We have been in Kerala for about a week and really miss the availability of good coffee in Tamil Nadu. But Kerala has beautiful jungle backwaters and is very tropical with beautiful birds etc. We are now in the central hill country of Kerala going to Ooty today in search of seeing a Bengal Tiger in the wild. The hills are around 4,000 - 5,000 ft so it is much cooler. We have seen at least three herds of wild elephants in the grass lands and forests in areas where they are protected. We are surrounded by tea, cardamom, coffee, rubber, and various spice plantations. Most people here speak pretty good English and we can communicate OK.
While in the backwaters area we took a 'canoe' out for about 5 hours with the guy that goes with the boat to help paddle. Well we stopped at a small village back in the rice paddies where there is no road and went into a small establishment where they were very anxious for us to try coconut beer -- a white substance in a large maybe rinsed out kingfisher beer bottle. Well it wasn't too bad and I drank about half. Susan declined. The next day right before we arrived in Thekkady - the big bad bug set off the alarm that everyone in the building was to evacuate Now! Just miserable along with fever and sweats and chills and all that goes along with that stuff. About 11 pm Lalit took me to the hospital -- I was out of it and he refused to let them do any injections because of the possibility of used needles, so we got pills and we already had tried to start with the right drug, thanks to last years list that Johnny E. had put together for us. We spent an extra night there and then resumed the schedule. All is better now but I am wondering about my judgment in drinking that "beer"! Just say No!
We are in a really nice home stay called the rose garden. The couple that own it are great.
We have stayed in some really unusual and beautiful places on this southern trip. On a future post we will update you on some of those interesting places.
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