We're moving into a new interest area today - wildlife. Even though we've been travelling in India for nearly three months we've not seen any wildlife parks. But today we leave Madurai for the journey to Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary just across the state border in Kerala. We could of course just travel on the bus, but because we're train spotters we opt to travel on a metre-gauge branch line for the two hour journey to Teni where we meet the bus again. The train just has second class basic carriages so we're sitting on hard seats. Except that we're not, because being train spotters we're hanging out of the doors and windows taking photographs and commenting on the track layout, signalling system, or anything else that takes our interest. The usual travellers can't make us out! No surprise there then.

Once we've got back on the bus we still have over two hours to go, much of which involves climbing the windy hill up to Kumily. We're staying at the Aranya Nivas, which is in the park itself and beside the 26-sq-km man-made lake on which the park is based. The highlight of today (apart from the train ride that is) is to be a 2-hour trip on the lake. It's an evening trip, getting back just before dusk, and we're expecting to see some of the wildlife from the boat. Apparently there are tigers, leopards, elephants, bison, sambar deer, wild boar, monkeys and a wide variety of birds. On our boat trip we see some crows and lots of midges. Actually, in fairness, we do see some sambar deer and wild boar, and we see some monkeys up close once we're back at the hotel, but the expected elephants are nowhere to be seen. The reason appears to be the high water level, which apparently means that the elephants don't need to go to the lake, or some such reason. Of course, there's no chance of seeing any big cats, which are hiding from us in the bushes and come out to make rude gestures just after we've gone by.

Given the lack of wildlife many of us opt not to get up at 6am and take the early-morning trip tomorrow.