It’s almost as if it is mandatory for Bangaloreans to venture out on a long weekend. The Good Friday-Easter weekend was no different. And I seem to be well on the path to turning a true Bangalorean now. This long weekend was a must holiday for me too. And typical of all things Bangalorean, one needs to plan way in advance for everything – movies – you book them 3 days in advance, holiday – book them at least 2 weeks ahead! And chances are you would still find it difficult to find a decent accommodation anywhere within 300 kms radius of this city. Just shows the amount of frustration building within ITzens, desperate to run out of the city on the first opportunity.
Alas! I hadn’t learnt it yet. Nevertheless I managed to find an accommodation after a 3 hour online research, finalizing hotels thrice only to be told later they aren’t available and the website isn’t updated. After 3 levels of escalations in the travel company, I was finally set for my short junket to Wayanad.
Around 280 kms from Bangalore, Wayanad is popular for its forests. Most blogs and people I spoke to advised me of a 5-5.5 hour drive; I should have realized all of them were Indians with typical estimation senses – round the corner in India implies a good 2 kms, and 5 hours actually meant 7 hours! Anyways the beautiful drive more than made up for the inaccurate advice. Especially once we touched Kerala. The drive through the forest reserve is amazing (unfortunately I am not good at remembering names of places, was it Bandipur?). It’s quite surprising how the roads in this dense jungle are so well maintained, and thankfully visitors are civil enough not to litter them yet. Have a look at this pic:
Just as we were taking in the beauty of the place, we spotted a few vehicles parked by the road with people staring at the jungle beyond. My curiosity (and to a good extent, the herd mentality) made me stop by too. The cynicism apart, it gave me my first brush with wildlife photography. Naah, I am not as enthusiastic a wildlife photographer as many others I have come across, and I am damn scared of all birds and animals other than humans. But then, any amateur photographer’s portfolio is incomplete without a few pics of freaky insects, pixilated pics of birds in flight and a few with small pecks of animals shot at a long distance. I tried my best to capture these wild elephants with my 18-55 mm lens and the one you find here is actually at maximum zoom. I was told these can run at 60 kms an hour, so didn’t try being too adventurous to overcome my modest lens’ limitation.
Moving on, hungry as we were with a 7 hour drive, the only thing we longed for apart from a sumptuous lunch was to find our abode to rest our weary souls. Winding through another jungle road, we finally reached our destination – Aranyakam. I am very apprehensive of home stays after our bad experience with the one in Coorg, but this one was totally different. In fact, I would call it a 2 star resort rather than a home stay. The rooms are completely independent of the owner’s home, and while it does not have the amenities of a resort, it doesn’t encroach on your privacy the way home stays do. This looked like a classic British era place; we later confirmed this place is indeed 90 years old. Despite the tiring drive, the coffee plantation and the adjoining valley was reason enough to scan the place than rest sometime. And it didn’t disappoint either. Perched right on the edge of the valley was a beautiful tree house, with a breeze so strong that it could have swayed the entire house. If that wasn’t enough, there was also the danger from a panther that had tread the path to this tree house the night before.
Eventually our rumbling stomachs got the better of us, and we waited patiently for what we expected a hot, spicy, Kerala meal. Only to be served some cold rice, a vegetable that I can’t remember (and would never want to), and a curry that I could barely identify. Definitely not worth the money, but again staying in Bangalore, we have learnt to keep our value-for-money expectations pretty low (I can be countered that this applies only to vegetarians in this city; and I’d tend to agree).
With barely a few hours left before sunset, we decided to make the most of the day otherwise lost to driving and bad food. So the immediate next destination was a waterfall (again I don’t recall the name). For someone coming from Lonavala, where you find waterfalls every few kms, the ones in Wayanad are no attraction. But the weather is so beautiful, and the place thankfully not as commercialized, that it does make the visit worthy. Finally tired after a long day, we retreated to Aranyakam to catch up on a highly missed sleep.
The next morning promised to be a busy one. We planned to visit Kuruwa island and drove close to 2 hours through an extremely bad road, only to realize that the island was closed for the day due to heavy flooding of the Kabini river. What a shame, couldn’t they just broadcast it 50 kms earlier. And that wasn’t it. We then drove another 30 odd kms to a dam (not worth the memory or the mention) to find a rather small lake with 3 hours waiting time for boating. Again coming from Lonavala that boasts of many popular dams, this was no attraction at all. Nonetheless we persisted further to visit Soojipura waterfalls albeit with moderate hopes. While the falls weren’t all that great, the drive was amazing. It traversed huge tea plantations and for a minute, I thought I was probably somewhere in Darjeeling. Check these pics out!
As we drove back to Aranyakam, it started drizzling and the fog was so dense that we could barely see 5 meters ahead. Pitch dark, incessant rains, dense fog, a jungle path, and a prowling panther – wow what worse can anyone ask for? Not to mention the mouth watering delicacies (sarcasm completely intended) awaiting us back home. This dinner wasn’t as disappointing though. For one, we had warm appams that tasted heaven in the cold night.
Next morning we headed to Edakal caves. I still wonder what on earth made us choose that over driving back home. For one, you have to trek 2 hours to reach the top, of which close to an hour is attributed purely to the one way pedestrian traffic. And secondly, once inside you realize it’s too small a cavern for all the hype with no carvings, save for some minor stuff on one of the walls. The oppressive heat doesn’t help either, and you literally crave for the comfort of your AC car, if not a shower to wash off the stinking sweat.
So after a grueling trek, we headed back home. As predicted, half of Bangalore population seemed to be heading back home with us, and we got stuck in rush hour traffic post Mysore. But once back, the feeling was truly one of homecoming. I guess, I did turn a Bangalorean. Despite the minor expectation mismatches, the trip was still refreshing enough. After all I did manage to try my hand for a good time at my Canon 550D with fewer “oh no, not again” glances from my wife this time. It probably had to do with the location, practically everyone at Aranyakam had an SLR, and every second amateur photographer seem to be hell bent on perfecting the art. So here’s my portfolio for this visit; positive comments most welcome!
