January 4, 2024

Thursday, 11:30 PM

A homestay in Nelliyampathy,

District Palakkad, Kerala, India

It wasn’t easy to sleep with the rats creating all the ruckus overhead but the thing about being tired is that you can sleep in so many sleep-killing situations, and one such was yesterday. I zipped my sleeping bag completely shut so that even if a rat happened to drop, it was most likely to slide off the outer side of the sleeping bag without making direct contact with me. So I might be startled but would still not have to deal with feeling a rat’s furry presence against my skin. The rats turned out to be more adept at scurrying around in those pipes than I had guessed (not that I regret taking the necessary precaution, just in case), so none of the furry creatures fell on any of us from the roof, thankfully.

During the day, we went looking for wildlife in right earnest and found none of it. By the evening, we had the choice of staying back at Parambikulam or going elsewhere even though we had our stay booked at Veettikunnu for two nights. We decided against staying at Veetikunnu because we could endure another night with all those rats but there was no real wildlife around for us to take the pain for. So we decided to go to Nelliyampathy Forest Reserve in Palakkad instead, for it appeared more promising in terms of wildlife than Parambikulam, particularly hornbills, which I really wanted to shoot for long. Hornbills are amazing birds to click. So we came to Nelliyampathy, a hill station in Palakkad, and checked into a simple homestay. That’s it for today.