Wayanad

About Wayanad

Wayanad is a district in Northern Kerala nestled amidst the beautiful Western Ghats . Its known for its "scenic" beauty ( :-) can't miss referring to this one ) and has a plethora of stuff on offer.

When : 21-22-23 March 2008

How to get there

Wayanad is 6 hrs drive from Bangalore . There are ample buses plying but my take would be to hire your own vehicle or even better drive all the way down .If u have a bike , thats even better

Formalities set aside , lets get into business..

One warm afternoon as I kept staring at my waves sitting in my cube , something suddenly hit me . It was close to a year since I had gone on a trek of some sort and this set off a chain of events which culminated in this blog ... Frantic search of places ensued , blogs ( thanks for them ) read and a couple of enquiries lead to a choice of places of which Wayanad was one of them ..
I had a couple of things in mind when I chose this place and I was just hoping I wouldn't be let down.. This was followed by tying up all loose ends such as travel , places to stay , learning some mallu-english ( think Prajna would agree after all those uncountable phone calls to people I dont even recollect now ) and finally a picture was emerging out ...

Day before the trip , I sat down and composed the last email which was sent out to a surprised few who dint even know where this place existed .. A few of us had made up our mind that come what may ,, rain or shine , we are going ahead ...

What then followed was an eager wait for the day to arrive .. Most of us were pretty excited from the morning itself and I guess we hardly spent time in our cubes .. Post lunch Mansoor, Suhas , Krishna , Prajna n Me headed out ,with Commercial Street close to office ,to pick up stuff to drink and eat .. It was a beautiful day with a slight drizzle on and so we ended spending all our time loafing around Commercial street ... It was 6pm by then and we only had a couple of hours before we left ..
Thankfully for me not a single one backed out!! It was finally time to say Tata to our comps..
The wait for the TT had began.. Some of killed time playing TT , a lil of the Wii , some soccer before the Pizza arrived and finally our ride had arrived .

Travellers :
Suhas , Mansoor , Krishna , Anshul , Gaurav , Ashish , Madhav , Bharti , Prajna , Radha , Shilpa and Deepak( Me)
who finally made it to the trip..

It was I think 10: 30 p.m by the time we left AMD's Poddar Facility and headed out to Richmond Road to pick up our last travellers - Bharti and Madhav, from the Mantri Facility on Richmond Road . A slight drizzle had begun to fall and after a quick refuelling we were finally headed out of Bangalore and its maddening traffic.

Traffic was slow as usual on Mysore Road and we crawled tilll RV .. Yes,, each time I go past my college RVCE ,, it brings back a lot of memories and it was the same that day .. We picked up pace there on things seemed smooth till we had our first flat tyre !! Things were happening already..

However by this time Gaurav was in his elements , inventing game after game .. We graduated from playing 5/6/7 up to a game whose name I can't even remember .. Basically one guy described and the other had to imagine n draw it and people were guessing .. Here was Radha with her directions like 17.5 degrees etc ... We then moved on to an antakshari of places .. Now this is when people started inventing places and we went to the extent of citing the local market .. ( Azadpur Mandi for starters or Yeshwantpur ) and Ashish was really at it this time coming out with places probably even fables wont have!!!

By now the road had become quite bumpy and it was close to 4 in the morning and most of the others drifted off to sleep... I usually never sleep in a bus and so here I was watching the beautiful night sky. .

It was 4:30 am when we crossed the Kerala State Check Post and we had finally arrived . What greeted me was stunning .. In Mid March , we had dense fog and the visibility had nearly gone down to a few metres.. I woke up a few and all of us just looked stunned at what we greeted us. Wayanad had given us its first glimpse .. .We zipped past Sultan Batheri and reached our base camp Kalpetta at 5 a.m . We had booked 3 rooms and since we reached early , we had to kill a little time in the bus itself. Most of them were tired and with a little of prodding we managed to get our rooms a good 2 hrs early..



A small note about the hotel .. Hotel Affas as the signboard says was a truly good find and all I can say is "Thank You" to the good samaritan , from whom I gotto know about this place ..
Most of us dint know what happened after as we crashed straight on our beds and it was almost 8:30 before we opened our eyes .. Krishna woke up first and the others followed . By the way , people in the other rooms were still fast asleep with no intention of seeing the morning sun..




After the usual freshening up , we headed out for breakfast around 10 I guess . It was Holi that day and so we thought the Hotel guy was playing a joke on us by giving us colored water .. But we later realized it was "root bear" . Post breakfast we debated n debated on what to see and what not to see and finally headed out to Soochipura falls.

The weather was amazingly cool for March with a slight drizzle and we headed out to Soochipira Waterfalls... The waterfalls can be reached after a slightly longish walk down a hill but it was worth it .. Here we had our first victim.. Ashish hurt his leg trying to impress someone which was followed by Mansoor beginning his saga of injuries.... The walk uphill saw Bharti n Mansoor climb trees ..etc .. Then all of a sudden there was this sudden burst of colour on my face . I looked back only to find Suhas all smeared in gulal . So , someone had come out with this brilliant idea of playing Holi in Wayanad and here we were running helter skelter throwing color .. The locals just stood bemused !! .. I have played a lot of Holi before however this was unique ..




It was almost 4 by the time we reached the hotel again .. Post a quick nap n lunch , we headed to Pookot Lake only to find that Wayanad shuts shop by 7 pm !! However some one suggested going to a viewpoint close by and what greeted us there was mind blowing. We had a bird's eye view of the winding road from Wayanad and the steepness of the landscape made me jittery !! However It was a sight to see.. Satisfied that we had achieved something , we headed back to the hotel . Each one had a song to sing in the ride back ( moi excluded :) ) and Anshul's flute too had us captivated .. A quick dinner and we decided to head out and check out Kalpetta ..





Think the cops thought we meant trouble and we were actually warned to head back..
So we trooped back to the hotel and with no one in a mood to sleep , we started our usual round of games . We started off with Dumb Charades and it was then that we gotto see somthing which definitely can't be described.. It was Krishna's depiction of " I always knew what you did last summer" and all I can say was this is part of Dumb Charades folk lore ... This was followed by the game we call " Village" where as usual we dint find the killer . It was almost 3 when we hit the sack ..This ended Day 1 and we had just about started with no idea on what was to folow..

Day 2 was meant to be the best of the 3 days planned .It was meant to be a trek to the Chembra Peak..

Suhas was determined to head out early and he was the first one to wake up followed by Krishna n then Me .. The others were still sleeping and a couple of loud thumps on the door and threats by Krishna meant all were awake ... Post a quick breakfast , we were about to embark when it started pouring .. A thought just crossed my mind whether we would make it but I was determined to go ahead.Come what may!! We headed out the Chembra estate which was the base camp .It was then that Wayanad showed us her beauty. The rain made it a chilly day and the drive up the estate was amongst the clouds..It was almost as if we were touching the clouds..
It was only after we reached the base camp that we were told we needed the estate officer's permission and so we had no other option but to head back.. Meanwhile I was trying to catch the morning mist in my camera and here came Bharti who wished to captured in as many pics .. Hmm. Plus we also had Krishna with his matrimonial pics .

Gaurav , Prajna n Mansoor decided to take an imaginary short cut and join us half way down while the rest of us went down in the bus.. The short cut proved otherwise and we never gotto see these people again !! They have a tale to tell of their own of the things they encountered.
After the drive down , the next thing to do was to find the estate officer which we did after learning a smatter of broken malayalam .. Since it was raining we also ended up doing some shopping and here's when I heard an interesting tale . Apparently a group of campers had forgot to douse a campfire properly and there was this sight of the burning Chembra Peak . From then on there was no camping allowed there and one need permission to trek. That explains why we goofed up . Anyways it was 12 noon by the time we again made it to the top and thankfully Gaurav , Prajna n Mansoor were there too with their tales..

Finally we were all set to go and I had this rush of adrenaline flow . The weather had relented a bit but still the sun was hidden behind the dense clouds .. I thought we were really lucky to trek in such weather in March. . Some of the girls were apprehensive about the Leeches but I was happy none of them held back and were raring to go like all of us and so we set out to conquer Chembra...





The trek started admist a lot of mist around and as we climbed up it got better and better.. It was tough to find a good grip too and when it started raining , all hell broke loose.. There were streams of water gushing down and people kept falling.. But we kept climbing along till we hit something called a "love lake" ..



The "Love Lake"


It was incredible to see a heart shaped lake at such a height.. With rain poring down and with freezing cold , we decided to call it quits here though the peak beckoned me.. By then pangs of hunger had struck and inspite of the freezing cold , icy winds blowing over n pouring rain , a make shift dhaba was setup under an umbrella with Anshul the main chef.. It was truly a sight to see everyone grabbing the first loaf of bread offered and within minutes we had wolfed down everything we had.. Bread never tasted better , I swear.



After the heavenly lunch beneath the umbrella

A few customary pics later , it was time to say alvida to the love lake n the peak and we started the journey down. The journey down was pretty rapid , literally with people falling off , sliding along and we were back to the TT in no time.
The journey back to the hotel was spent in silence ( quite unusual for us) as everyone was exhausted after quite an eventful day where the trek itself was in doubt.. After lazing away in the hotel for a few hours , it was time for the Wayanad Awards session to commence.



There were quite a few skirmishes esp with the funny bone awards ( which is debated even today) and things would have hottened up.. A few performances and a few awards n a few games later , it was time to end a tiring albeit well spent day.. Day 2 came to an eventful end.

Yawn.. it was a lazy beginning to Day 3 with aching limbs .. But we decided to head down to wat was proclaimed as one of the largest natural dams.. Yeah the dam n all was fine but whats the deal for us there.. Tats the question which arose in my mind.. Post some naach gaana , we reached our destination.. Armed with a tennis ball n a football we set out to make the most of what lay in store.. There was a speed boat ride on offer there but there was a long wait for it. We needed to kill time . Initially it started off with angling stones into the dam waters and to watch them dance along and then suddenly someone got this brainwave of an idea to pitch some wickets there and start off a game of cricket..



The war cry


Cricket in progress..




This turned into a full fledged free for all with new rules being framed every moment. It was time for the speed boat drive which was amazing fun but we just wanted to get on with the game we had to complete. We also had junta crowding around and shouting on.. Finally it was time to call it stumps and head back.. After a divine "fundae" a.k.a ice cream , we headed off back to the hotel . The next few hrs were spent roaming around , catching a few sights around and then a loong loong dinner at some place I dont even remember the name of now..
We left for Bangalore , tired but contended. However the story doesnt end here.. We were at Maddur's CCD at 1 am itself and we definitely had to kill a few hours.




There was a fundae session by Krishna on blowing smoke rings and it was almost 3 am by the time we left CCD. Reached Bangalore in the wee hours and dropping off everyone at their places..This ended a trip which was gives each one of us a high whenever we think of it..