peryar experience. It was so cool.. I felt like Charon in the underworld.. or like something from the Mists of Avalon.

The trek was beutiful and peacful.. not much in the way of animals to see.. We did see some large black monkey’s (about 50 pounds each) ..

Raju also found some lumps of frankincense .. which is hardened sap from a tree.. A bit later, we found a tree of it. Raju lit it for a few minutes so we could smell it. It smelt exactly like a Catholic Church.

About that point the leech attack began.. Gabe and Diane noice that their shooes were literrly crowling with leeches. They both stayed pretty calm as Raju coated our feet with salt and tobacco powder to keep the leeches away. No one in our family likes leeches.. Raju gave Gabe a stick to knock them off from time to time.. but warned tat they might climb up the stick. From that time on it was harder for us to look at the stuff in the forest.

Leeeches aside, we did see some cool stuff. We saw some really beautiful and massive old white ceders. They were so huge and tall it made us feel like ants .. or leeches.. did I tell you about the leeches ? 

We also found a very cool porcupine quill. It was as big around as a darning needl and as sharp as a needle. We carried it for the whole trip…

We also saw termites.. Raju didn’t believe that we’d eaten termites in Costa Rica.. though he didn’t feel like trying them himself.

We saw a huge wasps nest.. luckily no wasps

We eventually got out of the forest to the edge of the lake. No more leeches.. (did I mention the leeches ? )   We had a really pleasant walk along the lake edge looking for animals.. The best we got was this sign of a recent elephant  visit…  Hey.. not much.. but you take what you can get… It was better than leeches.. (did I already talk about the leeches ? )

Oh.. wait.. we did see some wildlife on the lake trail.. we found this little grog who had really interesting light and dark camouflage that made him almost invisible. He was pretty tiny.. about 3 leech lengths long..

We made our way back to the raft and crossed back to the dock. We started to take our leech socks off when we noticed that Diane’s was covered with blood (!).. One of the leeches (did I tell you that there were leeches ? ) had managed to burrow through her leggings.. She was bleeding pretty freely from the tiny hole.. Raju fixed her up with a bit of newspaper.. It was an adventure !

As we walked back up in the parking lot an Indian woman I’d seen at breakfast came and snatched the porcupine quill from my hand without asking  and threw it away.. she told us that if we kept it in our house, our family would quarrel. It was pretty funny.. I suppose I should be grateful for the warning.. I don’t think I could have taken the quill through customs anyway.  We spent a few minutes looking at the monekys.. and a wild pig that was walking around looking for stuff to eat.

Then we headed back to the hotel for some leech-free relaxation.. Just after we got back to the hotel I got the call that a guy had been able to bring my camera charger the 4 hours from Munnar.. he was a driver like Manooj who was bringing some travelers anyway. I went down to thank him. His name was Anil.. and he was such a nice guy. I thanked him a million times and we talked for awhile..  Like everybody here, he genuinely likes helping people.. I gave him some money for the bother anyway.. I was happy to have my charger again..