God’s own country

Always brings to mind a houseboat ambling along in pristine backwaters. But wait, there is more to Kerala than only backwaters. There’s Wayanad. One of the most gifted districts of Kerala. Beautiful mountains, green tea estates and nice weather. We were in Wayanad for 3 nights during the Diwali festival last month. The big difference this time was that we did not have any bookings. It’s a 3 hour journey from Mysore (about 2.5 hrs form Blore to Mysore). We left rather late that morning (we got up late ‘coz we’d slept late and had to pack in the monrning!) and took some leisurely breaks on the way. That’s the best part, enjoying the journey as much as the destination. What’s the point of driving when you don’t stop to spot birds on the way, take some pictures of the lush green paddy fields, drink tender coconut from the roadside seller…

 We finally reached Wayanad (Muthunga wild life santuary, which is an extension of Bandipur). Stopped at Sultan Bathery to check on some hotels, no availability. Then we went to Kalpetta (the district hq of Wayanad) and looked around…most hotels booked…which was actually good fo rus, ‘coz we were not too interested in staying at an ordinary hotel. We asked around for home stays, check out a few and didn’t like them, they were just an extension of a hotel. Wayanad is filled with homestays. In fact every house turns into a homestay if required. It’s not an exclusive home-in-an-estate concept anymore. Houses on bustling main roads are homestays!! Thankfully for us, a friend with us knew Malayalam and he spoke to a couple of guys we me and found a decent homestay for the night. We’d pretty much neared the end of the day by then and we all just wanted to crash out. The place was quite reasonable, clean and food was good. This was further from Kalpetta in a town called Meppady.

Next morning, we left early to a sunrise point but missed the sunrise by a few minutes. Back to the homestay place for a wonderful breakfast. It was a much loved Kerala breakfast: puttu and kadla. The puttu was from red rice. It’s like these big idlis (or kotte kadubu) we get in Karnataka, but it’s made with equal amounts of coconut powder and red rice (Unlike our idli which is made from white rice and urad dal). The kadla is chick peas curry.

After breakfast, we got caught in a tourist trap, we went to Soochipara waterfalls and were greeted with about 150 people there! We wanted to almost turn back and flee even without walking down the steps to see the waterfall. Guess it being a festival holiday weekend, a lot of peple did turn up. The tourist dept should not build pathways and steps for easy accessibility, it just draws in so many more people who don’t really preserve the sanctity of the place. I know I sound very selfish here (you’ll say how will aged people or people with difficulties enjoy nature’s pleasures if they can’t reach there?). But frankly, most people have no frigging idea about maintaining clean environs amidst nature. I could see broken beer bottles strewn around (now that is not only an environmental hazard, but also dangerous for fellow tourists), and so much plastic all around and people bathing in the waterfall and using soap. Aaarrrghhh when will people learn?

We then came back to the Meppady market place where we met a person who had shown us a homestay last night but we hadn’t liked it. We had told him to find us an isolated place, far from the town centre. Luckily this guy was well informed and he told us about a rundown house in Chembra estate. Now Chembra peak was one place we wanted to go (agenda was to avoid all touristy places like Pookot lake etc). And he (lets call him V) said this house was a few kms below the peak. Wow! Of course that got us interested and we didn’t listen to the details of how unusable the house was. So we took V and climbed the hill upto the point where vehicles are allowed which is where the Chembra estate bungalow is. The bungalow has a couple of old houses in its superb premises. We entered the house and realised that it had nothing…absolutely. Except for running water in the bathroom with half a door. So we struck a deal with V. He gets some people to quickly clean up the place, puts some basic furniture (a table to eat and a few chairs), a clean mattress and bedsheets and food and we’d take the place for a reasonable price. The view was terrifc from there…we could see the Chembra peak. We could even hear a waterfall which was close by. And the tea estate all around. Perfect isolation. Except for the watchman in the bungalow and a couple of people working in the bungalow, the place had no other human habitation.

Until the place got fit to be occupied, we walked over to a watch tower about 1 km from here took in the view of hills, valley and mountains all around. We heard from the guy at the watch tower that Chembra peak attracts a lot of trekkers who pitch tents and sleep over. Nice…but we weren’t prepared for that…Next time maybe. We got back just in time to see that the house was clean, one room locked, one room had 2 clean mattresses with fresh sheets and pillows. Tea was getting made in the old style cob web ridden firewood kitchen, with some twigs V and his friend picked near the house. We were totally fine with the whole set up now…V and his friend went back down to the valley and came back up with piping hot Kerala vegetarian home made food from their house!! The only thing we did there was relax…had some long conversations over some drinks and dinner

The next day, our plan was clear, we were to trek to Chembra peak. We got up late (a bad bad idea and something we never do when we have to go for a trek). Started the trek around 9 AM. Thankfully it wasn’t as hot as we’d expected it to be. The trek was uphill throughout. It started getting hotter after a while ‘coz the higher we went, we were in a grassland. After trekking for about 3.5 kms, we came to the lake we’d heard so much about. A lake right below the peak (another 1.5 km to the peak from this lake). It was beautiful. We hung aorund the lake, rested for a while…I wasn’t game for another 1.5 kms uphill ‘coz I had a bad cold (blocked nose) and cough and it really slowed me down. So I sat around at the lake…After a while, a bunch of loud people with blaring music came in and spoiled the entire tranquility of the place!! I don’t get this, why do you need to listen to film songs at a mountain peak, on loudspeaker??? I was so angry…they can do this any time, why do it here? I don’t understand why such people even take the trouble of trekking and enjoying such places, if all they want to do is talk in their loudest voice to try and beat the max volume of their music player. Hmmmmph.

Thankfully they left soon and I had my peace again . We were all starting to feel quite hungry and so thought it was time to start back. On the way down, we bought some juicy wild nallikai (Gooseberry in Kannada) a kid was selling and ate it all the way up until we reached near the house.

V and his friend were waiting for us with some hot food! I was really impressed with them, they went up and down 8 kms thrice a day to get us food (breakfast, lunch, dinner). Service doesn’t get better than this eh? Typical Kerala red boiled rice, dry veggies, papad, pickle, sambar, some Kerala curry (I don’t know the name) and one non veg dish for our friends.

After the hearty lunch, we slept for a while and then walked over to the waterfall we could hear from the house. Man, did we enjoy this waterfall! It was smaller than Soochipara no doubt, but it was so much better for the sheer isolation and surrounding view value. The water was freezing cold but we played around for quite a while and came back to the house for our very own private camp fire at the patio (we’d requested the watchman of the bungalow to get us some dead wood twigs and logs). We sat around the camp fire the whole evening and even after dinner…very relaxing.

Morning dawned and it was time to leave. Profusely thanking V and his friend (and paying them of course), we took a short tour of the bungalow (an old British day bungalow where we saw actual hunted animal heads on the walls and a fireplace in every room!). Apparently the bungalow belongs to some minister and he lets it out whenever his family is not using the place. Dont’ even ask for the price, it’s very expensive.

Journey back was uneventful apart from a couple of sightings of some birds and a fresh vegetable market right by the fields where the vegetables were grown. We stopped to buy some veggies there. And spoke to a few kids who were running up and down on the higway trying to stop cars so that people could buy their produce!

I can never tire of such outings…even though we seem to go to the same kind of places mountains, rivers, estates, forests…it’s different each time and most improtantly very soul satisfying