It's not about the taxi

We arranged a round trip of Kerala with our homestay. So he organized us a taxi to take us round as all the tour bus prices were exorbitant. Biiig mistake. Our taxi driver could not speak a word of English so when he arrived at a place where we wanted to go to let us know by saying "yes". Celia and I by the third time of asking were as well trained as the Elephants we were going to see, so we knew to get out the car.

We stopped off first at this Elephant training camp, it was amazing to be able to see fully grown Indian elephants at such close range and we even fed them coconuts. The trainers ordered them to lie down on the banks of the river and with the left over coconut shells, we gave them a good body scrub. Celia's index finger clamped to the camera shutter release (gotto get that thing checked). It was really exciting and the young elephants were really cute too. The one adult loved you playing with his trunk so much and used to sniff away at anything you wore on your wrist, trying to grab it with the tip of his trunk.

This is about where the fun stopped because when they were turning them over to wash the other side if they did not listen they would whip them and poke them with this massive brass hook. Did not enjoy that, but they ensured us it was all for training. This carried on for a while and the elephants were calling out in distress so we left.

We left early and went from there to the training center where in this cage at the entrance they had 2 baby elephants separated from their mothers, apparently "lost from the herd", not older than a couple months. Their trunks not longer than my forearm. It was horrible, they were crying out when the trainers hit them... it's disturbing just writing this.

There happened to be a TV crew there from some Indian channel, obviously seeing Celia and I visibly distressed, asked us if they could interview us. We both gave our strong opinions. Mine obviously more elaborately expressed than Celia's (still want to be a TV star) and went on our way. Taxi driver bleak that we ditched this place without even going in (obv. a gem of a place to him) so service getting increasingly worse.

From here we headed off to Munnar, but first a couple introductory facts:

Munnar its nearly 1600 metres above sea level and happens to be the highest tea plantation in the world. Adjacent to the tea fields is Anaimudi, the highest peakin South India, standing there at a massive 8 842 ft.

Now back to my story. Just passed Munnar town is Eravikulam National Park and home of the Nilgiri Tahr, an endangered species of the wild goat and the only one to be found south of the Himalayas. Its really amazing to see, and the trek up the single windy mountain road def worth it albeit a bit expensive.

By the time i got out the National Park it was pretty late and time to find our accommodation, with the driver already starting irritating us, i wanted to get to my room as soon as possible.

The story of this evening could use another blog post but it's so tiring and so old i will not bore you. Basically I sent the idiotic driver home on the evening of the first day because he was trying to cheat us out of money and get home early the following morning, therefore ruining our time.

Now that he was gone for good we could enjoy our dinner at the Rose Gardens homestay with, Tommy, Rajee and their fantastic children.

I sat back with a cold Kingfisher, chapatee in hand and enjoyed the fresh mountain air Kerala was offering me.