Remba the ELEPHANT!

Kerala breakfast of champions

Elephant day has arrived! I woke up late this morning and rushed out of the room. I was going to skip breakfast, but apparently they had already made it for me, so I ate it. Glad I did, I would have been starving otherwise. Breakfast was some sort of curry-like thing with a spongy bread thing and a ricey thing. It was no chocolate croissant, but it was fine. The staff handed me a piece of paper with my itinerary sketched out. So organized. After breakfast, my driver was already there with a Jeep, ready to go! No seatbelt and no door on my side. Of course. It's fine, I'm used to it by now. Our first stop for the day was Elephant Junction. !!!

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the ethics of elephant riding. I've heard both sides of this argument so let me lay out my point of view. In one of my biology classes, I learned the term "charismatic megafauna", which basically means really big animals that are beloved by people, e.g. tigers, lions, giraffes, etc. (the context of this lesson was that these animals end up getting a disproportionate amount of attention and money when it comes to conservation, particularly of endangered species because they're cute and cuddly and you can anthropomorphize them a lot easier than you can, say, an insect). Elephants would certainly fall under this category. I'm in no way making an argument for not helping to get elephants off of the Endangered Species list (quite the contrary, as I'll explain in a second). I do think there is a tendency to romanticize elephants and think of them as somehow more special than other animals. In so much as they are endangered, I agree. But to some extent, I also feel like riding an elephant is the Asian equivalent of riding a horse at the county fair. Obviously, there are some additional factors to consider with elephants that we would just take as a given for that county fair horse. I wouldn't want to ride an elephant that was stolen away from it's natural habitat. I wouldn't want to ride an elephant that's been mistreated. I wouldn't want to ride an elephant that's kept under poor living conditions. But I would want to support an organization that helps protect these animals from poachers, that takes good care of them, that feeds them, and gives them space to roam. I couldn't say with 100% certainty that the organization I picked would offer those things, but from as much as I could tell from the internet, the elephants at this place are well taken-care of. Yes, it does seem like a business and they're making money off of these animals. But I don't see anything inherently wrong with that if these animals are treated well and living a good life while also allowing these people to survive. End ethical aside.

Did I mention Thekkady is basically a jungle?

So many elephants!

We pulled up to the place and there were elephants like 50 feet away! There they were! Elephant Junction has a total of seven elephants, six females and one male. They seem pretty happy. They've got a lot of space. They look well-fed and generally of a good temperament. They get bathed many times a day. And as far as I could tell, they've got a great relationship with all of the people taking care of them.

I was ushered over to a raised gazebo area where I put my stuff down. I was leery of leaving my bag out but the guy was like "don't worry, I'll move it to the office." [Spoiler alert: he never moved it to the office! But it was fine, it was there when I got back.]

¡El elephante es gris y grande! - Animaniacs

A couple minutes later they brought an elephant over! It was HUGE! I mean... like, elephant huge. It was wearing a saddle-looking thing and they instructed me to climb on. So I did. Verrrrry carefully. Whoakay, I'm on an elephant. I'm ON an elephant. This is awesome.

My elephant's name is Remba and she's 32 years old. They told me she'll live to be 100 but the internet suggests otherwise, probably closer to 65. Remba is incredibly gentle. She had a handler with her who led us up a trail. He had a pretty loud, stern-sounding voice, but from the way they interacted with each other, they actually seemed to have a pretty good relationship. As far as I could tell, neither of them spoke a lick of English.

The view from Remba

It was pretty crazy riding an elephant. More comfortable than you would think. There were metal handles attached to her saddle that I could hold onto. Remba's skin is basically what you'd expect it to feel like. Kind of rubbery and leathery. Pretty rough. A little hairy. Occasionally ants would crawl on her, but I don't think she noticed. She did look a little old. Parts of her (face, ears, and few other spots) looked a little discolored, but maybe that's just what elephants look like. She also had a hole through her left ear. I didn't know what it was for, but I learned later that it's a thing they do to the elephants so they can use the hole to pull on their ears while they are training them. Sort of the elephant-equivalent of a choke collar but a little more... gruesome.

Welcome to the jungle

Remba and I went on a roughly 20-minute trek through the forest. It was beautiful. I was sitting up high on Remba so I had a good view. Occasionally I'd have to push the tree branches out of the way or they would have knocked me off of Remba.

I'm on a boat! Err... elephant!

Remba was pretty quiet throughout the ride. On occasion she's let out a "phphphrrerrerrrrrr" or whatever sound elephants make. I kind of felt like talking to Remba but I felt super awkward talking to an elephant, especially with the handler there, so I didn't say much.

We came back to the gazebo area and I dismounted onto the platform. I was surprisingly not sore from the ride. There were these two other guys on the platform who also seemed like visitors to the place, but I'm not sure what they were doing up there. One of the guys was like "You know that pain you feel in your crotch? We call that... pain in the crotch." Worst. Joke. Ever.

Please don't eat me. Please don't eat me. Please don't eat me.

I had a cup of tea post-ride in a little outdoor cafe right next to the gazebo while they got the next activity ready for me. A few minutes later they called me back out and there was a bowl full of huge cut-up cucumbers, which meant... feeding time! I fed Remba the chunks of cucumber one-by-one. I'd hold up a piece of cucumber to her mouth and she would stick out her tongue and take it right out of my hand! Her tongue was enormous and super slimy, as you would expect. THIS IS SO COOL. Remba has like... six of those huge cucumbers, which was probably just a little snack for her.

Splish splash, look who's taking a bath

The next activity was bath time! I was told that I was probably going to get wet so hopefully I had brought a change of clothes. ...I hadn't. However, I am backpacking through Asia, so I'm already pretty prepared for this situation: Shoes, socks, and shirt came off, the legs of my pants zipped off, and the rest of what I had on was quick-drying. Bring on the elephant!

This was the one guy who
spoke decent English so
he shepherded me around

They brought me over to a 1-ft.-deep pool where Remba was already lying down, ready for her bath. They handed me a brush and told me to go for it. I had no idea what I was doing, so I started scrubbing her shoulder area. Apparently I wasn't doing it right, so someone came to show me how. You're supposed to do it hard. Like, really hard. Like you're waxing a car hard. Gotta put some elbow grease into it. I asked if it hurts them and they said no, it's actually like a massage for them. I was skeptical at first, but Remba seemed to be enjoying herself. And who wouldn't love to get a bath from this guy, amirite?


After about five minutes, it was time for us to switch! So Remba sat up and I climbed up her from the back. No saddle this time. There was a separate pool of freshwater in front of her so she filled up her trunk, lifted it back over her head and gave doused me like I was on fire. THIS IS SO COOL. There's nothing quite like it. The water was freezing, but what an experience. We did that for a couple of minutes until I was sufficiently clean/unclean. I got down, toweled off, and got dressed.

You be good now, Remba!

All good things must come to an end, and this was unfortunately the last of the Adventures of Remba and [R]. I said thank you and goodbye to Remba, found my driver, and we were off to the next activity.

We drove up a huge hillside to a huge hillside until we got to the top. We parked on the side of a dirt road because if we went any further the Jeep would have gotten stuck. We walked a couple more minutes through pretty deep mud until we made it to a clearing and an absolutely incredible view of the valley surrounding us. This place is called Ottakathalamedu and it's a common tourist place around here for good reason. My driver has no idea how to hold a camera straight, so unfortunately a lot of my pictures came out totally crooked.

And the valley was thiiiiiiiis big

Am I a real explorer now?

Our next stop was Chellarkovil, a waterfall! It turns out that the best vantage point is in some rando's backyard, so we parked in the street, and walked through someone's property. Apparently, if they're home when you come by, then you give them some money (on the order of $US0.35).

If I could dangle over the edge, you'd see an over 1km waterfall drop

Next on the agenda was the lunch. We went into town. The restaurant I ate at was packed, but nothing too special. I had biriani, a traditional chicken and rice dish. Food was spicier than I would have liked, but what food in India isn't?

Up next was a tour of a tea plantation! There are a few big ones around here, but only one of them gives tours, the Connemara Tea Factory. Unfortunately, because it had been raining the few days prior, leaves hadn't been picked, so the factory wasn't running. I decided to still do the tour though. I walked up this paved street with fields of tea trees on both sides. Someone came up to me and asked me if I was there for the tour. I said yes, and he told me that I was a little late, but he presentation had just started, so I followed him to a building up the road. Inside, a Indian dude speaking with pretty much no Indian accent was giving slide projector presentation to an international crowd of about 10 people. He was a really friendly dude, and explained the lifecycle of how tea is made, from planting all the way through drinking.

Our tour guide at the Connemara Tea Factory

After the presentation, we walked down to the factory. None of the machines were running, but it was actually pretty much the same thing. We saw the area where they dry the leaves, and the machines they use to press, sort, and package the leaves. During the tour I met these two awesome German girls who were also taking some time to travel. After the factory tour, we went outside for a tasting and a lesson on the proper way to make tea:

Step 1: Put one teaspoon (about 2.5 grams) of tea into a cup
Step 2: Pour boiling water on top of the tea (8 ounces)
Step 3: Cover the tea and let it steep for 5 minutes. Do NOT stir. Stirring will make the tea bitter.
Step 4: Uncover and strain tea into a new cup
Step 5: Drink!

My spice walk tour guide

I walked back down the road to find my driver, said goodbye to my new German friends, and we were off to our next destination, a spice farm. This is apparently a pretty popular thing in this part of India because I saw a handful of places where you could do this during the drive. The spice walk was really cool - basically a guy showed me around this huge garden and pointed out a zillion different spices that were growing there.



There were also lemons the size of your head, cacao, a bunch of other fruits, and this crazy plant called a touch-me-not that closes up with you touch it!

But what I was most excited about was star fruit! Star fruit is this amazing fruit that I only know in the context of Guyana. I didn't even know it grew out here. But when I got really excited about it, the guy who was showing me around climbed up the tree and picked one for me and it was huge and juicy and one of the best starfruits I've ever had.

So-named because when
you slice it, it's
shaped like a star!

After the spice walk, we took a trip to our last destination, a vineyard in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. It was a beautiful drive over. On the way, we saw trucks filled with women driving back to Tamil Nadu. My driver told me that these were day laborers who came to work in Kerala.

Omnomnom

We arrived at the vineyard after about a 20-minute drive. We didn't spend too much time there. I mean, there are grapes, and that's about it. On the way out, I bought some grape juice. It was one of the most amazing drinks I've ever had. So sweet, I didn't know fresh grape juice could taste like this! Turns out it can't, because when I checked the bottle, it said that this thing was packed with sugar. Like... worse than Coke.

We returned home right around sunset. JA made dinner for me again tonight, this time slightly less spicy, at my request. Dessert was lassi instead of ice cream tonight, since I figured they still didn't have any.

Last but not least, today I decided that my next country is going to be Cambodia. I was choosing between Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Cambodia. I've been in India for a month now and kind of want to try something totally different. I think Sri Lanka is actually going to overlap with what I've experienced in India a lot. So that got crossed off the list. And for Myanmar, it turns out it's more difficult to get a visa there last minute that I originally thought, so that's out. So Cambodia it is! I know absolutely nothing about Cambodia, so this should be interesting. It's also the first place I'm going to where I won't look like the people, which will be an experience in and of itself.

It was an exhausting, amazing day and everything I wanted it to be.

CONTINUE ON to Thekkady Part 4: Goodbye India!

And Then I Went To The Hospital

Everything was wonderful until I decided to head down to the lounge to hang out. It was still raining a little bit and the ground was wet. As I was coming down the stairs from my room, I slipped and fell. For a second, it didn't seem that bad, I only fell down a few stairs, and I fell backward onto my back so I didn't hit my head or anything. But then I felt this awful pain in my right shoulder. I stayed down for a few seconds but the ground was wet, so I wanted to get up, but when I did, I could barely lift my arm. I was very clearly in pain and as I looked across the courtyard I saw one of the staff there just laughing at me. Seriously?! A few seconds later, his boss asked him what happened and he told her I fell and I could hear her from across the courtyard say "oh my God!" and rushed over to help me up. After which the dude sort of realized how much of douche he was being and followed suit.

They helped me over into the lounge. A few other staff members came over and all of a sudden, everything thought they were doctors and were all telling me different things to do. In retrospect, I should have realized that I'm in India, no one knows what they're doing, and I should just go back to my room. But I was in a lot of pain and at they mercy of their instructions. Which were to continue to swing my arm around to relax my shoulder (which, again in retrospect, was probably the worst thing I could have done). Then one of the guys came and tried to stretch my arm out. They offered to take me to a hospital but I was like "uhh... I think I'll pass." At one point they were like "oh, it's not a big deal. It's probably because this is just the first time you've fallen. We've all fallen on those stairs many times." To which I'm thinking 1) obviously, this isn't the first time I've ever fallen, that's a ridiculous thing to say but it also has no bearing on how much my shoulder should hurt, and 2) ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! If you've all fallen multiple times on those stairs, WHY DON'T YOU FIX THE PROBLEM???

I went back up to my room and a few minutes later, one of the staff members came with some terrible-smelling green liquid in a little bowl and said this was a local remedy for sore muscles, so he came in and rubbed it on my shoulder.

This hallway is the entirety of the
hospital, as far as I could tell

After an hour my shoulder was still killing me, and I figured I probably should get this checked out. Better safe than sorry, right? So I went back down to the lounge and said yes, I did indeed want to go to a hospital. They called around for a cab, but it's still Onam (because it's always a holiday of some sort in India) so there weren't any cabs available. Their solution: send me to the hospital on the back of a motorcycle driven by one of their staff. We didn't really have another option, so I went with it. The lucky staff member was JA, a skinny 17-year-old. With a motorcycle.

So we went outside. It was still raining. And night time at this point. I hopped on the back of his motorcycle. Didn't have a helmet. And couldn't really hold onto him all that well because... well, my shoulder felt like it was going to fall off. And as we were speeding toward the hospital along a dirt road going waaaaay faster than we should have even if it weren't raining / it weren't pitch black out with no streetlights / it weren't a dirt road / I didn't have a busted shoulder / we were wearing helmets, I thought to myself, "well, I guess I had a good run."

My state-of-the-art (in 1970) X-ray machine

Miraculously, we made it to the hospital in one piece. Luckily, JA was there because I couldn't have navigated the hospital scene without him. He came in with me, talked to the right people, and a minute later, I was filling out the shortest intake form I've ever filled out. A few minutes later, they took me in and did the standard height, weight, and blood pressure measurements. A few minutes later, I sat down with the doctor, a woman probably in her 60s. She wasn't all that talkative and just asked me a few straightforward questions about what happened, etc. After she was satisfied, she didn't say anything to me, just sent me back out into the hallway. Every staff member there I interacted either gave no expression when looking at me, or gave a little chuckle at the helplessness of this Westerner in their hospital. After a couple minutes I went into a room with a huge X-ray machine. So... it turns out this was the next step. An X-ray technician laid me down on the table and took some X-rays of my shoulder. No protective gear for me of course, so hopefully I'll still be able to have children, but who knows. Luckily, the X-ray was positioned pretty closely to my shoulder, so I think the radiation was localized.

You could definitely go
off-roading in this puppy

While we were waiting for the doctor to take a look at the results, I saw a woman in the most amazing wheelchair I've ever seen in my life. It's literally made out of a plastic lawn chair, a steel frame, and some bike tires! There was a sticker on the back for Free Wheelchair Mission, a nonprofit whose goal is to provide "wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing countries." Amazing.

We waited for another 10 minutes, and then we went back to the doctor. I laughed as I walked in and told her that in the U.S. this would have taken days. She seemed to find that mildly amusing, and I think she also took some sense of pride in it too. Or some sense of judgement about the healthcare system in America. She told me the X-ray looked fine and that nothing was broken. I could have told her that! I figured I either tore or dislocated something, but that didn't seem to be on her mind. Her next question was "do you want a shot for the pain?" Are you kidding me? Poked by a needle of any kind in India? No thanks, doc. I have absolutely zero problems with getting shots. But it's definitely not happening in India. I don't care if I'm at a hospital. She laughed at me when I said no because I'm pretty sure in her head I was a wimpy American afraid of needles, and I was fine letting her continue to think that. She prescribed me some medicines, which she scratched out on a piece of paper, written in Malayalam, which I obviously couldn't read. She asked me one more time, "are you sure you don't want a shot?" to which I again replied "no." I think she just wanted to laugh at me one more time before sending me out of the room.

JA took care of giving the "prescription" to a woman at the counter, who gave me three medicines and explained to him how much of each I was supposed to take, which he relayed to me. He also took care of the bill, which was all inclusive a whopping ~$15. Start to finish, we were probably there about 30 minutes. I asked JA to get my X-rays. What better memento of my visit to a hospital in India than my own X-rays? Of course, this is where the blindingly quick experience got tangled up in the backward bureaucracy inherent in all things India. We waited probably another 20-30 minutes before someone gave them to us. Nevertheless, we got them! I tucked them away under my shirt and mentally prepared myself for the equally if not more treacherous motorcycle ride back to the hotel. Still raining. Still dark. Still no helmets or paved roads.

We got back, I went to the lounge to update the staff on the verdict. Literally every single time the rest of the evening when I went back up to my room at least one staff member would say, "please be careful, sir!" Which was fine at first, but quickly became pretty patronizing. There were also some not-so-subtle suggestions from FA that I must have fallen because I wasn't being careful. No, FA, I fell because your stairs are made out of material that has zero traction on it. Boeing should coat 747s in that stuff so that they can fly faster.

I didn't stay in my room for too long because the internet there was spotty, so I headed back down to the lounge to figure out exactly what drugs the doctor had given me. Luckily, the packaging for each one had either the brand name or chemical name on it, which was a good place to start. The doctor had given me a few things for pain and also... something for an upset stomach? Really? Maybe she just figured I'm a foreigner so obviously my stomach is going haywire. Well played, doctor. She also gave me something that on my first pass of researching initially had me thinking it was a mild form of LSD that was unregulated by the FDA and could potentially get me arrested if I tried to bring it back into the U.S. and I was like "whoa, okay, maybe I'll be skipping this one." On my second try at googling it, I came to the conclusion that it's not what I thought, just a mild pain killer. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

While I was in the lounge, I talked to FA about arranging for me to go see some elephants. She laid out a few pamphlets to look over and I selected the package I wanted. FA made some calls and it turns out that the trekking option I wanted to do wasn't available because it was only me going and the tour company didn't want to hassle with all of the costs associated for just one person. Which I get, but... come on! I came thousands of miles for this! FA was pushing some other options and we talked for a bit about what I really wanted to do, and then she went away for a while and came back with a new idea. She pulled together her own itinerary of things to do for the day that included elephants, as well as seeing some other parts of Thekkady, waterfalls, views, a tea plantation, and a trip into the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. Seemed cool, a little on the pricier side, but it sounded like a great day so I went for it. This is really happening! I'm going to see elephants!

While I was down in the lounge, I ordered dinner. It turns out JA is not only the resident motorcyclist, he's also the resident chef. So he asked me what I wanted, and disappeared into the kitchen. Food came out pretty quickly and it was amazing (if not super spicy). I ate outside in the courtyard. Which, my earlier accident aside, is beautiful. After dinner, I asked for dessert. They asked me what I wanted, so I said ice cream. They said yes and went away. I waited for a while, maybe 10-15 minutes. At this point, I kind of didn't care anymore, I just wanted to go back up to my room. I was wondering why it was taking so long and then I heard the motorcycle pull up to the hotel and I realized what had happened. It turned out they ran out of ice cream, so they sent one of the guys into town to get me some! They're definitely going above and beyond to make sure I have a good stay. I imagine the fall I took is all the more reason for them to bend over backward to make sure I give them a good review.

I called it a night after that and went to bed. I really hope this shoulder thing doesn't ruin the rest of my trip.

CONTINUE ON to Thekkady Part 3: Remba the ELEPHANT