A 7.30 breakfast with a 8.30 departure. The journey to the Peryiar national park and the Peryiar Tiger Sanctuary is approx a 4 hour journey on the coach.
Sad to leave Vanilla County which has been a very pleasant few days.
The coach quite quickly travels up higher than the line of rubber trees. At somewhere between 400 and 500 m from what we learnt about rubber yesterday.
We travel through the villages and towns of Velliklum, Vagamon, Kolakalamenu, Kuttikkanum to Peermede for our first stop for coffee and tea. We soon enter tea growing country after leaving the rubber. The green regimented neatly trimmed bushes of tea carpet the hillside all the way to the side of the road. We stopped the coach fro a few moments to look at the tea being harvested by the workers overseen by the supervisor under his umbrella.
Our coffee/tea stop in Peermade is at a very odd hotel called the Himarani International situated on a near vertical hillside overlooking the river. We had to walk down two flights of stairs to get to the dining room which was painted a strange black on the hillside side of the room but had a commanding view of the river below. We then set of again and after only about 10-15 mins stopped again at the Mount St. Francis, Pattumala Church And Pilgrim Centre otherwise known as the Matha Pilgrim Shrine.
This catholic church is set on top of the hill with fantastic views across the surrounding tea planted hills. The church is decorated with as lovely star with the words “HAPPYX, MAS”. A good stop and the church peaceful with a few locals praying and the local priest sitting reading on one side. Interesting the church has no pews as in the UK and from what could be seen of those praying the locals stand or kneel on the floor but do not sit.
We travel on for approx another hour through Pambanar, Vandiperiyar (a busseling town which apparently is mostly populated with people from the neighbouring Tamil Nadu who work in the tea plantations) to Kumuli and reach our hotel the Grand Thekkady at about 12.30. We were greeted by a very sinister Father Christmas who was dancing outside the hotel to welcome guests and played art of the festivities for the remainder of the day. As we walked in we got a bindi on the forehead, a chocolate sweet and a glass of local sherry in a shot glass!
We all had a rather chaotic lunch with 4 families spread across 3 tables before getting ready for a 2.15 start – a quick walk to the Tiger Sanctuary. The hotel although only 2 years old was a it grubby – we were spoilt over the past few days.
The Tiger Sanctuary walk was termed a “soft trek” and before we set off for our to hour walk we had to put on leech socks which were thick cotton knee length loose socks which went over both feet and lower leg and tie below the knee. We all looked very silly!
The walk was nice but disappointing from a wildlife perspective. We saw some big deer and a couple of monkeys at the start but over the next 100 mins or so saw nothing – the elephants (which we saw signs of had disappeared – there are over 1000 so we had a good chance of seeing these normally) and the potential of tiger (only 30 left) never materialised.
The rest of the day (5.30 on). Shopping and the Christmas Eve celebration on the rooftop restaurant of the hotel.
The shopping was a success with a dhothi for the boys, new silk tops / trousers of the girls and some secret Santa gifts for boxing day all sorted. I am not sure we did a good job bargaining but we got what we wanted. Charlotte was tempted by a silver ankle bracelet at 2500 (then 2000) and might have gone lower (approx £30) but decided she would never wear it!
Dinner was at 8 and Eugine (our guide) gave Nick, Tim and I a quick lesson on tieing a dhothi and we were ready! They had laid on quite a feast (a 500 rupees a head) with 4 different rices, about 6 meat curries, 6 vegetarian, parathas, appams, BBQ fish, sweets (gulab jamon, halwa (sp?), cheesecake, ice cream. We were entertained by some excellent Indian dancing from a young couple.
It was then our turn to dance and, to Boney M and other cliche Xmas songs, the Father Christmas from earlier at the door, started to encourage adults and children to gyrate in from of the other diners. It was all good fun and quite silly.
Things started to peter out at about 10 and the kids disappeared to Mills and Fiz’s room and the adults to Nick and Libby’s. We sat around chatting and said goodnight about 11.30.
After quickly getting stockings ready and telling Charlotte and Tim to be at our door at 7.30 we went to bed.