Craving for the Wild

Craving for the Wild

We are in the first wildlife reserve are we have visited in Asia part of our trip. Its name is Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The reserve area, on the way between Ooty and Mysore, with a busy road passing through it, is not fenced and a natural living area of wild elephants, gazelles, monkeys, tigers and some tribes under protection, living in a primitive way compared to actual circumstances. It is open for tourism with a reception, information center and several guesthouses in a small area. It is prohibited to walk out of the space around these buildings. Also with your own vehicle… This restriction is to avoid being hunted by wild animals and getting lost in the forest. It is also forbidden to get close to the local people around the place because nobody wants to spoil their way of living by modern citizens, especially by western tourists. So, the “wild” people are also under protection here. Just for a couple times in a day, the chance to observe wild life is given to us, modern human, with camouflage-buses following a certain way in “Wild Life Tour”. We join one of them because of despair and inattention. As wild animals are afraid of the noisy buses, not only we it is not possible to observe wild life, but also it becomes an activity in which we feel ashamed because of disturbance we caused and questioned our species again. This place is so quiet and calm that, we dream of staying for one night and observe the wild life around. After settling in a room we found luckily in one...
Kerala

Kerala

Coming back to India after Sri Lanka, first we stepped into the capital of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram (or Trivandrum), and our first thought was like: “Hello again the smell of urine, hello crazy sound of horns”… But interestingly, we felt ourselves back home again. Kerala, is the western of two states sharing the south part of India (The other one is Tamil Nadu. E.g. Chennai, Ponducherry and Madurai). This time the local language is Malayam, English speaking level is very high. According to Lonely Planet, this is the place with highest level of literacy in India (approx. 100%). We indicated that there is a different culture in every state of India. When we first written about that, we hadn’t experience yet, we just heard of it. We understand what it means when we arrive Kerala. First, we are going to Kovalam, 40 minutes south of Trivandrum. We weren’t planning to go there actually but, our hosts were living there who accepted our Couchsurfing request. Grigory and Ulyana is a Russian couple who is living in India for some time and working as tourist guides. They work very hard but we come together at dinner. Grigory is an adventurer who travelled to many places on the earth. He even experienced passing over a river in Tibet illegally with his bike on his shoulders. They also give us a short photography course as they are both professional photographers.  Kovalam, one of the famous beaches of Kerala, is a center of Ayurvedic treatment and Yoga Schools. It’s highly touristic, more expensive compared to the average of India, but a calm holiday resort. Average...