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Early morning mist came flooding down the mountains as we tucked into our “Wonderful” Toast. I say Toast.. Slightly warmed bread is a better description. Today we would be heading south to the town of Kumily and the Periyar National Park, located in the Thekkady area. Our hope would be to discover some elephants in the heavily jungled Western Ghats.

We decided to take our hosts advice and get 2 buses to Kumily and bypass the need to go into Munnar (which would add 2 hours to our journey).

“Come come on” he beckoned and we climbed into his brand new 4×4.

The bus was smaller and the seats smaller so Karen and I sat apart. This was a bad mistake as the windy roads that hugged the the mountainside threw her around like a rag doll as we headed up road 19. We managed to make our connecting bus and gave each other a high five. But Ganesh was not smiling on us and our bus broke down. We had to wait for the next one. It was during this part of our journey that John’s bladder came to life and he needed to make an urgent dash to the nearest restaurant. A 10 Rupee bribe later and the Patrons Only rule was waivered 🙂

They say a watched kettle never boils and while John took his eye off the road the replacement bus arrived. Luckily Karen was on the case and her broad Scottish accent ensured the bus waited for John, who was running up the road after it.

With our new bus we were back in business and an hour later we descended into the town of Kumily where we downgraded from our bus to a TukTuk for the last kilometer of our journey through the streets. Our new home for the next few days was the Kerala House Hotel that was located near the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary and we even managed a cheeky room upgrade from the ground floor to the penthouse with private balcony and some fantastic views into the park. Nice!

A small walk around town yielded a cookery class, an Elephant Ride and Boat trip bookings for the following day. A lot of the shops sold cardamom spice cultivated from the nearby Cardamom Hills.

The highlight of the evening was the ‘High Tea’ at the local restaurant. Don’t worry viewers.. We haven’t gone all Downton Abbey on you. Due to the lack of off-license at the said restaurant they had to serve Kingfisher beer in pots of tea which we drank out of cups!!

The next morning we were settled with some lovely breakfast on our balcony that was delivered to our room and this included 8 slices of real Toast.

What a difference a day makes!

As 10am worked its way towards us our lift to ou excursions arrived…

To be continued