where the wild things are

Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala is supposed to be a place of refuge for elephants and tigers, but the only evidence I ever saw of the big animals was their poop... which I suppose is just as well because I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see the tigers or elephants caught in the flashbulb glare of the thousands of tourists who take the noisy motorboat trip around the lake. I really don't know what anyone was expecting to see making all that noise between the motor and the chatter... I hope the animals were far away living in their natural habitat without any intrusion. I did join the evening party boat cruise and, although the wildlife was non-existent except for a few deer and some tormented birds trying to settle down for the evening and instead finding their nests encircled by photo-snapping predators, I was able to meet some Indian girls finally instead of my usual entourage of boys. I ended up on a boat full of high-school girls on a three-day class trip out of Cochin accompanied by their biology teacher and their Hindi teacher. It took until most of the 2-hour boat ride was over, but a few girls were bold enough to ask my name and we started conversing about the usual stuff. These girls were all beautiful and well spoken and they had a good time laughing at each other for talking to me. Young women are really not supposed to talk to strange men in public, but the boat offered a more private atmosphere and their teachers (both men) also joined in the Q&A.

The next morning I took the early dawn nature walk with a young French photographer/filmmaker and her mother and really got to see the natural environment in a more intimate and educational way... we were clad in high canvas booties which we would occasionally rub with tobacco to keep the leeches at bay. Our guide was a bird enthusiast and pointed out many species while whistling and warbling his way through the jungle. We saw black monkeys, kingfisher birds, grey-billed warblers, an orange-breasted bird, a rare Sri-Lankan Frog-Moth bird?, spotted wood-peckers, wild boar, a bamboo snake, a giant wood spider, bison (in the distance), mushrooms of all sorts, turmeric, cinnamon, teak trees, rosewood trees, grey mongoose poop with evidence of a meal of blue scorpions, porcupine poop (funny, I didn't think Bryn was going to be in India until January?), week old tiger poop, and elephant poop (which apparently dung beetles gather and bury and then bears? dig up to eat the beetles). The jungle sounds were really haunting with the chirps and chatter of the birds, the steamy hissing of unseen water, and the distant "oooa-oooa" echoes of monkeys invisible in the trees.