Periyar Tiger Reserve

No tigers.

We went with a hope, but the park office is very quick to dampen expectations. There’s maybe three sightings a year. But there are a lot of other animals to watch out for in the national park!

We gave it two shots to look for tigers. We would settle for elephants. Birds are good too. Monkeys, giant squirrels, buffalo are pretty much all but guaranteed apparently. But most of all we would settle for a nice day in the wild. There were some guides with us for the whole journey. One is a ranger that carries a gun. For a tiger attack. Or more likely, a boar charging the group. Ours had never used his though.

The first day was a twofold tour. Bamboo rafting in the morning, and a nature walk in the afternoon. We went with our group on a walk to the lake to go bamboo rafting. Maybe we could see an animal taking a sip of water.

The landscape reminded us of Elk Island National Park back home. The mix of forest and grassland created a familiar atmosphere. One thing that is not familiar is the banyan trees. These snaky branches weave around all the paths and canopies in the forest, and create really complex looking trees.

We made it to the lake, and had breakfast with Carol and Silas, a Swiss couple on the same day plan as us. They were some nice company to have for the day. We shared travel stories, and swapped general life plans.

Finally we got to rafting. Bamboo rafting is quite a funny little thing. We were sat in the middle of the raft, which sagged below the waterline. So we had to precariously sit our feet on a little log for the whole time so we didn’t get wet.

We saw a lot of birds here, and the antlers of a deer, but no other mammals. The rafting only lasted an hour, and felt like a bit of a novelty. We took a different walking route back at least.

Animals! We saw quite a few animals on the walk there and back. We did the afternoon nature walk with Carol and Silas, but that was a fairly similar walk, with just more heat. I don’t have a lot of zoom on the camera, so all the animals are little. They’re mostly in the centre of the photo’s. Anyways, here’s the animals of the park!

We got one of the big sightings on our morning walk back. Elephants! There was a family of one male, two females and a baby grazing. We spent half an hour watching them eat grass.

For our second day in the park, we did something called Border Hiking. Which is just a long hike that straddles the border between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This was a different region of the park, but it all looked fairly similar It was a little quieter though, a lot more animals were coming by to say hi. So much so, that we had to do a bushwhacking detour due to a herd of buffalo on the path. We had a couple rare sightings, like the giant hornbill bird and the wild dogs. It was very very hot in the afternoon. It had a little fun though. There was a pull-raft used to get to and from the trailhead.

More Animals! These were from our second hike.

The park was really lovely. While there was a lot of heat, and it got somewhat repetitive, we got to see elephants. So it was a total win.

That’s all for the mountains now! Back to the ocean we go. See you there!