Kalpetta is our choice of place in South Wayanad. It only took another 3 buses today. Thankfully the hotel is nice and we have good showers. Cold but nice. One thing that was I noticed the way the Indian people are so enthusiastic towards foreigners embracing their ways. Its quite the task trying to eat your food while the whole restaurant is sitting and stareing but this is almost always the case. As soon as I began eating lunch with my fingers the restaurant owner was so happy and was saying 'thankyou, thankyou' over and over and kept coming over with more and more things to try and would stand and watch you untill you tried it and of course gave its approval.
Today we went on our trip around the sanctuary. We hired a jeep and driver and were up bright and early at 5am. Just as I was starting to give up hope, we finally spotted two large Wild Elephants and its baby calf. So cute. We unfortunately did not get to see any leopards which Jon was most upset about! The never ending rolling hills of tea farms were really cool too!
Today we moved on to a little town called Ooty in the Western Ghats of the state of Tamil Nadu. Ooty about 2,500 metres above sea level and was really Picturesque. On our walk around the town we started chatting to a couple of people. One local guy called Benny who fell in love with Emelie, who was 19 and wanted to show us around the town the next day and the surrounding areas. It was nice and another guy named Sharan, who mostly now lives in the US, who also fell in love with Emelie was going to show us around too. I did not know what to make of Sharan as he was saying alot of crazy things about how he owns this and works here and saves this but it turned out he was pretty ledgit, well almost. He took us to one of his 'projects' that he was working on in the beautiful hills in the middle of nowhere about 1 hour from Ooty. On the way he was stopping and chatting to everyone. Foremans of building sites and managers, he stopped to take someones blood pressure as the man could not afford to go to the doctor. (his blood pressure was over 400 by the way) When we finally got to his little bungalow that he was building in the hills it was so beautiful. He had a few locals working for him, including this sweet little girl who would translate the Tamil to English for him.
It can get rather hard in India, even for Indians as there is about 13 different languages in the country and most have no similarities whatsoever! Sharan was fighting the loggers from Sri Lanka by keeping a close watch and planting more trees. He was doing all this 'as he didin't have a real job.' Supposedly he had a number of projects like this here and in the US. Wether that was true or not, his little bungalow was so spectacular as well as the area including the beautiful waterfall close by, where we spent alot of our time.
Indians, especially the country ones are so pleasant and peaceful. They have nothing, lots of them but they are happy it seems. As we went for a little walk through the hills alot of the locals would come out of their little huts and houses just to see you and say hello. The kids would always wave and say hello, as well as the adults. Its different state to state but none so obvious in this area. They love getting their photo taken just because some have never seen or used a camera and they just want to see themselves on the camera I guess. These huts were always so impressively spotless inside which was always so amazing. Sweeping the dust away with their home made duster!
Today we made our way towards the coast again so we left Ooty on a little steam train down the 2,500 metres with some amazing picturesque scenery. We eventually, after a bus ride arrived at Coimbatore where we would catch the over night sleeper train to the backwaters of Kollam back in Kerala. I suggested to use the sleeper class on the train but as I learnt that night that sometimes you were lucky with the conditions on that class and sometimes you were not and on that journey, we were not. The bed was quite filthy and unfortunately my late night trip to the toilet was not too pleasant as the smell was so over powering, I was overcome and I vomited. Not good!
