Mark's World Tour 2007-08

Wednesday 2nd January

I was up at 07.00, packed my bag and got on the ferry from Fort Cochin to Ernakulam, then got the 10.30 bus to Kumily. I was told the journey would take about six hours, but just hoped that we would get there at least before sunset. I met a German girl called Anja – from Cologne – who had been in India for a few weeks, and we chatted for a bit before the bus started off.

The journey was fine, although the bumpy, winding roads into the mountainous countryside brought back memories of those early trips in Himachal Pradesh at the start of my time in India. The landscape here, on the other hand, was covered in palm trees and even lusher forest, and minus the snow-capped peaks that dominated the backdrop in the area around Manali and Dharamsala. The bus itself didn’t have any windows, which made a novel change, but it is standard on most buses in Kerala (although the have blinds to keep out the sunlight). By the end of any journey on one of these buses, a thick layer of the dirt and dust clogs your face that has been kicked up by the bus.

We got to Kumily at 17.30, and took a rickshaw to the 'Coffee Inn Hotel' in the hope of getting a room in one of their tree huts (I was clearly having hut withdrawal systems after leaving Goa). We had to settle for a little house with a couple of rooms and a bathroom in the grounds of the complex, and it was good value, clean and quiet.

After a dinner of mashed potatoes and fried eggs (the spuds were pretty good), we made our way back to the house and got an early night, to get some rest ahead of a day trip to the nearby Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary the following morning.