Jungle Fever

While staying in the middle of nowhere Wayanad, we managed to do a bunch of stuff. Our hotel was a bit interesting, a giant concrete tower standing above the town and each room was incorporated into suites of three 2-bed rooms. Robby and I shared a suite with two other women from the group; kind of like being back in college, except everyone went to bed by 10:30pm and you showered in cold water.

In the morning we hiked our way up a winding road for a mile and then climbed tons and tons of mismatched steps to reach the mouth of Edakkal Cave. This cave holds petroglyphs from 6000AD. When we first walked in, huffing and puffing from our refreshing, yet hard climb (mostly due to the majority of the group being out of shape, it being hot, and Robby and I being sick), all anyone saw was a bunch of scribbled geometric shapes carved into the sandstone walls. Swirls, lines, and squares were indecipherable amongst each other. Luckily this little journey came with a guide who was kind enough to point out figures - king and queen, an elephant, a flower, some tools, and a deer. I would have never guessed much of anything without his help, but it was actually easy to identify the images once you knew what you were looking at.

Back down the hill we went after learning the history of the petroglyphs - some society put them there to tell the story of their village or Kings and added SanSkirt and one of the local Indian languages for the region. In India there are over 600 different languages, each city or region has their own and not everyone speaks Hindi, so it's a little hard to communicate "thank you" to someone in their own language. Luckily, most everyone speaks a little English.

We hopped on our bus to arrive at some local villages. While getting there, we drove past tea, coffee, and Banana fields. South India is very lush, green all year long and excellent at agriculture - the main source of income for the people. The local villages were not what I expected. We walked down a lovely coconut tree lined road with nicely built houses on either side, stopping at one house to watch a group of ladies cut up coconuts for the markets. Since the women don't much venture away from their homes, the neighboring men bring them their coconuts to break, so the women have something to do and so they don't have to. I guess it's a good trade off. 

While walking on our jaunt down the well paved dirt road, four young men joined us. They lead us to their village (I think they lived there or at least knew everyone who did live there) and showed us about. The village of the Panyas people was still modern looking. Homes, some with electricity and wooden shutters on the windows, new doors, beds inside, etc - littered the landscape. Laundry swayed in the light breeze, strung across ropes while the villagers peeked out from their doors to watch us. The Panyas people are farmers, they work the fields, growing bananas, rice, ginger, and other stuff. Sanjay pointed out cardamom, pepper, fern trees and some other stuff I forgot, but basically if you got strained in the middle of this area, you could live a long life and never be hungry.

We got to walk by banana grows, across the rice fields, through the ginger plants to the neighboring village of the Kuruma people. It was a gorgeous sight - multiple shades of green stretch as far as the eyes could see with different sizes of trees lining the horizon. A few farmers sat under a grove of banana trees enjoying the shade and watching us with equal curiosity. Apparently the villages get non-Indian visitor once a month or longer. They wanted to know why we would be enjoying their livelihood (because it's vastly different then living in a city and not seeing farming, especially maintained by archaic machinery and stock animals) while we wanted to know how they worked the fields and what they grew. Our guide explained what we wanted to know.

The Kuruma's still live like it's the olden days - staying together as one giant family and supporting themselves by living off the land. Their houses seem to be almost as up-to-date as the Panyas', but the people were more shy and wore typical, traditional clothing. The lovely walk through the farmlands and villages ended at a "shaman's" house. The family living in the house have been the villages' doctors for centuries, still using some of the old equipment their ancestors owned. We got to hold an old medicine account book, tools, bowls, a money box, and some weapons dating back 150 years or more. Nice family heirlooms.

The next day we drove about six hours on a small little bus across bumpy and curvy roads to a "resort"  in the middle of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The resort, a loose term, was a large expanse of land with small stone huts (where we stayed) lined across the middle; a unsafe looking kids playground that is still in use; a rose garden, minus the roses; and a restaurant. Two of the sides of the property are open to the surrounding jungle which incidentally allowed some large creature to throw our neighboring cabin's chair off the porch and leave behind a massive crap to wake up to on the front stairs. Robby and I, but not our neighboring touristers, slept right through the ruckus. It's strange, but this resort was the first and only night that both Robby and I slept through the night, not waking up at least once. I guess birds chirping, trees swaying, animals stomping, are peaceful sounds to our subconscious'. 

Before actually sleeping though, we got to go on an Indian safari through the tiger reserve. We loaded into open air jeeps and headed into the jungle...well, along the paved road lining the jungle. The reserve only allows the forest service to venture into the jungle, everyone else drives on the road and looks for the animals. Our "safari" became a Where's Waldo - who can spot the wild animals first as we drive by at 30mph. At first we were all disappointed because really, why would a wild tiger meander  to the side of a busy road and chill for photos? Sanjay assured us that the animals were used to the cars and came to the road.

He was right, we photographed water deer in droves, a family of peacocks crossing the road (I'm sure there's a joke there somewhere), some wild boars, and....elephants!!! A family of them were munching on the trees not 15 feet from about 25 people and four vehicles. It was so surreal. They didn't give a shit as long as they got dinner and we got to see Elephants! The whole safari was therefore a huge success. I didn't even care that I didn't see a tiger. I'm pretty sure one saw us, but I don't think they are dumb enough to get close to the road like the other animals.

When we left Mudumalai, we bused through Bandipur Tiger Reserve on our way to Mysore. I guess all the jungles in the area are Tiger reserves and the name changed because we changed States. We saw more deer and more elephants. This time they we right on next to the road. One almost walked up to the bus, I really wish he would have, but Sanjay was getting nervous and told the driver to move along. :( 

Mysore is a huge metropolis in South India and happiness for me. I love the quaint towns with a small marketplace and the surrounding jungle or farmlands, but I also thrive on a city atmosphere. I feel like I need the chaos of traffic, people running about, industrial noise, and more options. Our hotel was perhaps a little slice of heaven in this country. The shower was amazing - continuous hot water with a shower head that sprayed with enough strength to drench my head, a flushing flush toilet, and clean and dry towels. The bed was soft and cozy and there was a working ac unit, although I apparently wasn't smart enough to figure it out, so we spent most of the night sweating since the thing was set to just blowing about the hot air in the room. Either way, I was so excited to be clean and comfortable, even if it was for one night.

We spent the morning delving into Mysore history. First stop was the Mysore Palace - a gigantic palace that was home to the Royals for centuries. The country became a democracy under British rule in the late 1800's and it's own independent Country in 1949. The Roayls were allowed to live in their palace up until 1974, when the Palace was turned over to the government, effectively ending the reigns of maharajas in Mysore forever. The first Palace was comprised of solid wood, a sight to behold I'm sure, but a fire in the kitchen one evening burnt 95% of the place to the ground. The queen commissioned a new, grander palace to be built using every non-flammable construction material available. The outcome, a beautiful, multistory palace with ornate columns lined in gold, peacock etched stained glass windows, semi precious stone inlaid steps, silver doors, painted ceilings depitching the three main Hindu Gods, nine gates, a Terrance, gardens, meeting hall, and much more. The second palace took 12 years to make and was completed around 1910.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the palace or wear shoes. There's something to be said for walking barefoot through a rather large home, amidst 1000's of other tourist. Needless to say, my feet needed a good scrub afterwards. Since there was no guide at this location, we were given headsets that told the stories of the rooms. It was great up until Robby's player died. We tried to share, but Sanjay wouldn't hear of it and ran back to the front of the palace to get us another recorder. This one was temperamental and if you made one wrong move, it flashed "error" and turned off. My player worked, but you had to jiggle the cable to listen out of only one ear. Robby stole my player and poor Sanjay ran back and forth to the headset room four more times. I'm not sure if Robby and I just had bad luck or if the tape lady kept giving Sanjay the same bad players, but it took five tries to get a player that not only stayed on, but actually played the history. No one else seemed to share our tape player bad luck. Hum.

As the sun was setting, we arrived at a Hindu Temple honoring one of the main Gods wives. We got in line to look at a statue and then were herded out into the courtyard, I was roped into buying an offering of smelly flowers, so I hope I'm granted good luck or whatever the goddess grants. Many people deposited their offerings, said a small prayer, and kissed the image of the goddess. It was nice to see so many people rejoicing in their faith and happy.

The last stop of the Mysore tour was to visit the worlds second largest bull statue. The bull is the travel animal of the Hindu God Brama, the creator. It was a 25 tall, black painted bull that looked very friendly and a little goofy. He sat on top a hill and looked out on all of Mysore below. Next to the statue, Sanjay treated the group to fresh squeezed sugar cane with ginger and lime smushed in the middle. It was a tad sweet, but very refreshing drink.

And so Mysore ends, we slept in a grand hotel (according to my standards), and enoughed the major highlights of a big city.