Michelle and I are off to the jungles of Kerala for a few days before we return to the United States.  Kerala is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I’m gunning for the the monsoon season not to strike a few weeks early so we have nice weather.  I took the precausion to place several “good weather” orders with all the right people, so I feel good knowing I did my part.

We’ll fly into Cochin and travel 5 hours east to Thekkadi where we will spend two nights in a “cottage on an island in a wildlife sanctuary”. Having seen the animals running around the tiny sanctuary in Mysore, this actually scares the bujezuz out of me. Sleeping on an island with this guy as my bunkmate sounds more like “terrifying” than “relaxing”.

India’s national mascot is the King Cobra, the world’s largest venomous snake.  It really bothers me that one of the deadliest animals on the planet is fast over land, can swim, can squiggle into small areas, can move about silently, and can strike accurately and lethally from something like 10 meters away. If it can kill a full-grown elephant with a single bite, the least nature could do is make it super gimpy or blind or something.

One of the managers here in Bangalore is from Kerala and I expressed my concerns about getting up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire only realize that what I thought was the fire poker was actually the business end of a cobra.  He really got a kick out of me being afraid of snakes in the cottage.  “Oh, they make sure there are no snakes in the buildings.  But you should be careful when you go outside or leave the door open.”  Thanks.  That helps.

While staying in the sanctuary, we’ll be going on an elephant safari or some similar activity that seems to border on suicide.  The good news here is that apparently, it’s possible to reattach limbs that get torn off by jungle beasts.  The base assumption here being that you survived the attack.  And even then, I bet it still ruins your trip.

After Thekkadi, we’ll be heading to Alleppey to get on a private houseboat for an overnight tour of the Kerala backwaters, which Conde Naste ranks as one of the ten things everyone should do before they die.  What they forget to mention is that you should time this trip so that you do it before you spend the night in a cottage on Cobra Island in Thekkadi because then it becomes one of the ten things you should have done before you cozied up to a 12 foot venomous snake.

The houseboat will then drop us off at our final destination in Kumarakom where we will have a room on a big lake.  Apparently, this is the place to be this time of year because most of the streams around the area will have dried up by now and all the wildlife will come to the water to drink.

If not, I’ll just use my croc-call to bring ‘em in.

Disclaimer for both our mothers who I’m sure I have scrared half to death with this post: the dangers of this trip have been greatly exaggerated.  This is a very common itenerary and almost no tourists die on these trips.  Usually.