It's a jungle out here

We arrived in the town of Kumily a few days ago. What a difference. We are high in the mountains surrounded by spice gardens and tea plantations. It is also about 20 degrees cooler here and it feels amazing. No sweating. What a relief.

Our primary reason for being here was to go to the Periyar Animal Reserve. So far in India we have only seen farm animals such as cows and goats. It is nice to see, but I've gotten quite used to the fact I have to watch out for wayward cows in the road as I try dodge rickshaws and trucks in traffic...

Anyway, we are in the jungle here. So far, we went on a small trek(Damon will tell you all about that adventure) and took a boat ride around the animal reserves lake. I was beautiful. We saw all types of bison and strange deer and many more birds. Our best find was a family of elephants that let us watch them from our boat. It is a very strange experience with these boats. First of all there must be about 5 to 10 different languages spoken on the boat and we are all playing, "I Spy" as we cruise past animals hiding in the bushes and trees all around us. But everyone gets excited when we see soething and we get out our cameras and try to get a good shot of something 200-300 feet away, in the rain. This boat ride kills all camera talent.

As usual, the best animals showed up in the parking lot of the boat station. There were many monkeys in the trees looking down on us and they were almost close enough to touch...almost.
We also saw this thing referred to as a giant squirrel, well not only is he about 4 times the usual size but he also looks kinda punk with blue and red tufts of fur on his back and his head. No tattoos though.

The next day we went on a tour of a tea plantation and factory, Connemara Tea. It was amazing to see how much work goes into tea. Women do all the picking of the leaves and the men work the machines. As with a lot of things in India I ask, what year is it? I was told women have more nimble hands... Anyway, there were many machines in the factory to cut, dry and roast the tea. This place made all the tea into different grades of tea powder. It takes about 22 hours from picked tea to turn into drinkable tea.

Next was on to the spice tour. I have to admit I'm pretty ignorant to how all this stuff grows, so the tour was very informative. We saw pepper plants, cardamon, vanilla pods, coffee, pineapple, cocoa, cinnamon, coconut, curry leaves, nutmeg trees, etc. There was a lot to learn. One of coolest things we saw was land crabs that aerate the earth around the plants. They were hiding in holes all over the place. They were about the size of hermit crabs. Who knew these things existed? After the tour, there was a elephant we got to visit to outside the spice farm. Our guide also told us that in India there were many hermaphrodite elephants which could get a female elephant pregnant or get pregnant themselves, which I also never heard of. So strange. All in all, a good tour. After that we went out to dinner, ate a lot, went back to the guesthouse and waited for the rain. We were not disappointed. The thunder and lightning was intense and it poured all night.

This morning we got up, and went for breakfast. We tried to write some emails but the power went off again. And we found ourselves in our guides spice shop were we bought many spices to bring home. Tonight, we are off to watch Kerala martial arts. Hopefully we will make it out of there alive. Pray for the power to stay on.

Debbie