Periyar Tiger Reserve

We woke early and left the boys sleeping in the room (with Lilly) while we headed out for a boat safari in the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Periyar Tiger Reserve is one of the largest and most visited wildlife reserves in India. It is 777 square kilometers in the Cardamom hills region of the Western Ghats. It is home to bison, sambar, guar, mongoose, wild boar, langur, over 1000 elephants, and at least 46 tigers. Now, everything I read assured us that we would not see a tiger, but it was highly likely that we would see other animals. The guides also said to make sure you do the first boat trip of the morning if you want to see anything. Well, there we were at 6:30 am on a boat in the cold (we were up in the mountains and 65 degrees is pretty cold when you are used to 98). We started the trip and I didn’t hear Joel stop complaining until WAY after the 2 hour cruise. Ok, lets just say it didn’t live up to expectations…not even a little! One of the Indian families that were on the boat thought it was great. The man filmed almost the entire 2 hours of it! I would hate getting stuck watching his family videos J We didn’t see any elephants or tigers, but we did see several kingfishers (bright blue birds), some deer, bison, and a wild boar. The scenery was beautiful. But we saw much more exciting things in our car on the drive out of the reserve. We stopped to look at 2 different kinds of moneys. One group was playing in the trees right by us. Plus we saw a Malabar Giant Squirrel. It was huge- 3 feet long! We decided that the hike safari would have been better. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. We were back for breakfast with the boys at 9:15 and then spent the morning on the grounds. We had the hotel naturalist show us around the spice garden they have on the hotel grounds as well as the organic vegetable garden. Joel swam in the pool but it was way too cold for me to get in! Then we headed to Elephant Junction after lunch. It is a place where you can ride an elephant or help give it a bath. Joel, Gavin, Dick, and I went on the elephant ride. When we tried to do this last October Gavin was very scared of the elephant. This time he loved it! He sat still the whole 30 minute ride. Once we got down he kept saying “more, more” and pointing at the elephants back. It was really fun to see him enjoy it so much. When we got back, we all got to feed the elephant. Barbie and Lilly joined in on this. It was great. Braden woke up from his nap just in time to get a few family photos with the elephant before we left. That evening we had dinner and then Joel and his Dad played snooker on a 100 year old table. I went back to the room to let the boys play some before bedtime. Barbie went back to her bungalow to take a bath and had what she called “one of her scariest experiences!” She called my room and said, “Becca, I need help!!!” She had been relaxing in her bathtub when a 3 inch gecko (that’s a lizard) fell out of the window and onto her foot in the bath tub. She said she was terrified and jumped out of the bath. She then proceeded to try and wash it down the drain. That was unsuccessful, but she did trap it underneath a glass. That’s where my help came in. I walked over and carefully took the gecko outside where it belonged. I am sure it was just as scared as she was! I made sure I took a picture of her killer gecko so she could always remember him :)