Elephant Valley

So, Elephant Valley... What can I say? To begin with, our itinerary indicated that we'd be staying at a hill station (Kodaikanal, if memory serves) for two nights. Well, a valley is the exact opposite of a hill, so we were off to a bad beginning before we ever began. It would get much, much worse.

Moments after arriving and downing our "welcome" drinks (which I have come to detest, I have to confess. Welcome cocktails, okay. Welcome wine, sure. Welcome unidentified, artificially colored juice drinks, not so much), our guide told me that I'd be staying in one of the cabins "across the river" with him and the other solo traveler (a nice guy, but extra goofy). I immediately protested on the grounds that I didn't want to be alone over there without my pals (the gay English guys in their 20s). The non-English-speaking guide's solution: I could switch rooms with said English guys. Right. After explaining that I wanted to be on the same side of the river, that bit was worked out. Still had no idea where these cabins were. Unfortunately, we would soon find out. (As a reminder, this was a "comfort" level trip.)

After a five minute walk down a hill, past the horse stables and the cabins lucky enough to be on the same side of the river as the restaurant, we came to a river, maybe 40-50 feet wide (however many meters that is, I neither know nor particularly care. I am not metric, and learning the kilogram and celsius conversions is the best I'm going to do this trip). No bridge in sight, nor a friendly boatman to take us to the other side. Instead, just some stepping stones, and sand bags that were already under water when we arrived. End result: no way to get to the other side without having to wade through in water up to or past your ankles. And the journey was made considerable worse at night (no path lighting, just flash lights, and after the rain, which completely submerged the sandbags, making the plunge a bit more mid-calf).

Ten minutes after starting out on this little journey, we arrived at our cabins. No air conditioning. No fans. No window screens. And no mosquito nets. Instead, there was a little note stating that "of course" there will be animals in the rooms, it is an eco lodge, after all. The management told us that the mice, spiders, insects, squirrels and monkeys that we would likely find in our rooms were harmless and wouldn't bother us as long as we didn't bother them. How reassuring, I thought later that night, as a smashed the 8th bug I found crawling on me under the sheets. The other people (the English contingent) joining me in exile on that side of the river refused to shower the entire time we were there because of the overabundance of spiders in the bathrooms.

The one bright spot from the stay in Elephant Valley: impromptu singing around the campfire the first night. It turned out it was the other solo traveler's birthday (and can I say how awful I felt for the guy to be spending his birthday on such a crappy trip with a bunch of strangers?), so we ended up taking a lot of requests. Oddly, those requests were for Celine Dion, Bananarama, Barbara Streisand, Cher and Peter Cetera. Hmmm. Sadly, an evening of song does not make up for 2 days in hell.