From Varkala we moved inland to Kumily for the last few days of Matt’s visit. Kumily is a great little town, perched conveniently close to Periyar Wildlife Reserve in the beautiful, fragrant Cardamom Hills on the border of Tamil Nadu. Thanks to the proliferation of coffee, tea and spice plantations most of the town smells wonderful and, at 1900m it is far less stifling than the coast. 

At 5am we took a ’safari’ into the reserve, hoping for a sighting of wild elephants. Actually we were more excited by the prospect of green, tranquil surroundings but our Jeep companion Rachel had flown from Delhi to Kerala to try and spot some and she was rather desperate not to return home from a month-long tour of India’s wildlife sanctuaries without spotting some baggy grey elephant hide. The omens looked grim when our guide told us there were 1000 elephants and 72 tigers in a 900km square reserve and although we did see some funky snakes and monkeys, the clever elephants stayed away from the road. The day was saved from disappointment by a surreal rowing boat trip in the rain and by the fact that James and Matt were both sucked dry by leeches (I was untouched but in a fit of Karmic justice I was woken up two days later by a cockroach scuttling across my arm). 

 

We departed Kumily the following day on perhaps the most heart-in-mouth 6 hour bus journey yet, but we arrived back in Kochin alive and best of all, as we were hurtling down a mountain face the 11 residents of an oncoming car slowed down enough top screech ‘ELEPHANTS!’ at us. The bus driver hit the brakes, 200m later we stopped moving, and sure enough a family of wild elephants were trampling happily through the undergrowth about 100m from the road. Rachel went home happy.

 All of which brings us bang up to date, since I am writing this on the 2 night sleeper train from Kochin to Mumbai. The train is called the Mumbai Express but we’ve just realised that it’s gone as far inland as Madhya Pradesh, which in terms of directness is like going from Cornwall to Essex via Northumbria. Still, there’s plenty of entertainment on board: Indian Railways employ 1.6 million people and about two thirds of them are on this train, sweeping, checking tickets, making breakfasts, taking lunch orders and shooing off the additional half a million food and drink vendors who embark at every stop and flood the carriages with the smell of deep fried filth. Every half hour or so from 6am onwards the chai wallah passes through, chanting ‘chai-chai-chai-tea-coffee-chai’ in a robotic drone which is coming to characterise our frequent train exploits. Adding to the excitement, about 4 stops ago, two stern-looking chaps in intimidating khaki marched down our carriage and served a single cup of tea to a business man in the next compartment. Then, without exchanging a word to each other or anyone else, they marched back onto the platform and the train pulled away. The business man disappeared to the toilet half an hour ago and I haven’t seen him since. I swear I’m not making that up, although I am reaching a level of boredom that may bring on hallucinations so I will stop short of describing the miniature green elephant that just ballet danced down the middle of the carriage. We hit Mumbai at 4am and have a two day whistle-stop before we take yet another sleeper to the city of Jaipur in Rajhastan.