Mudumalai National Park

English - A new month, a new altitude and back to some more respectable temperatures! We are dropping a thousand feet, literally in a clapped out government run bus. This was one of the smaller buses (late as usual) because the roads are so steep and corners so sharp that the bigger buses can' make the trip. It takes roughly 2 hours to go 40km and by the time we get to the bottom the bus is screaming for help. We headed for Mudumallai national park home to Elephant, deer, leopards and tigers amongst others in search of some un-caged wildlife. We stayed in a very nice wooden lodge on the banks of the main river through the park which is where we saw most of the wildlife. We took a government run tour through the park but this was not up too much. A loud diesel bus filled with tourists is hardly the most covert of sightseeing tours but there were no alternatives. We did come across 2 groups of wild elephants plodding along and it was much nicer to see them than the ones chained up at nearly every temple. There is also an elephant park for orphans, sick ones and some are used for day to day tasks in the park. After the tour we were able to see their bath time in the river. And what do you get with big elephants having a bath.. BFF's or Big Fat Floaters as dad likes to call them except on a monumental scale! Comprendez? Incidentally, this is the same river where everybody takes a bath, collects water and washes the dishes... Nice! Right next to our lodge were two families of monkeys that entertained us our entire stay. All the seem to do is play fight and eat! That evening we sat out outside watching the river and in the space of a couple of hours it was visited by a group of spotted dear, wild boar, peacocks, a snake and a king fisher. Needless to say we had an excellent time at the park and are looking forward to some more in the north of India.

bath time

big elephant

elephant family

lunch 30p

monkey 1

monkey 2

our lodge

spotted deer

stand back