On Sunday we woke to rain, which didn’t bode well for our ‘rest day’, a 15km trek in the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Fortunately the rain was warm, but it soon stopped so we didn’t really need to carry our waterproof coats and trousers all day! 
The reserve has about 40 tigers, so we had an armed guard with us. Needless to say, we didn’t see a tiger 
, but it turns out the thing we really needed protection from was the leeches 
.
Shame we didn’t see tigers or elephants (tbh the rest of the group were jabbering away so much I’m not surprised), but we did see wild boar, red mongoose, langur monkeys, large necked stork, a HUGE spider, and buffalo and samba deer (both favourite tiger meals).
