After a hair-raising eight hour mountain journey on a local bus, we arrived in Kumily to find an eerie silence and every shop closed. Thinking the tourist season had not started, we immediately wondered whether we could catch up with the bus, but it had hurtled off down the mountain. It then began to rain.

As it turned out there was a bandh (general strike) due to the governments proposal to build a bridge to Sri Lanka which would destroy some Holy sights.

Fortunately for us a man approached us and took us to a beautiful homestay with a tropical garden and hammocks called Green Valley.

The next day we went for a jungle hike in Periyar nature reserve and we saw . . . . . . . lots of elephants! Our guide Charles tracked the elephant through the jungle (they leave quite big footprints and enormous piles of poo) and after half an hour we heard the cracking of branches and there were 4 elephants having breakfast. We watched them for a while, then they went quiet, they were watching us too. We heard more booming footsteps and another elephant appeared, a male this time with huge tusks, we were a little bit scared so backed off. We also ate curry out of a banana leaf for breakfast looking over the jungle and found the skin of a King Cobra.

The next day Charles took us on a tour of Spice Plantations and to a tea factory. The tea factory and plantation were over 200 years old and had not changed since the British set both up. So we now know where our cup of Tetley tea comes from. The countryside is amazing, really lush and green. We were a little sad to leave the next day, back on the bus to Thiruvananthpuram.