Our last trip during
December 2012 to Araku valley in Vishakapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh was
wonderful and joyful.
After the trip, we decided to have another such enthralling trip by the
end of the year 2013. As the time arrived, one of my friends rang me on the
Christmas morning and reminded me about our trip once again by saying that he
has two more leaves and he doesn't want to waste them. As usual, I started
discussing the same with my friends and we got involved in
planning the trip.
Our group comprises
me and four other friends. Except one remaining all are bachelors ready to get
married soon. We know that this is going to be our last trip before getting
married and hence each one of us wants to enjoy this trip to the core of the heart.
So this time we wanted to choose a place, where we can stay in the middle of the jungle in a beautifully designed farmhouse, and where we can sit all night
on a hilltop, in the warmth of a campfire, surrounded by darkness, eating hot
chicken barbecue and cracking silly jokes.
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| Beautiful Nature at Wayanad |
After 24 hrs of
research we finalized Wayanad in Kerala, as our destination. As it was the peak season of Christmas and New Year, we struggled to find a stay in Wayanad and we
were shocked to hear the rates for our dream stay i.e. Tree Top Residence and hence we avoided it completely. At
last, we found a serviced villa far from the town of Mananthwady. We started our
journey on a hired taxi from Hyderabad to Wayanad via Bangalore and Mysore. The
entire night journey was quite interesting with funny moments, discussions, and debates over contemporary social and political issues, having tea at a roadside Dhaba for every now and then.
Day 1 of Trip:
Early in the morning, we stopped near the border check post of Karnataka, where the R.T.O officer took
Rs. 1000 as border tax and has given a receipt for only Rs. 500 which we have realised only after some time, and soon we got
involved in estimating his monthly illegal earnings. Since we woke up the entire
night, we relaxed for some time at our friend's house in Bangalore and then we
started again. The journey on the outer ring road from Electronic city to
Mysore road was really smooth without much traffic.
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| R.T.O Check Post @ Karnataka Entrance |
Having realised that
we cant reach the Muthanga wildlife sanctuary within time, we slowed down and
halted for lunch at a Punjabi Dhaba near Mysore. Being Hyderabadi we never
lose interest in biryani and as soon as we saw Chicken Biryani(CB) on the menu we ordered
3 CB for 5 people, as this is the usual practice in any hotel at Hyderabad.
Later we were shocked to see the Mysore version of Chicken Biryani, it looks
like lemon rice and the quantity was very minimal and hence we ended up ordering 3 more CB. Then I recalled what one of my friends used to say i.e. Never
expect Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani elsewhere.
On the way from
Mysore to Sultan Battery, we found that most of the people are involved in
farming fruits and vegetables. When inquired we found that Kerala has very
little land available for agriculture and horticulture and hence most of their
food supplies are supplied from Tamil
Nadu and Karnataka. Soon we entered into the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in the Western Ghats. We were eagerly looking for
animals on the two sides of the road and luckily we could able to spot a herd
of Deer. As we crossed the forest, we ended up again at
the R.T.O border check post of Kerala, with the earlier experience we kept Rs.
500 and wanted to fight with him if he asks extra, but to our surprise here he
asked Rs. 100. We gave it happily and later to our dismay the receipt was for
only Rs. 50. Here we drew a conclusion that irrespective of the state the
percentage of the commission remains the same.
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| R.T.O Check Post @ Kerala Entrance |
Here comes the most interesting moment of the day, as we were already late we canceled visiting
places near Sultan Battery and started to Mananthwady, the place where we have
our stay put up. Since we were new to the
place, obviously we engineers used our trusted travel guide "Google Maps" to reach the destination. Having a strong
faith in Google Maps we simply followed its instructions and only after 1 hour
of travel we realised that we have lost and with all the struggles we could able to
arrive at the Mananthwady Bus station at 9 PM.
Everybody was
hungry and tired with day-long journey and we were eagerly waiting to go and
relax in the villa. Here comes a man
named 'Babu' who is a manager at the villa to guide us to the villa.
Unfortunately, he only speaks Malayalam and none of us know Malayalam, at a
moment when we were all hungry and impatient he was testing our limits. We
picked our phones and started calling our Kerala friends to translate what we
wanted to put forth. However at last we could able communicate with him using
Trilingual formula i.e. Malayalam, Simple English, and Universal language (Sign
Language). Now we realized the importance of the book "learn Malayalam in
30 days". The good thing is, he is very patient and trying his best to
understand our language.
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| Wayanad Spice County: Where we stayed |
One of my friends sat
on the back of Babu's bike and Babu started guiding us to the villa. We started
around 10 pm at the Mananthwady bus station towards the villa. It is a blacktop
road, surrounded by Jungle, hardly anyone is there on the roads. Though we
could able to spot some houses here and there, they are separated by almost
half a Km and they look abandoned. There
are no street lights and slowly we took a turn to enter onto a Kutcha road,
and suddenly we could not even spot Babu and my friend who is on the bike. For a moment we were afraid that we were trapped. When we went further ahead we
could able to see a big villa situated on a small hilltop full of lights
decorated for Christmas eve, waiting eagerly for our arrival. We relaxed
and went into the house, we were thrilled to see the facilities,
infrastructure, and architecture of the house. We forgot all our pains and
relaxed. At around 11 pm we had the food that we have brought from a
hotel at Manathawady bus station. After dinner, we happily slept dreaming of the
next day ..........To Be Continued with Day 2......
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