Carmelia Haven Thekkady

... morning to the before dawn prayer that lasts 15 minutes). I go see the local caves, which turn out to be overpriced and super crowded, much to my dismay (after climbing a mountain for an hour), so I return and try to go to the Wayanard Reservation (again overpriced). I arrive only to see it's also super crowded, so again I did not enter and after talking to the warden, he advises me to come at 6:30.

The ...

... in a taxi only and I get whisked off to the Beach Hotel due to the lack of selection. The hotel turns out to be quite beautiful, and I get a room on the second floor with a separate room facing the Arabian sea filled with windows. Hardly believing my luck, I quickly put my things away and run down to the beach to watch the sunset. The beach is full of Indians, and there is a loudspeaker booming with some man speaking who knows what. As I watch the sunset, I reflect ...

... bares battle marks and scars from this illegal practice. Regardless, I squeal with delight and go take a closer look at these trees (I am a dork).

As we continue our hike, we witness monkeys leaping tree to tree, squirrels, and the usual display of tropical animals. He goes into the bush only to return with wild turmeric, ginger, cardamom and other myriad spices and herbs. He explains the forest and I appreciate his knowledge, completely loving this trek. As I love plants ...

... br>
We started @12am and both of them agreed to my thought finishing the lunch and trying Topslip as we heard and read in newspaper of wild elephants moving around there. I was pushing fast towards the guesthouse. Mohan asked me to stop the car as he found some blood drops in his legs. Damn we got down and see that it was bleeding from his feet, but can’t understand why. We started looking at his pant for leeches but nothing found… Sreeni rushed to his seat and ...

... whispered conversations near the back of the group. The atmosphere was very much that of first day at Junior School. Then from nowhere he starts screaming at a member of his staff half way though our little talk. We learn later that this concerns an on running pay dispute. This drama continues for fifteen minutes while us tourists all sit around not quite knowing what to do with ourselves. His staff then walks out in protest. Classic comedy. We ...

Tuesday July 15th, 2008 Today was a slow one in preparation for other traveling: mostly laundry and reading and such. The one event was a visit to Dr. Luke's childhood home, where we met his mother and sister-in-law and her children, who were visiting from Illinois. It was neat to see an authentic Keralan home (they had a well and a wood stove) and it was a relaxing time overall. Wednesday July 16th, 2008 Today we took the ...

... up a nearby hill in the heat of midday. As you can imagine Becky went an interesting tomato colour due to the intense heat (she's not unfit!). Apart from the spectacular views we also chased a black bear which a local woman had spotted, to our disappointment it never came out and gave us a wave and neither did any elephants. Don't let us mislead you however because it was definitely worth seeing the huge cricket and the 2day-old elephant dung! Whey! Our guide ...

... temple door was open and the Kali Murti (Statue of divine mother in fierce form representing Birth, death and preservation. Her name Kali meaning "Devourer of time", everything withers away with time, except the God in you, the Love, the formless substratum of all existence, or soul in Christian terms-whatever you want to call it) was exposed with some burning lamps lit around her. Feeling compelled and drawn in. I approached her ...

... We got on the train, at first we could not find any seats and then we did. We went to this lovely house, the man was called Dr Pooppally and his wife was Mrs Pooppally. The first day we had a beautiful explore in his garden. It wasn't a hotel, it was a house. The food was delicious. We ate every dinner, lunch and breakfast. Mummy kept saying "The food is delicious, but I can't eat any more, I'm so full!" We met Ben and Polly, they were so nice. One day we went canoeing, when we ...

... Had a nice cup of chai with a few of the boys, really good feeling overall and great produce (brussel sprouts, artichokes, coffee...) met up with our ubiquitous travel budy, Rickard, after the market. Great to see him, only caught up briefly in Bombay, so we found a grassy spot and talked about all the great food we'd been trying (among other things). Mark got a sudden spurt of adventourousness (i know that isn't a word!) and tried ...