How to rumble in the jungle.

Hey folks!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I know I've totally abandoned my blog for Christmas and New Years - but I promise to make up for it through this month and this year. So here's a quick update on life ... December was mostly filled with family, food and INDIA..

My brother and I left to India for a week on Christmas night and got back after new years. We literally went prepared to camp out for a week- we were going to be trekking it to the mountains of southern India for about 5 days with a bunch of our cousins. A few words to describe this once-in-a-lifetime experience would be - illegal travel, illegal flowers, excessive food, leeches, a water snake, spiders, mountains, a taxi strike, rivers, frogs, elephants, beauty, family and cameras. I'm pretty sure there was tequila somewhere in between.

The Wayanad district of the state of Kerala (where we were heading) is about a 12 hr, overnight train journey from the city we landed in (Chennai/Madras). Since we booked our trip so late - there were eight of us and only six train tickets. Clearly, that didn't stop us - So, let the games begin. We planned our scam better than Ocean's Eleven and illegally got to our destination with sneaky smiles on our faces.

It was 4.30am and pitch dark when we got off at our stop to meet our driver for the next 4 days. His name was Shafoor and he was a noob to say the least (keep reading for an explanation). We got to our "resort" on the mountain at around 7am just as the sun came out, had breakfast, and confidently went off to explore the forest.

The mountains as we entered Wayanad

Here are a few excerpts from our adventures:

 Leeches.
-"Oh Hey, what's that thing by my.. omg.. is that a worm? .. omg! WHAT IS THAT?!" *shriek*
- "!@#$%^&*"
-"i'm bleeding"
-"OMG IT'S ON ME TOO" *voice cracking*
-"GUYS, its DOING SOMETHING!!!!" *kicking the air really hard*
- "I need to salt this fucker"
-"Shit, it's in my socks!!"

Lesson: If you want to get a leech off you - pulling it off is a bad idea. It leaves an enzyme by the area its on which does not allow your blood to clot, so you would bleed for a longer time than necessary. The best way to get a leech off you is to SALT it. It will naturally release itself from ur body and die.


Exploring, right before we got leeched.



The leech sucking on my cousins foot



The leech post-salt



Elephants.
We woke up at 4.30 am and drove for almost 2 hours to a wildlife sanctuary.  Ofcourse, we lose our way to the point that we ended up in a different state - all thanks to Shafoor. As we were figuring out how to get back, the sun was rising and the fog was clearing up on the roads that were surrounded by forest. Just as we headed back, my cousin spotted a family of elephants through the fog.

It was so beautiful! The baby elephants were the cutest! They moved really slowly and graciously. We watched them for a while through the mist, took some pictures and left before they noticed us there. No camera can really capture this moment.



Rivers
Shafoor drove us in and around the mountains, I guess it would have been really pretty, but I slept for the most part. Finally, we got to the place everyone at the resort was raving about. I imagined the place to be a serene jungle with vines and rivers and cool animals - I was upset that I had forgotten to bring my bathing suit.

In reality, we got off the car and it was SO crowded. I immediately felt naked in my shorts and tank top since every other woman/girl was fully covered with Indian clothes. I'm pretty sure I would have been arrested for indecent exposure if I had worn my bikini. We hurried off to get a guide and then followed him clumsily while he expertly walked through the rivers and forest. As we got deeper into the forest I asked him if there were alligators or crocodilios in the river. He confirmed that there were, but they were more upstream and didn't ever bother to come down to where we were. NOT comforting at all. 



Overall, this was an amazingly fun day! We had a small snack while playing in the water inside the forest and then later stopped off at this tiny little shack to have a meal on the way back to the resort.

Spiders and illegal flowers
I hate plucking flowers, but we were kayaking at a lake close by one morning and found a million water lillies - I just had to. Little did I know that I was going to get fined for plucking it. Yes, we paid 50 rupees for deflowering the lake.



We also found the COOLEST spiders around town and unfortunately, one was inside our room as well. Even though I hate the thought of one of these creeps beside me or on me  - they were pretty fascinating in the wild.

Taxi Strike
Strikes in Canada involve a few picketers and maybe a couple of news reporters scouring the area for a decent story. Strikes in Kerala,India = being stoned. Lucky for us, we were a huge family with women and children (sort of), so they were kind to us. However, we did get pulled over about 3 times by the picketers. And each time, Shafoor got yelled at for not supporting the strike. It took about 10-15minutes of reasoning with the strikers to get us off the hook. One time, the cops came to rescue us too. It was scary at first, it later become funny and annoying.




The stupid taxi strike haunted us until we got back to the train station 4 days later. At this point it was just getting annoying. So, we made the best out of every situation and went shopping and walked around the city instead of taking the cab. We bought souveniers and food for family back home and headed back in the same illegal fashion we came in. NYE was pretty quiet and we went out on new years day instead. Clubs in India are worthy of a whole new blog. I can't - I have no energy to even go there right now.


Bhel puri in India = the bomb



Something that doesn't look appetizing - Kerala, India



Varieties of banana chips - Kerala, India

Hope you enjoyed the videos and the pictures! I have tons more - maybe they will eventually find their way to facebook. Stay tuned for more blog posts on Dubai. Love you all and miss you tons! xoxo