Day 49: Thekkady

We made an early start from Madurai to Thekkady. I felt better than yesterday, as my fever had gone down a bit, I felt out of it and my appetite was almost nonexistent. The drive was another long and bumpy one, all I wanted to do was get some rest, but our tour guide had us doing one thing after the other before we checked in. I was pretty mad with this. We drove by our hotel multiple times, but he insisted that I "shouldn't miss it." Anything is worth missing in my condition. It seemed like a huge hassle when I asked him to drop me off at the hotel after we had lunch while the group was visiting the spice plantation in Cardamom hills. For example, one of the things he had us visit was a cashew field, it was actually a grape field. Seen that before, get me outa here.

I visited yet another doctor to get a checkup. For some reason, I trusted this doctor much more, probably because he spoke perfect English and had visited the US multiple times. He also reassured me that it was just food poisoning.

Honestly, right after the doctors visit, I was feeling better, mostly because I didn't have the fear of having malaria anymore. When I got back to the hotel, I rested up for a bit and then joined some of the group for a local martial arts show, called Kalari. It was pretty impressive to see a different form of martial arts that involved all different types of weapons. The shows were pretty impressive, and at the end they had one guy jump through two hoops of fire and then two guys, side by side, jump through the two hoops.

After that, we visited a local family and all prepared a home cooked Indian dinner. The preparation lasted entirely too long, 3 hours, leaving many of us angry and ready to leave. Especially with me being sick, I was hoping for a quick meal. Americans invented the microwave for a reason, sometimes we want a meal in 30 seconds. In southern India, the more local food tends to have a coconut base, which I am not a fan of. Luckily, aside from all the coconut, we had some beef curry, so I was able to dig into that.

Early the next morning, I woke up absolutely covered in sweat. At first I had no clue what was going on and then realized I had broken my fever. After I dried off, I felt 100 times better.