Mudumalai

The drive from Mysore wasn't as bad as Rory makes it sound (though the road was), he slept most of the way! But once you get out of the towns and villages and into the national park everything changes. The roads are new and, once your through the entrance, you suddenly find yourself in the jungle! This perked me up a bit as I was still recovering from a rather bad night of being sick on a train. I didn't hold out much hope of seeing any wild animals this close to an Indian version of a national highway (no bigger than normal roads in England). But then the driver slowed down and pointed to two wild elephants casually wandering through the bushes near the road! And it didn't stop there, the last hour of the drive to Gudalur to meet Colin was filled with sightings of elephants, deer, peacocks, monkeys, warthogs and bison, all wild. I would recommend Mudumalai to anyone!

The accommodation we booked was at a place called Jungle home, located just outside the gates to Mudumalai national park. We decided, when booking it, we would do it properly and booked the 'deep jungle home, surrounded by jungle on three sides'. In my mind I had it pictured as down a dirt track with the hotel just out of sight. In reality it was a kilometer away, past farms and down a flooded road. But that wasn't the biggest shock, that game as it got dark and the rains started. The roof was tiled in two layers, not joined together and not joined perfectly to the walls. This meant that, to shelter from the rain, it was the perfect home for rats. All night you could hear them scuttling around. And after we played some cards, ate dinner and went to sleep Rory was woken with a massive shock when one jumped from the beams of the roof and onto him! Luckily on closer inspection it turned out to be a mouse, but we're not sure what jumped on me the second night as it ran away through a hole under the wall before we could see it.

It wasn't all bad though, a good shower with hot water, plenty of food (Indian and Colin brought over some western stuff like Nutella) and helpful live in staff. In all the room was an experience, one we didn't want to repeat for the third and final night, not just because of the rats but also because of the unfortunate rains which limited what we were able to do. But while we were there we decided to do a day and a night safari. The day one was in the Jeep Colin borrowed, and we drove through the park. We saw all the same animals again and pulled into a nature reserve building to have a read about the place. On leaving the building we were greeted with the sight of a large elephant, slowly walking down the path to meet us. This one was very friendly, he walked right up to the steps and held out his trunk to meet our outstretched hands in a sort of elephant handshake. He was a tame elephant and had a chain around his back leg like he had escaped. When the handler came to collect him we followed him to the other elephants they had, one was a 9 month old baby! He was shy but very cute!

That night we decided to take a night safari. This time we were in a jeep with a driver, no doors and walls. No lights inside of course so, except for the headlights and torch, it was pitch black. The safari took 3 hours, and we saw all the above listed wild animals again, but this time at night. However, it was what we saw in the first 20 minutes that was unbelievable. A wild leopard ran down one side of the road, crossed it in front of the car and then walked down the other side! We stopped and watched it, amazed at the rare sighting of a wild cat and the fact that it was yards away from us in a jeep with no protection! It looked at us quizzically, walked through the bushes and then treated us to a roar! That made the week.

The final thing to do there was an elephant safari, but unfortunately due to the rains this wasn't possible. Because of this (and the kamikaze flying rats) we decided to head back to Coimbatore (where we caught a flight to Chennai), via Ooty to stay for one night.

(More to come soon, but please write comments to let us know you are reading this and we're not just writing to ourselves!)