A trip to God's own country-Part 2

Is it possible that there is no shopping done when there are three women in a tour group? Well, so we happily window-shopped and bargained in the market outside Matancherry palace in Kochi for a couple of hours. Ironically,we ultimately bought some shawls from a shop of Kashmiri handicrafts. Imagine buying Kashmiri shawls in Kerala! But that is what India is about. You might find something from the northern tip of our country in the southern most state, merrily mingling among the local products and you are not even surprised.
We had deferred our spice purchase till we reached Thrissur where we were to go to see the Guruvayoor temple. We bought spices( cardamom, pepper, Khuskhus, clove etc) from the spice market in Thrissur. They cost us about one third of the price we pay in other places. We also bought some great quality almonds and cashews at very reasonable prices. In Thrissur we stayed in an extremely elegant Government guest house 'Ramanilayam'. It is housed in a building dating from British days, has the same decor retained and is well maintained. The rooms are huge and the surroundings all green. It also has a restaurant serving authentic Kerala food, filter coffee included.
The Guruvayoor temple is about 35 km from Thrissur. It is one of the most revered temples of Kerala and is often referred to as the Dwarka of the south. The reigning deity is Lord Krishna. In this temple men are allowed in only if they are bare chested and clad waist-down in an un-stitched piece of cloth- dhoti or lungi. Till a couple of years ago women's dress code was saree or lenhga-blouse( traditional attire of women in Kerala) but now they allow salwar kameez too, thankfully.Guess the temple authorities have acknowledged the universal (Indian) acceptance of this eminently convenient and hugely popular Punjabi dress all over the country. There was a long queue for darshan in the temple and when we reached before the deity, no sooner than we had a fleeting glimpse at the Lord's statue, we were pushed to the exit door to make way for the huge rush of people behind us. This is something that happens at all the popular temples in India. We were particularly reminded of our trip to Vaishno Devi some years ago. After a fourteen km, 4-5 hour trudge uphill, when we had arrived at the main temple, we were given precisely five seconds to decipher the form of the Goddess under the mound of flowers before being pushed out to make way for the crowd.
The place in our itinerary that we all were eagerly looking forward to was Periyar wild life sanctuary, and the 150 km drive (half of which was across ghats or, in other words, hills) that we undertook to reach there from Munnar was well worth it. The mountain scenery on the way made the five hour drive picturesque and beautiful. We reached the forest guest house around noon. After freshening up, we went for lunch to a restaurant in the market and enjoyed some delicious Kerala food.
Periyar sanctuary is also known as Thekkady- which literally means a hill. The thick forests in the sanctuary house bison, elephants, tigers, wild boars and many other animals. There is a 26 sq. km lake in the middle of the forest, created by the British 115 years ago. There are two ways to see the forest and the animals- through a motor-boat cruise and by taking a jungle walk along with a guide. We were told by the forest guide that the best chance to spot wild-life is either on the very first boat, which sails at 7 am or on the last one which sails at 4 pm as the animals do not come to the lake shore during and around noon because of the harsh sun. We decided to take the last boat and went to the lake for our hour-long boat cruise. There were six large-sized motorboats plying on the lake and we bought the tickets to one of them. The motorboats had an upper deck and a lower deck each. We went to the upper deck of our boat and settled down on the chairs to enjoy the ride into the tranquil lake surrounded by thick green forest. As we sailed, we saw herds of elephants, bisons, deers and wild boars which had come to the clearing between the lake and the forest either for a drink of water or for a bath. The experience was truly unforgettable.
After we disembarked from the boat, we inquired about the jungle trek options. We were told that there was a 3 hour guided jungle walk, a full day(nine hour) hike, a 2 day tiger-trail trek and a 3 hour night walk on offer as well as a full day of bamboo rafting on the lake. Niranjan and I chose the 3 hour jungle walk. Our friends declined to go on the trek citing health reasons and Shakuntala Bhabhi, who was initially enthusiastic about trekking withdrew when we were informed that in this season the jungle will be full of leeches and that we would need to wear leech socks( supplied by the trek organizers) and shoes to protect ourselves.
We reached at the starting point of our walk at 6.45 am. There were two other couples, one of them European and the other from West Bengal, and a young man in our group, to be escorted by a tribal guide. Niranjan and I were the senior members of the group-all the others were below 30 or so. After putting on thigh high leech socks inside our shoes, we started our walk following our guide.Within a few minutes we reached a part of the lake which we were to cross using a primitive bamboo raft. We stood on the raft with our feet apart to keep our balance. The sailing experience on the raft was exhilarating.
The first half hour of the walk was on the clearing between the forest and the lake and was uneventful, though pleasant. After that the guide led us into the thick jungle, after telling us that we will be encountering leeches then onwards. We saw many beautiful trees and birds and funny-looking insects while walking in the forest. There were stretches where the forest was so thick that no sunlight could reach the ground and it was dark even during the day time. There were times when we got leeches stuck to our shoes and socks. In spite of the guide's assurance that leeches can not go through the leech socks, instinctively every one shook their feet to get rid of them with disastrous results. The leeches shaken off from one walker's feet dropped on another person's body and stuck there. Niranjan got a leech stuck on his neck, I got one on my back and the tiny creatures managed to suck some of our blood and became double their usual size before discovered by us and being thrown off.
The guide had warned us to be extremely quiet if we wanted to see any wild life. As we quietly followed him, we found a herd of bison in the clearing between us and the lake. We stopped and watched in silence the animals in their natural habitat for long minutes before moving on. The guide led us to the top of a forest covered hill. The climb was quite steep and slippery too because of the rainy season. We trudged on and on and just when I totally lost my breath, and called out to the guide for a rest- break, he laughingly informed us that we had already reached the top. It was nine am by then. We collapsed on the ground enjoying our well-deserved break after the two hour long walking and climbing effort and took in with our eyes the beautiful scenery surrounding us in all directions. Sitting there, looking over the dense green forest and the serene lake were the moments that one can never, ever forget all his life.
Climbing down was fast on the slippery tracks. We held ourselves upright by holding a plant trunk with one hand and making sure that we gripped another lower one by the other hand before letting go the first one. One of our group, the Bengali girl was finding a lot of trouble climbing down so the guide supported her nearly all the way down. We reached the raft point in about half an hour. As we sat on the grass waiting for the raft as it was on the other side of the lake, the guide came to Niranjan and me and asked if we were okay and how we liked the trek. When we said that we enjoyed it, he confessed that he was worried about us most, out of the whole group -because of our senior citizen status-and had wondered if we would be able to complete the trek. Why, that was a morale booster for us to be sure.
After another bamboo raft ride, we reached the end point of our trek. As we sat down to remove our leech socks, we found 10-15 leeches in each of our shoes. The guide sprayed our shoes with a pest killer before we could shake them off and wear our shoes on our way back to the guest house.