Trip to Wayanad - 2010

I am not one of those who look for a company to pass the time; instead I enjoy solitude and always try to make most of it, and when it comes to join a huge group on some leisure trip my mind goes on a toil to decide ‘to go or not to go’, so did it happen when a group of 20 decided to go for a weekender trip to a hill station in Kerala called Wayanad, around 220km from our accommodation at Coimbatore. I had numerous reasons to say ‘no’ to the trip; I’m not very fond of the group, I didn’t know about the place, it’s a hill station so I could get sick, I had other plans for weekend; but somehow I decided to join in, and now I think it was the best weekend I could have had.

The trip was planned in a very haphazard manner, ‘coz till the very last hour we didn’t know the total number of people, the tour plan that we would take up and the budget, yet we managed to leave the hostel at 2400hrs of the Friday night(with final head count of 16 and a budget of 2500 per head). The take off was good as the bus was a luxury deluxe with a flatron TV screen and surround sound home theatre facility (the only trouble was that the backs of the seat were still covered with plastics that made us li’l uncomfortable).

The next thing I remember was of saturday morning; when our bus stopped somewhere and we got down to see something that I had never seen before.  It was a treat to eyes and soul; we were on the face of a hill, and it seemed we were viewing the world from above the clouds. The greens were trying to peep from beneath the whites of clouds, and the browns of the rocks were steering through to make themselves visible. This was the very moment I said to myself ‘good that u came Ajita !’.

The caravan moved ahead and we reached a point from where we had to be divided in two groups to reach till our resort in jeeps, and I was mesmerized by this 3km jeep trek too; the untouched nature that rests in peace in the lap of these hills shared their joy with me. The tea plantations, the coffee bushes, the cardmom herbs, the beautiful forest flowers all seemed to welcome me with the best of the faces, thus we reached our resort, and to my amazement the resort too was perhaps a replica of the heavens (if something like that could exist). The natural stream water pool, the cute wooden cottages embedded into the hillocks, the lush green sheet that covered almost everything, now even us, and the fresh cool breeze freed me of all my inhibitions about the things to follow. Our cottage was at the highest point of the resort, and the resort was called ‘Rain Country Resort’. Wayanad is one the rainiest places of the country (yes on the lines of Cherapunji, so was told by our guide Anik, though we didn’t see any of it in the two days we spent there).

The day was flanked by two spectacular trips, one to Banasura dam, that is Asia’s second largest earthen damn, and two to the View Point. At Banasura dam when most decided to go for boating few of us chose to trek down the rocky dam till the water, and what an experience it was.  I had never seen such a clear water body before, though I have visited to lakes around Delhi, to Hardwar and such places but the serene beauty of this dam was a never before experience (I know mom would have never let me go down the way I did, but in her instruction she had asked to not to boat only and I didn’t ;) ).  The clear cold water, the comfortably warm sun, the beautiful protective hills and I; I felt inexplicably in sync with the nature. Some similar feelings engrossed me at the sheet View Point too; we were on a cliff that’s end ran down straight till as low as it could. There was a forest river encrusted in between the greens of the view, and for the icing were clouds floating on the greens and silver of the forest and the river. I could spend rest of my life sitting there and praising the beauty.

Thus the day’s outing concluded, with the movie 3 Idiots in the bus, and we were back to the replica of the Heavens, our resort. This Rain Country Resort looked amazingly pretty at night as well, the small ball lamps on the pathways dimly lighting the place looked like shining pearls encrusted at intervals that made the surroundings glow with theirs. For me the night concluded with a traditional Malayali Chicken and Fish preparation in dinner (as for others the night was flanked with a bonfire dance party for which I was too sleepy to attend, like few others too).

The next morning showed another face of the resort; as I stepped out of the cottage I could see and feel that I was standing in a cloud, and so was the cottage, the trees around and everything else that I could see.  We chose this time to go on a trek inside the resort to reach to the highest hill top, the trek was freshening for sure, but the final treat was outlandish. The top showed us the phenomenon of the three states, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, embracing each other in the witness of the skies, and now even us. Truly has been said for this place “God’s own country”.

After witnessing the glory of nature we checked out of the Rain Country Resort to marvel the man’s intelligence, we were heading towards the Edakal Caves that date back to 1400 B.C. . This cave was built due to a volcanic eruption that made a rock fall over two (‘Eda’ means 2 and ‘Kal’ means rock in the regional language), to give home to men who found it so. The encryptions and drawings carved on the rocks reminded me of my history classes when we were taught about the early stone-age man (wish we were given practical classes then to make us love the subject). I salute man for being so unbelievably intelligent (I wonder if we could be so fit in those stone ages).

Thus was my trip to Wayanad, refreshing, delightful and enlightening; a trip to experience nature’s miraculous creativity that man can never imitate; and a trip that made me realize that I could enjoy with myself in the big groups too.