Wayanad is a wildlife sanctuary in far north east of Kerala, known for having a lot of wild elephants. We had given only given ourselves one full day here so we hoped we were lucky enough to see elephants on our only safari. The town where we were staying was some way from the sanctuary entrance and was in a pretty sad state of affairs, our hotel room reflected this too. This was more like the travelling we'd expected! 
 
On our second day we managed to get on a safari through our hotel, just the 2 of us. It was raining, as it had been for the last 3 or 4 weeks so we were glad to find our jeep had a roof! In the park itself our jeep and one in front struggled a few times in the extreme mud and it was a bit of a bone rattling journey round the park. After about 2 hours we had seen lots of deer, monkeys, a tiger pug mark (ooooh) and some strange squirrel type thing (not sure the guide meant squirrel but we'll go with that for a description). But no elephants. Hannah was getting more and more dispondent as time went on and when we left the park she put her camera away with a big sighhhhhhh. Not long after we left the park our driver pointed out two wrecked cars, apparently they had got too close to an elephant who was not in the best of moods! Put into perspective how powerful these animals can be. We thought the driver was going to take us straight back to the hotel but we hadn't realised that the park spills over into the villages and is carved up by the roads so in actual fact our driver was busy looking for elephants hiding. Suddenly he slams on the breaks and says “Elephants!”. Whaaaaaaaaat!? Through the bushes we could just make out a young male. As we watched more came into view and as we took up a position a bit further away they all started to edge towards the road we were on – some wary glances in our direction made me hold onto the jeep a bit tighter than I had been. We could clearly see four wild elephants and a baby some 5 metres away from us!! It was incredible. They edged closer and closer to the road in order to make a crossing to the other side but they wimped out in the end and wandered back into the jungle as a loud tuk tuk and lorry came whizzing past. Grrrrrrrr, stupid tuk tuks! Hannah was beaming from ear to ear on the way back. She was very happy to see elephants! On the way to the hotel our driver pointed out ginger, rubber, coffee and pepper which were growing together, cocoa and tapioca. All in all an excellent day :)