Wayanad trip

After a lot of yes-no, yes-no from many friends we finally decided that we would be leaving for Wayanad on a Friday night. The group that finally went missed many of the people who form our group in office. Nevertheless we could not cancel this trip for anyone.So it was seven of us who embarked on that trip in a Qualis.Wayanad is just 320 Kms from Bangalore and we wanted to reach there not before 6 in the morning.So we chilled out for sometime in the CCD at Maddur.The drive along the Mysore road was superb and the road from Gundlupet was also good. The road in Kerala looked better inspite of Deepak's allegation that Communists had fared extremely bad when it came to governance. The superb roads however made us counter that.

We stayed at a resort "Harithagiri" in Kalpetta. Kalpetta is the district HQ of Wayanad disrict though it does not seem anything more than being fit for taluk Hq also.The early morning walk in the town was scintillating. It was drizzling and we had expected to be caught in the Kerela monsoon.The early morning splash into the pool was awesome. Do you believe we were in the pool so early in the morning, that too in a hill station. We must have lost our senses.Deepak had got his full swimming gear complete with a swimming cap and goggles but had forgot to get swimming trunks. With all this we thought he must be an expert swimmer only to find out that even he was walking along the pool with all his gear on.
First day we went to Banasurasagar dam and Soochipura Falls. Banasurasagar wasnt a big dam but the view all around it was awesome.Actually the light drizzle made it look better. We had a speed boat ride in the dam for about 20 mins or may be more . More because one of the boat had some engine problem and had stopped 3 or 4 times in the middle and the engine refused to come to life.The only consolation was that we had life saving jackets on.From there we went to Soochipura Falls. People had written in their travel diaries that they had gone under the waterfall. But what we saw there was a furious monsoon falls and no one could ever imagine people going anywhere near that.We had to climb down a hill to go the falls from the nearest motorable place.That walk was good.We went back to our resort and thought of taking a nap before venturing into their Bar. Vedu woke us all to tell that it was 11:30 and we found the bar and the kitchen closed and we could not have our dinner. Somehow after requesting the reosrt staff, we were served with the dinner but with a limited menu.Next morning we checked out of our room and went ahead for the trek to Chembara peak. Resort had arranged a guide for us. It comes under the purview of Forest Dept and permission is necesary to trek. We had a heavy breakfast at Meppadi and when we were almost halfway I cursed myself for having eaten so much.The trek was tiring and was superb. We had planned to go only till the heart shaped lake which is almost halfway to the peak.Our guide told us that last year he had taken along an IBMer from Mumbai on this trek. And he was blind. Wow we with all senses working perfectly found it so difficult I wondered what guts that man had to climb up till here.Hats off man.Our guide was fluent in English and talked all the way up. He told about all the recent leopard sightings in the area and what not.The weather was superb till we reached there.After sometime we planned to go a bit higher to take the pictures of the heart shaped lake. Vedu cudnt have gone back without this.He had to send that photo to many girls with a caption which I dont want to mention here.But it started to pour heavily and the whole area was covered by thick mist. So it became difficult for us to sight the lake and Vedu's plans shattered. But he has promised to go back there again to get that photo.The descent was a horrible experience as the path which we had taken to climb up had become like a small stream because such heavy downpour. AD himslef lost count of how many times he slipped and fell. We climbed down four legged animals.Luckily we were not bothered by leaches. That came as a surprise to us. We had expected a lot of them.Fully tired and drenched in rain,we had a heavy meal in Kalpetta and were on our way to Matunga National Park. We went inside the Forest on a jeep.Well that was the worst part of our trip.We didnt sight anything other than some deers.We were told by our guide that most animals prefer to cross over to the Karnataka Tamil Nadu forests during Monsoons. Then cursing the animals, forest Dept and AD( For occupying the front seat in the jeep.People thought thats the reason we couldnt see any animal.And to make matters worse he was singing) we were on our way back to Bangalore.On the way we saw some elephants inside the Karnataka border. One Elephant was with 2 calves and very close to the road. There was one car already parked near the elephant and as soon as we stopped our car, it attacked us. SJ was still taking out his cam and planning to get down from the car. Thanks to our driver's instinct he hadnt switched off the car.We had to leave without a pic of that huge elephant.Then all ou us were all ears as Vedu preached his gyan on how to woo girls. When that is the topic everyone is interested.We stopped at the CCD in Maddur and I got down at Channapatna trying to avoid going home late night fearing the dogs in our area.
Finally it was a nice trip and deserved break for all of us. For me life had become so mechanical.I needed this very badly.
Some of wayanad pics here http://www.orkut.co.in/AlbumZoom.aspx?uid=16702818083314523209&pid=1215066288703&aid=1214864915