Wonderful Wayanad

During our auto-rickshaw ride from the bus stop in Mananthaverdy to our guest house in Tholpetty, we came upon a wild elephant by the side of the road. Charlie and I are in awe of these magnificent creatures and feel very privileged to have lucked into seeing one so early in our trip to Wayanad, the animal sanctuary between the Indian states, Karnataka and Kerala.

After we checked in, we thought we would take a look around the small town of Tholpetty. However, Venu, the caretaker of our guest house, the Pachyderm Palace - which incidentally is pronounced Pas-i-derm Palace by the locals - warned us against walking around after dark both because of the potential danger of wild animals - tigers, bison, etc. - and due to the fact that the town has nothing to see. No bars. No restaurants. Just some houses and a couple schools and one very noisy mosque and Hindu temple each. So Charlie and I - very uncharacteristically - went to bed and, embarassingly enough, I actually started to fall asleep at about 8:30 pm. At about 9 pm, the caretaker frantically knocked on our door. As I woke up, all I could hear were the words, "Baby elephant." Charlie and I hopped into a jeep and were driven to see 13 elephants, including 4 babies, by the light of a giant spotlight on the jeep.

It was a good thing too because that night Charlie was struck with his second bout of Delhi belly, and so we cancelled our planned 7 am jeep safari the next morning. Charlie spent the day in bed, while I walked around the town. I use the word "town" loosely, because it was smaller than that. I am under the distinct impression that I met at least 75% of its residents, who literally poured out of their homes to wave and say, "Hi." They don't see many Westerners around these parts.

That afternoon, some new guests arrived at the Pachyderm Palace and I joined them on a safari, while Charlie was sadly confined to his sick bed. We again were lucky to see elephants. The four beauties in the picture above, including the baby in the middle.

After a couple of hits of the super-antibiotic, Cipro, Charlie felt well enough for a jeep safari the following morning. However, the animal-spotting luck finally ran dry. We saw fresh tiger tracks, and the tiger likely scared away all the animals.