I woke up in the morning a little startled to hear banging on the roof and screeching. I peeked out the unsealed door hinge to see a female monkey just taking a stroll on our front porch. I quickly got dressed what was going on. I grabbed my bible and journal, and let the other girls sleep in since we had been on such a rigorous schedule the week before.
I found a seat out on the balcony, and I could hear a monkey screaming angrily on the tree branches next to the boys room. It obviously woke Brock up because he began screaming back at it from inside his room. I just sat on the porch and giggled. I mean really- monkeys woke us up?! I love it.
The angry monkey looked a little territorial, and climbed around to the front of the house to get a look at me. It sat on a branch about 10 feet away from me and stopped screaming to stare me down. I just stared right back at in the eyes and eventually it got the hint. It left our tree, and it didn’t come back. Take that monkey.
Eventually Brock and Brent came out to see what it was. (Brock must have woken Brent up with his screaming.) Apparently the bars of soap that they had put in their shower the night before were gone, and there began, The Mystery of the Stolen Soap.
Maybe they misplaced it. Maybe mice ate it. Maybe the soap was just a figment of their imagination, but I think it was the monkeys. I think the monkey snuck into their unlatchable window and stole the rosemary mint scented soap. For what purpose? We will never know.
[Suspect #1]
I walked down to the creek next to our tree house to finish my quiet time. I had to get to it by walking down a convenient staircase down into the 20 foot ravine. For maybe 10 minutes the only thing I was thinking about was my tiger escape plans.
Now if you’d like a quick Animal Planet lesson here it is: The Tiger, Panthera Tigeris, is the largest of all the big cats. They can reach up to 11 feet long and 660 pounds. It is India’s national animal, and India is home to the largest population of wild tigers. Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, and although they are an endangered species, it’s still kinda scary to walk down to a creek in the Indian jungle by yourself—even if just to pray.
[Man eating Tiger from Calcutta. 1903. Killed 200 people.]
This is what I came up with:
Plan A: Get Getto Crunk on that Tiger, and bow up and scream, “GET AWAY FROM ME IN THE NAME OF JESUS!!!”
Plan B: Run up the ravine as fast as possible. Run to the Tree in house. Run up the first flight of stairs, and then the second. Try to get in the girls room, and if the girls had locked the door from the inside… then my life would just be over and the girls would open the door to see my poor mangled body and a gigantic tiger waiting to get them too.
Despite all these gruesome thoughts, I could feel Jesus reassuring me that I would see no Tigers, and that I could stay there as long as I wanted, so I did.
Roger came to pick us up. Breakfast with Samuel was simple, toast and eggs. Roger took us to his farm again, and back behind his house was an natural elephant haven. Brock, Carlie, Grace and I walked down a steep path and into a dry river bed with a small river winding through it. There was elephant poop everywhere, and the bamboo sounded like a chorus of creaking doors. It felt like an elephant wonderland.
[Elephant Haven]
We walked back up the steep path, and as I was coming back into Roger’s yard I about stepped on a tiny lime green snake about 1 foot long. It quickly squiggled away, and we lost it.
We then left Roger’s farm and began the trek up the Nilgris Mountains to a city just over the peak called Ooty. We wove through 32 hairpin turns. Some of us were feeling sick, but I was not. The view was incredible. I just felt so full of joy! .
[Fields of Tea were terrace all through the mountains]
The Scorpio started to overheat 3/4ths of the way up the mountain. Not good. We all got out and walk about 100 yards up the mountain, and found the Scorpio parked. The whole way up the mountain I had Waterdeep’s line, “Go tell it to the mountain tops, that I’m alive! Dark and Night are not your masters.” The car was leaking orange liquid. We waited about a half hour for it to cool off, so we took pictures by St. Josephs Church.
[Our picture by St. Joseph's Church]
[St. Joseph's Church]
While we were waiting I tried (unsuccessfully) to catch a little yellow butterfly. I tried for maybe 10 minutes, and it never flew away from me. It just delicately hovered all around my hands, but quickly dodged them every time I went for it. This little butterfly was significant to me because I had the same one when I was about 8 years old. I think I bought it at a school book fair, and it was dead and pinned inside of a little clear plastic box. It was my treasure as any 8 year old girl holds on to something tiny and beautiful. It was an itty bitty butterfly, not bigger then an inch. Mostly yellow wings, but with one black marking at the top of each wing. Being sentimental as I am, it really touched me, that God would allow me to have that same kind of butterfly when I was a little girl, and then show me their origin when I’m a young woman. Maybe I’m sappy, but to me it was confirmation that God had known about this experience in India long before I had. This butterfly apparently is only in India, and the only place I saw it was in the mountains.
[ThePlain Sulphur (Dercas lycorias)]
We went across the street and did a little shopping. I brought a pack of 8 Bhindis for 4 rupees. (the cheapest/funnest thing I bought in India). Bhindis are a decorative little sticker to stick between the eyebrows. They are not religious. When a personal has painted a dot, or put colored powered in-between their eyebrows, it is usually from a Hindu alter from a prayer asking for a third spiritual eye. My cute little Bhindi’s are always decorative with no religious association though… so I thought they were fun.
[Indian Women, I'm not sure who the artist is]
We did have plans to go explore a waterfall, but our car trouble kept us in the little city. I was a little sad about that. I love waterfalls! Oh well, We found some cool knives for the men in our lives, and I bought a couple things for my mom and a yellow silk scarf for me. The scarf was about 100 rupees ($2).
Met back in Café Coffe Day and bought some Snapple for 120 rupees (way too much again, Snapple… Snapple, do you really have to be overpriced everywhere?)
I also bought some Non-Sense brand tea, the same kind of tea Roger’s wife uses. I hope to duplicate her tea when I get home. I bought my Dad some peanuts, but when I showed them to Roger he said that I should probably not give my Dad those because he’s afraid they might make him sick.
We drove back down the mountain, and Roger stopped to let me take a picture of the mountains. I hopped out of the car, and my skirt got all caught in briars. I thought, “Oh, I can just get out of this”, but after several minutes of everyone in the car watching me struggle in the briars, Rebecca hopped out of the car and saved me… I’m not even sure if the picture was that good.
We drove to a restaurant and had mashed potatoes and other American dishes. We had great conversation about sperm donors, drinking your own urine, and yes, if you and I were trekking in frozen Alaska, and you died, and I was starving I would eat you, and no Brent, I didn’t know that the butt would be best to eat, but thank you for that tidbit of information.
Just as we were walking to our car, we heard some commotion from the workers at the restaurant. Apparently there was a wild elephant in the dark just beyond the fence. A man positioned his Jeep headlights into the brush so we could get a better look. There it was, a full grown male wild elephant. We stood at a distance, in awe, watching him eat. Apparently this same elephant had climbed on top of one of their cars and the two story building next door before. It had climbed up the stairs! They said the BBC had come out before to do a story on it.
A man came and told us, with his finger pointed into the darkness, “A women spotted a tiger just over there this morning.” Creepy…
After a long day of wildlife adventures, we went back to sleep like the Swiss family Robinson in our tree house. We didn’t go driving, looking for tigers after dinner because we knew we’d have to get up at 4:15am for our mountain trek in the morning.
I slept so light because the boys were in charge of waking us up in at 4:15am. None of us girls had brought a watch or alarm. It was so windy outside, and I could feel the whole tree house swaying and creaking. I woke up several times thinking the boy were stirring and fixing to wake us up… I thought I heard something going up in their room.
[Keep reading for the continuation of our Jungle Adventures…and comment so I don’t feel like talking to myself.]
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