Final stop Wayanad

Its an inland area in about the middle of Kerala, mostly plantations of different sorts, very sparsely populated. In Bangalore, most of the guys wear pants. Down here, almost none do. They wear what we would think of as a skirt, or a sarong, that just wraps around them and is tucked into itself. It extends to their ankles, but most of the guys wear it folded up on itself so it lays above the knees, like a miniskirt. And they fuck with it constantly, always retucking it, refolding it.
Its been raining since Bandipur, sometimes in monsoon downpours. When the rain gets so bad the visibility drops to near zero, we'd pull over and wait it out a bit.
It was a long one day ride, started at about 4:30am and we get into Wayanad at about 3pm (they use the 24 clock here in India, but I'll spare you the 1500 jargon). We stayed at a coffee plantation on the side of a densely jungled hill. The tent I stayed in was pretty large, and had an outhouse of sorts behind it. The canvas was treated well and although it was pouring down rain it didn't get wet inside. I was totally beat when we got in so I crashed for a 3 hour nap. When I woke up, it was twilight (no Bella and Edward, just a setting sun). I looked up and saw the largest spider I've ever seen in my life, tarantula excluded. It was on the inside of the tent canvas right above me. Its leg span was over 6 inches, and its body was pretty big. I definitely did not scream like a terrified school girl and run from the tent like it was on fire. Definitely not.
Calmed down, had a couple beers with the others, and went back to the tent for the night. Well, turns out, there was a Wayanad monkey who possessed a terrible combination of abilities; expert level user of tent closure zippers, and a wicked and cruel sense of humor. Goddamn I hate monkeys. Animals are not supposed to have a sense of humor. Anyway, through most of the night I would be woken up by the slow, deliberate unzipping of the tent flap. I would yell “HEY!”, and the little spawn of Satan would screech in laughter and run up to the top of the tent. I would then get up, zip the tent closed again, and lay back to sleep. I would drift back into sleep, thinking of the cruelest, most violent, most efficient ways to kill a monkey, only to be startled back to consciousness again by a slowly unzipping zipper. If it were actually possible for a human to catch and kill a monkey, I would to this day still be wearing that little shit as a cape.
We got going early the next day, with the intention to ride up a nearby mountain. It was still raining very hard, but as we climbed the winding mountain, a thick fog set in, reducing visibility to absolutely zero meters. Unfortunately, the truck drivers winding up and down the mountain didn't feel like a dense fog was reason enough to slow to under 80km/h, so they were tearing down the mountain road with reckless abandon. It was just way too dangerous, and I'll admit I was the first to finally just pull off and say “fuck this, I'm not going further”. With just a little argument, it was agreed to just start the long haul back to Bangalore.
The ride back was uneventful, fast, and dangerous. Lots of bus dodging at 105km/h, lots of wet windy roads.
Everyone made it back alive, me with a sore ass, a sunburn, and a temporarily satiated sense of adventure.