Travel Adventures: Wayanad (Part 1)

It's such a delight to pull out old memories of trips taken and things discovered! Here's an entry from my diary from a trip to Wayanad, Kerala in southern India in 2010.

What a day! We started our journey in a jeep and that put an automatic smile on my face. It had been drizzling since morning and after a chilly night, the weather didn’t have the heart to continue being hot and dry. So, we had an AC climate (mom’s words!) throughout the day! 😊 

Started out by going towards Banasura Dam (supposed to be the second-largest earth dam in Asia) but we had low expectations since travellers prefer going to other places. Nothing new about the dam per se BUT (and that’s a big one!) it was here that I saw like a million birds! AND (that’s another biggie) had an exhilarating ride around the dam on a speed boat. Exhilarating because the wind in my hair and the rain against my face made it so.

From here, we went on to Pazhassi Raja’s burial site (an 18th century warrior who fought British colonialism, whose legends are told to this day). It was a place full of the loveliest flowers. Saw a blue and yellow parrot pair and got a chance to pose with a bow and arrow (the place had weapons used during the Raja’s time).

Our next halt was (the long-awaited) Kuruva Island. I confess, I had these blissful visions of Kirrin Island from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series 😉. The place is a bamboo forest, giving way reluctantly to a few other species. It was a little walk in the woods with still water parallel to the road. It made me think of the bayous in the US (read a lot about them) and later learnt the place, like the bayous, is home to alligators!

There was loads of scope for adventure with these crossings over stepping stones and fallen logs. But the most fun were two things. One was rafting (5 mins only) yet the rafter (no idea what he is technically called) allowed us to steer the raft (not difficult since he was there plus we only had to pull the raft by holding onto the rope that ran overhead, connecting trees bank-to-bank). The second fun part was rowing the boat back to the jetty from the island (Mom and I had a go though we often sent the boat spinning in circles! 😆 My younger sister, on her part, found all the trees she could climb (of which there were plenty, like every fourth one!).

Our last trip was to Thirunelly temple. The route passes through the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary and Tholpetty Sanctuary. AND!!! We saw wild boar, lots of deer and two stags. I had the privilege of spotting a young elephant (whose sudden trumpeting had our hearts jumping to our throats. We expected it to burst out of the bushes any moment or worse, attract the attention of its mother who was sure to charge at our jeep!). Subair, our driver, lost no time in speeding away.

As for the birds, here is a list of the different birds I saw that day: 1) yellow sparrow-sized 2) crested bulbul 3) the lesser coucal 4)brown (pheasant?) 5) magpie robin 6) Asian palm swift 7) green-blue parakeet 8) yellow parakeet 9) black-brown small bird 10) pigeon-sized blue-grey bird and many, many more.

P.S. Didn’t see any crows, sparrows or pigeons!

P.P.S. Want to learn to row! 

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Trees of the Kuruvadweep crowd an inlet of the Kabini River from both banks, roots exposed, showcasing the mud-coloured water in dappled sunlight. Image Courtesy: Vinayaraj, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons