What if we go on a weeklong trip into the wild? This plan of ours had been in pipeline for over 3 months or should I say 3 years! The last time we (Cakewalk boys) went on a weeklong trip was in 2006, when we were out on the beaches of Goa, binging and gorging every possible thing available to mankind. That was just after Dilip and I met the veteran cakewalk boys. The old cakewalk pals had gone their own separate ways, with only 3 old men (Gullu, Joshi and Pai) left to sing songs to each other. We joined in to add chorus and slowly the group grew to be a 10-member gang. This was a long time back reminiscing our past trips all of us were gearing up to the next big one, not knowing what was coming.
All of us believed savouring Wine, Food and Song (shit how did food come in-between) were the common things amongst us, but sooner we found out that there was another thing that was common amongst us ‘Photography and wildlife’. Across the table usually the question would be ‘What if we go to Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Kerala or back to Goa again?’ With many budding photographers onboard with the recent addition of Narayan Canon Pai with his 450D, it was unanimously decided to subdue our binging behaviour, act and think as normal individuals and travel the length and breadth of Maharashtra in a week, phew!! Thank god that trip never happened (or else we would have returned with a sore ass), just as we were chalking out plans and the itinerary there was a swine flu outbreak, with pune being the worst affected city in the country, with the outbreak just setting in and many people warning us not to take chances all we could do is see our plans turn plain fart!
So What if we missed Maharashtra we had many other places to visit. We were back at our adda deciding on the next possible place to spend a week and with a couple (grossly understated) rounds of talk across the table things started to materialize with many skeptics like me deciding to be on the trip just in the nick of time. And just a week before we hit the road we were desperately searching the net, flipping pages of outlook traveller, scouting the maps of Kerala, dialling every possible number in Kerala to find accommodation and freeze on a route.
After some frantic searching and hard work during office hours from Mr. Dilip, Pai, Kadri and others we had a route and all places of stay booked. Hurray!! We were going to Kerala for a week and with 2 people (Gullu and Joshi) who knew driving reasonably well and 5 experts specializing in night driving. We were set to hit the road at 11am on Saturday 26th Oct 2009.
Since it was festive season Gullu had to stay back at his office a little longer to perform aayudha pooja. Then we postponed our start time to 8pm. It was also a blessing in disguise for me, as I had to edit Tour of Nilgiris (TFN) videos, which needed half a day more than I expected. Kadri didn't want to come empty handed and managed to arrange a camera for himself. Every one of us had planned to take an afternoon nap since it was a long journey ahead of us to reach Thekkady, our first place of visit in Kerala. Like most of the time nothing works as planned, none of us slept in the afternoon.
Finally at 8.30pm we started our week long trip with Gullu and Joshi driving their respective santro’s. Kadri, Pai and Myself comfortably got into joshi’s car where as Anil and Dilip had to squeeze into Gullu’s car :). We drove through Hosur, Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri and Salem with Pai and me talking bakwas about FM Radio, rolling terrain and reasons why FM waves don’t reach the bottom most point in a rolling terrain. Much of this journey passed between Me and Pai taking a nap for a few minutes and waking up to continue our bakwas and Kadri smoking away another cigarette. Just after nammakkal check post Joshi wanted some peace of mind, stopped the car dropped his seat back and within 5mins was snoring which sounded like a car’s jammed horns. In the other car Gullu, Dilip and Anil took turns to rest, while Pai and myself roamed the fields following some ghosts, which turned out to be our own shadows.
Image Courtesy : Narayan Pai (Albert)
After about an hour and half again started towards Thekkady and immediately I was in my dreams, woke up briefly to see the 2 cars parked at a petrol bunk with Gullu doing the same thing that Joshi had done a couple of hours ago.
Reached Theni, had a sumptuous buffet breakfast and finally reached Thekkady, checked in into the Periyar view homestay and immediately the shutterbugs were out and my camcorder was rolling capturing the wilderness outside the lodge.
Image Courtesy : Anil Rao (Lion King)
Ordered a dozen bottles of fresh naturally cold beer that were emptied in no time and by around 3pm had lunch. After a while most of us had a sound sleep with a few unfortunate ones only measuring the decibel levels around without the sleep.
Later that evening Dilip and Pai went around town enquired about the boat ride at Periyar Lake and the safari. The lights were off pretty early, with each of us dreaming about catching a glimpse of black strips and spots the next morning. The next day everyone woke up by around 4.45am and we were in the jeep to Periyar Tiger Reserve.
Image Courtesy : Anil Rao
The entire safari through the reserve was on road, which was a letdown; as we expected it to be on fire roads after paying 1500/- bucks each. What we saw? A honeycomb, a rock disguised as an elephant that was brown, some acrobatic driving by the jeep driver.
Image Courtesy : Pramod Kumar (Modi / Pummy / Hugh)
It must have been around 9o’clock, our tummies were growling, reached Gavi dam and had a well-prepared buffet breakfast. Boating at the lake was free and we took a bamboo raft, which we had to row towards a waterfall on the other side of the lake. Clicked a lot of pics and Kadri had his first bath in 2 days.
Image Courtesy : Pramod Kumar
On our way back from the falls I stood up to take pics, slipped, my ankle got caught between 2 bamboo logs…and tumbled over. Thank god nothing happened to the camera! Got up and sat down quietly looking at my swollen ankle. Once back onshore Anil, Dilip, Gullu and Pai then started a 3-hour marathon effort to capture small Sunbirds, Malabar Whistling thrush, yellow billed babbler and other wingless birds’. By around 5pm we were back at base camp, had a crappy dinner and we decided to wake up early the next morning and take the boat ride in Periyar Lake.
Most of us woke up by around 6am, little late for the first boat ride, by the time we reached the counters the slots for the first boat ride was booked. Then bought tickets for the second slot that was scheduled for 9.30am. Being a holiday season there were loads of tourists and we had rushed to the front to get seats in the front row on the upper deck. It was quite a sight to see 3 boats adjacent to each other and skill of those drivers to park their boats.
Image Courtesy : Pramod Kumar
What was a little uncomfortable was that the tourists from the last boat had to pass through the other 2 boats to come out. 10 mins into the boat ride it started pouring and all we could do was helplessly wait for the rains to recede. Half way through the ride the rains stopped and the light was just enough to bring back our smiles. Any direction we turned we saw only cormorants and clicked loads of this bird perched on submerged trees in the lake. Towards the end Anil was so frustrated seeing only cormorants that he packed his camera and sat down mumbling ‘he’d had enough of cormorants’.
Image Courtesy : Dilip Gopalkrishna (Lombardo)
Back at base camp packed our backpacks and left for Munnar. The drive to munnar was amazing with huge valleys and the scenery was just breathtaking. In our initial itinerary we had planned to visit Eravikulam but with 2 places to visit in 4 days and around 900km to cover we decided to skip Eravikulam the next day. That night was quite eventful with Joshi being christened “The Tasmanian Devil” due to his 2 60’s down antics.
Image Courtesy : Dilip Gopalkrishna
Next day morning we started our journey towards Parambikulam passing through Top Slip (Anaimalai range), probably one of the most beautiful reserves in the country with zero enthusiastic morons. The next 2 days was like heaven. Won’t talk much about it, as it’s an experience one has to go through. We went on a safari to Kannimara. The 6km drive through the thick forest was slow with bustling bird life. Got to see lots of exotic bird species (check them out here,here & here), few of them multiple times through the safari and visited the Parambikulam canal and the dam. Early afternoon at Parambikulam ate one of the tastiest and biggest paper roast dosa’s I’ve ever eaten along with 3 varieties of chutney.
Image Courtesy : Clock wise from top Dilip Gopalkrishna, Anil Rao, Dilip Gopalkrishna, Anil Rao
The safari was the best we’ve ever experienced and would recommend this place if interested folks plan to visit Kerala. It was also the first time on the tour we got to cook….maggi noodles. As backup we had bought some noodles from a town enroute to Parambikulam. It was a saviour in the evenings, on both the days at Parambikulam after coming back from a day long safari one gang used to transfer their photos onto the laptops while the other gang cooked maggi noodles.
What the fuck! We were there a day before and knew nothing about it until we went to the eco care centre to enquire about stay for the next day. When we set out on our trip, our accommodation at Parambikulam was confirmed for only a day. So On day 2 at Parambikulam we went to eco care centre to request for an extension and later went to a café near the eco care centre. A localite told us that at Periyar lake a boat had capsized and around 40 people drowned. It’s very unfortunate; it was a time when every one of us felt sorry for the families of those who lost their lives. A few of us hadn’t called in 2 days, tension was mounting back home and none of our mobiles were reachable. Immediately grabbed our guide’s (Veerankutty) mobile and dialled our respective homes. Phew!! was a big relief.
Early next day morning woke up and went to the Eco Care centre to pay the charges for our stay, what we heard was a pleasant surprise! Since we approached and booked through Dilip’s uncle who is a CF at Kannur Range, our charges were waived to a great extent and all that we paid was 600Rs for 2 days for all the seven of us that meant we saved 500/- each, which we spent buying some tees and caps. A last look at Parambikulam and a goodbye to our wonderful guide we drove towards Kotagiri.
While descending the ghats the rain gods invited with a thick blanket of rain, stopped at Pollachi for breakfast, don’t have to talk about those lovely dosa’s and chutneys that we got in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Being a avid biker and a member of Bangalore Bikers Club & RAC-F, have a natural instinct to always scout for a trail and the weather was just perfect for a bike ride; wish had a bike to ride. Myself, Kadri and Joshi were driving in joshi’s car where as Gullu, Anil, Pai and Dilip were in the other car. It was generally the case all along the tour, Gullu used to drive ahead of us wait somewhere in-between and start over after we caught up with him but this time around it was our turn to wait, not due to some super fast driving but as a result of the other car taking the wrong route. After having breakfast we set out not knowing that both our cars were travelling on different roads. While Joshi, Kadri and myself enquired about the road to Mettupalyam to reach Kotagiri, Gullu and others enquired about Annur and they were directed to a wrong road. After having realized that they were on the wrong route we constantly kept in touch, which was a little too uncomfortable for kadri. At one point when Dilip was talking to me over phone he mentioned about being surrounded by windmills and at that very moment we say windmills at a distance and thought we were also on the same road heading towards those windmills but apparently which we found out later, they were on a parallel road to ours and had to travel around 30 – 40kms extra to catch up with us. Frustrated by taking a wrong route Gullu had his peddles down. Anil, Pai and Dilip realizing the value of a life insurance held onto themselves maintaining silence when Gullu put his car in full throttle to catch up with us. Into the ghats we realized the car was low on fuel and luckily cleared the ghats and at Kotagiri town’s entrance filled the tank. Stayed at Kotagiri for the night and for the second time on the tour got to see the Tasmanian devil later that night.
Finally after 6 days of sheer bliss we started our journey back to Bangalore passing via Gudalur, Bandipur, and Mysore.
Anil Link
Pai Link
Dilip Link
The title is credited to Mr Kadri, on the road we were listening to Best of Creed and Metallica's Cunning Stunts. When we stopped for a chai at Munnar, teasingly we asked kadri how were the songs as he's known not to be a big fan of Metal, his reaction 'all that I heard was What if....so what...what the fuck' combining 'What if' from Creed and 'So Fucking what' from Metallica.
