Trip to Wayanad (Part 1)

Yeah, this one was long overdue.

Last month on the 25/26/27th of July we decided to go off on a family vacation. Sawani’s birthday falls on the 27th of July and we have decided to spend time away from home every year on her birthday. So about a week before, we started scouting for nearby places of interest. Typically being a weekend getaway, we didn’t want the place to be beyond 300kms of distance from Bangalore (sometimes it just gets too tiring travelling and quite a many times we felt more tired than relaxed after a weekend off). So we looked up Holiday IQ and based on umpteen discussions between the 3 of us we shortlisted 2 places…It was a toss up between Kabini River Lodge or Wayanad. Both the places looked equally inviting. But being July and with the rains in full flow, we came to know that Kabini river was flowing to the brim, and due to the rains chances of seeing wild animals in the awesome Nagarhole National park were bleak. Actually, it was raining in Kerala as well…so we were kind of thinking whether the trip would be a go. Anyways, my scouting out for a resort continued unabated. While going through Holiday IQ for places to stay in Wayanad I remembered the last time on our Coorg trip we had thought that it would be wonderful to stay in a Homestay and experience native hospitality of that particular region rather than live in a hotel/resort, so decided to look for an appropriate Home stay. Lo and behold, among the homestay’s that had the maximum of ratings turned out to be a nice place called Ente Veedu. Interestingly in Malayalam it means “My own home”. I called up Ente Veedu and a lady by the name Mrs. Seetha answered my phone and explained the facilities at Ente Veedu. She was so gracious and honest and mentioned that it was raining heavily in Wayanad and it would not be a good idea to visit at this time. We were disappointed but she mentioned that, we could do the booking, and she would call us if the weather cleared up…else she would refund the entire amount. Now where does one get this kind of service, in the extremely commercial world of today.  Still we were a bit unsure, and guess what, over the next couple of days, she mentioned that there was no need to make any upfront payment and we could just drive over. She would reserve a Bamboo Cottage (as per our preference) for us. It was amazing…So the destination decided was Wayanad, decked in the beautiful Western Ghats and we would be staying at Ente Veedu.

Meanwhile I also googled for routes and the best way to travel to Wayanad. Interestingly came across this site…http://www.hampi.in/bangalore-to-wayanad-by-road.shtml which gave amazing details into travelling by road to Wayanad from Bangalore, that I decided to follow the directions albeit with a little change. Instead of going by route A and coming back by Route C, as suggested, I decided it would be better to go by Route C and come back by Route A, reason being I was aware of Route C, right upto Gundlupet since it falls on the way to Ooty and having done Ooty a couple of times I was comfortable with the route. That way we would be covering 4 forests…(yeah I am aware it’s a single monolithic chain divided only by the official state demarcations)…on the way to Wayanad it would be Bandipur (Karnataka) and Muthanga (Kerala) and on the way back it would be Tholpetty (Kerala) and Nagarhole (Karnataka)…how about that eh…

So with all the planning done we started at around 6:30 am in the morning on the 25th towards Wayanad…via Mysore. The weather was perfect and it was great being in the car with family…chatting, laughing, joking…with Sawani and Arjun…

In no time (9 am actually) we reached Chennapatna, a small town before Mysore famous for it’s wooden toys.  We stopped for breakfast at the famous Kamat hotel on SH17 and had some delicious Idly and Wada. Sawani then indulged in some shopping in the nearby store and off we headed towards Mysore.

We crossed Mysore at about 10/10:30ish and headed towards Ooty on NH212. We rang up Mrs. Seetha and she mentioned that since we would reach Wayanad (Sultan Bathery) by around 12/12:30, it maybe better for us to visit Edakkal Caves on the way and then reach Ente Veedu by the evening, since she was not sure of the rains in the later part of the day. She mentioned, her guide would be available for us from Sultan Bathery and then he would take us to Edakkal caves. We agreed and decided we would have lunch at Sultan Batthery and then head out as planned. In the interim, our journey continued, the weather was nice and misty and we reached Gundlupet by about 11 am. From there we had to leave the road to Ooty and head towards Maddur and Sultan Bathery via the Bandipur/Muthanga forests. The journey through the forests was amazing with all of us silent in our cars, car moving slowly, looking out for animal sightings..unfortunately we were able to sight only monkeys…lot’s and lot’s of monkeys…but no deer/tiger/elephants. Oh well, the journey was awesome through the dense forests and we were thrilled. We reached Sultan Bathery at around 12:30/1:00 am and headed straight to the hotel recommended by Mrs Seetha for a sumptuous lunch of Chicken, Meals and fried fish ( I forget the name of the hotel…so much for penning down the travelogue after nearly a month..was it Jubilee..I think it was Jubilee)…We also met Vivek there, our guide from Ente Veedu..Being in Kerala we had to attack the fish, it was some local catch, fried in coconut oil..didn’t taste all that great really but we were famished and we must have chomped down a ton of rice (extrapolation personified here…but you get the picture) with amazing variety of veggies.

We were then told by Vivek, that there was another family also visiting from Bangalore to Ente Veedu and they will also be joining us for the visit to Edakkal caves. It was a family of 6 (2 kids, a couple and their parents), from Bangalore, and essentially we travelled and did the sight-seeing together. It was fun. One thing to note about Wayanad is that the places of interest are quite a distance from each other, min: 25/30 kms. Off we headed to Edakkal caves, what an amazing ride it was through treacherous mountainous pathways…The last 2 kms we had to go in a Jeep (Mahindra) since our cars would not do the climb, all 9 of us + vivek alongwith the driver were packed into a Jeep for the 2 km arduous climb to the base of the mountain. These caves are located within a mountain range, and we had to trek for about 30-45 mins to get to them. It was awesome, Arjun had a blast and he climbed the steep rocky mountains with elan. It was heartening to see him climb using the 3 point rock climbing technique at this age and without any special training whatsoever. Arjun made friends with the 2 kids and all the 3 of us were having a blast. It was one helluva climb. The caves were awesome.

 

Vivek then asked Sachin and I, if we were further interested to climb. The caves are midway through the climb, and the remaining climb was steep and dangerous for the kids, so our better halves decided to rest and soak in the view and the 3 of us (Sachin, Vivek and I) ascended further. It was one helluva climb and all of us were soaked with sweat. At one of the places, we actually had to climb a huge rock with the support of a rope. It was amazing. At about 3/4 the climb Vivek took us to an amazing spot and we decided to head back. Vivek was asking us if we wanted to climb further but we decided against that and started our descent back.

We travelled back to our cars, in the jeep and then headed towards Ente Veedu, it was 5pm and we were all famished to the core after the amazing workout and were looking forward to be welcomed by Mrs Seetha and Ente Veedu…

For photos visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/yranade/WayanadTrip#

More in Part 2

Cheers,
Yogesh Ranade