Kerala Tips

This guy tries his hand at elephant bathing

Other visitors soon joined in the elephant bathing. I’m sure we didn’t clean the elephants all that well, that the mahouts were doing most of the actual work, that we were just tourists play-bathing the elephants. But I didn’t care. I was standing ankle-deep in a lake in India, rubbing a wet elephant’s head. And the elephant was loving it. I can’t say I’d ever pictured myself in that situation before, but now I can’t ever forget it.

After that, we went to Edakkal Cave, which was rather disappointing. I mean, the cave itself – situated halfway up a mountain – was fine, though I’ve been to way better caves in the states. But the overcrowding at this one made it insane. In India, a line of people doesn’t actually mean a line – it means everyone pushes up against everyone else – oftentimes people grabbing you by the waist or the shoulders. You have no personal space at all. And this place was the worst. It was filled with tourists and schoolkids, everyone jostling and shoving and not giving you any room to breathe. A few times I snapped some nasty comments at the people behind me who kept holding my shoulders. And mild-mannered Matt even called out some line-jumping hooligans who were pushing children out of their way. Not fun.

This reminds me of an incident i heard recently. My friend was flying to US and he was standing in the line at Mumbai airport. In front of him stood an american. My friend was standing too close to the guy. After sometime american guy turned around asked - “Do you want to kiss me? ”

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