| On the edge of wilderness |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|08:53 pm] |
A walk in the wilderness : Wayanad, Kerala.
A place next to the forests, a calm house and a chef who treats you to a king's buffet; that is Fringe Ford, where I spent a long weekend taking walks in the forest, reading a book and generally relaxing.
( read on with 23 more photos... ) |
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| Weekend in Wayanad |
[Mar. 6th, 2006|06:05 pm] |
Clouds lit by lightning look very good once you get out of the city, we(![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ashokd,ashvinm,bchandan and me) were on the Mysore road Friday night when it started, and driving in a car you get a much wider view of the lit sky through the front windshield. We drove in the rain on the smooth road to Gundlepet which we reached at around 11pm and stayed overnight.
Morning the next day, we entered Kerala stopping on the way by the side of the road; the reason we stopped was because this place was a carpet of orange fallen leafs, the black road making a contrasting path here and the bamboos almost leaning over the whole road as if trying to protect it; there were two woodpeckers working their way around a tree, but otherwise complete silence. We took a 15km jeep ride through the Muthanga wildlife sanctuary, we got to sit on top of the jeep for part of the ride, very bumpy for your backside; one of the things I had not seen before was a malabar squirrel, this huge one was on the side of a tree upside down.
There is a short walk to reach the entrance to Edakkal cave, after which you go through the rocks, some of them in odd angles, to reach the place where there are some very old carvings on the sides of the rocks. The guide there will point to the male, female, child and dog figures on the walls. There is also a crevice here, two huge rocks stand vertically a few feet apart, almost parallel and never touching each other. The Edakkal cave is supposed to have been formed when an earthquake made a huge boulder fall and get stuck in between two other rocks forming a roof.
We went to Pookat lake in the evening, a lot of people picnicking here making it a little noisy, we walked around the lake on the 2km path talking about various things, there are semi-circular benches at regular intervals facing the lake on this path. We went to the roof of our hotel in Kalpetta to enjoy the beautiful sunset sky. Although the sun was not visible, it produced a range of colors all around the sky, the crescent moon behind the red clouds making a statement with the clouds making ever changing shapes in the sky of various colors.
We started the next day back to Bangalore, in the fog, taking the road coming through HD Kote. There is no tar on the Karnataka side of this road, just rocks, making the drive slow through the forest; but this allows you more time to take in the beauty of the forest, through which you would have zipped through otherwise. The road smoothens out after the Jungle Lodges camp here. We reached Bangalore in the evening with the trip meter reading 655km. |
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