The unwelcome and nagging pain of an old injury (I’m fine, just in need of some time resting off the bike) and the sudden realisation that it’s February already, led us to fully experience the complexities of Indian driving from the inside.  Thank goodness the car had seatbelts.

Early on in our trip we’d realised that it was best to give all white cars a wide berth, they often exhibited very specialised driving skills and clearly enjoyed keeping other road users on their toes. Ours was to be a white knuckle car ride – when we reached our destination Gez tipped the driver as a thank you for not crashing (mostly) and we were both genuinely relieved no other road users were harmed in the making of that journey, at least not physically.

Having screeched to a halt in a lovely spot, the past few days in Dandeli have been all about Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation punctuated by cold beer, hot masalas, bike maintenance and of course jungle safaris.

After seeing a pair of Great Hornbills while hiking near Gavi in Periyar tiger reserve, and subsequently searching in some other remote places for these beauties with limited success, we were made up to find a tree FULL of Malabar Pied Hornbills in the forested timber yard on the outskirts of Dandeli, Karnataka. Here we found plenty of other birds, recent evidence of panther and bears crossing our path, and a jeep to take us out into the jungle in search of more wildlife.