Thellikal Nights

Day 7 - 3rd Oct, 2009
After few hours of sleep in the machan, we all got ready by 7:00AM, ate the remaining bread, jam, banannas, etc. We trekked few kms ahead of the machan to chcek out the animals. Unfortunately, we didn't see any. We started walking back to parambikulam village. That was 5 kms. We reached parambikullam village, refreshed ourself, ate lunch, packed curd rice for the dinner at thellikal nights, boarded the bus around 1:00PM, reached parivari pallam. from there we need to trek 8 kms to reach thellikal nights stay. It started raining as soon as we got down from the bus. we put our rain coats on, started walking. Sunshine had an head ache, gave the local balm, which we bought at the eco centre shop. Luckily, there were no leeches on this trail.

On the way, murugesh found some guava trees, plucked lot of guavas. Then found a amla tree, plucked few amlas. It was nice walking in the forest when it is drizzling. We reached the Panthera den, near the thellikal vayal around 4:30PM. We ate one pack of curd rice with pickle. Bliss took some mind map notes about the treks, Moon light slept a bit. Sunshine and Wanderer were resting themselves after the walk. Babu and Murugesh brought some water from the pond near by to the kitchen and prepared the black tea. Drank the black tea. Archillies and Bridget went for a walk till the pond and came back. Babu and Murugesh shared lot of wild stories that they came across. Once, Babu met with an elephant and it started chasing him. Somehow he ran off and escaped from the elephant, reached his home, and didn't go to work for the next few days it seems. So many stories like that. Archillies was tired and went for a short nap. Bliss and Moon light listened to all the stories.

Suddenly Babu observed that a sambar deer is being hunted by a team of wild dogs. Moon light, Bliss went and saw that with the guides. In few minutes, all the wild dogs cleared off the sambar deer. Archillies got up around 7:00PM. All ate the dinner, went out, saw few sambar deers, malabar squirrel, etc. It was pitch dark, we went back to panthera den, chit chatted for a while and went to sleep early, as we need to walk 8 kms to reach the bus stop to catch the bus at 7:00AM in the morning. We got up at 5:00AM, all got ready quickly, let the place, walked briskly in the morning, took some short cuts, reached the bus stop on time. After few minutes, bus came there, we got into bus, reached parambikulam village, directly went to the hotel, ate breakfast :)

You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Full Moon Cencus

Day 6 - 2nd Oct, 2009
We vacated salim ali centre around 2:30PM and headed to Full Moon Census. From salim Ali centre, Full moon census is 5 Kms away. Our guide said we should not reach early, because animals won't come after smelling our presence and alos we should not reach late, because animals will go away if they see us coming. So, we planned to reach around 4:30-5:00 and started accordingly.

After 5 days in forest covering almost 70Kms, our stamina improved a lot. Covering 5 Kms and all is a easy task now. We never felt tired, we were at a good pace. Not much of leeches on this trial. We saw few sambar dears at some distance. We crossed couple of vayals, grass land. Saw few Bisons and sambar deers at a distance. We reached our tree top machan after around 4:45. Bliss, Sunshine went up. To adress nature's call, Archilles and Moon light walked few metres away from the tree top machan. Saw a herd of sambar deers at a very close distance. Almost 25 to 30 sambar deers. After sensing us, all ran away in different directions and after sometime, gathered again and went inside the forest trees.As the machan is occupied very rarely, It was dirty all over the place. One big rat and few bats were inside. Our Guide cleaned the machan and set all the rat and bats away.

We ate some snacks and played few rounds of card games. We ate chappattis, bread, jam, boiled eggs, bannanas, etc as dinner. After dinner time was 9:00PM. We made some shifts to be awake and watch out for the animals. Bliss wanted to stay awake the whole night. Archillies and Moon light were on the last shift, which starts from 2AM. So, both went to sleep. Bliss, and Sunshine were on the first shift, 9:00PM to 11:00PM. Bridget didn't get sleep in machan because of bat's smell. Bridget also accompanied the first shift folks. They identified a sambar deer. All went and saw. After 11:00PM, Sunshine went to sleep. Bliss, Wanderer, and Bridget were observing the animals. Around 00:30 hrs, some one woke up Archillies and Moon light saying "Bear, Bear". They spoted a bear. All woke up and saw the bear. It was right beneath the machan. We used the bright-light torch, brought by the guide, and saw the bear. Because of the disturbance, it went back to the trees. It was raining whole night. Because of that, none of the animals came to the grass land, stayed inside the forest.
Moon light went to sleep. Archillies could not get sleep after that. Started observing animals. Around 2:00AM, Bliss, Wanderer went to sleep. Bridget went to sleep around 2:30AM. Archillies woke up Moonlight around 3:00AM and went to sleep. Didn't observe any more animals. But felt some movements beneath the machan. Not sure, what was the animal.

Near to that machan, there is a rock stone. Elephants normally come there and rub its body on that rock stone it seems. Because of that rock, that place is named as "Anakkal", meaning Elephant's rock.

You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Salim Ali Centre

Day 5 - 1st Oct, 2009
After the Early morning safari, we ate the breakfast near the information centre, saw the displays at the exhibition centre, rested ourself below the trees near the information centre. We left around 12:30, reached parambikulam village, ate our lunch, refreshed a bit, took the neccessarry stuff for next couple of days to stay at Salim Ali centre and Full Moon Census. Initial plan was to get the material with us and someone will cook for us near salim ali centre. Unfortunately, some one passed away in parambikulam village and most of the people who stayed near salim ali centre came to parambikulam village. So, change of plan. For the next two days, We packed enough chappatis, tomato rice, curd rice, eggs, bread, jam, banannas, candles, etc.

Since Salim Ali centre is on the way to the cochin tramway trek and we already covered that trail, we didn't want to walk 10 Kms again on the same trail. We reached Salim Ali centre in the SUMO and we released the SUMO. Babu didn't come with us. He was there in parambikulam village to attend the rituals. New guide came with us.

We reached around 5:30. Guide cleaned the salim ali centre dormitory. That facility had Bamboo cart, very basic toilet, water arrangement for the toilet, no power. We off loaded our lugguage. Bliss went to river to take bath. Rest of us asked our guide to make the arrangement for fishing. We have already brought the fishing thread and the fishing needle from parambikulam village. We got three fishing rods, tried to catch some fish. We got some pull from the fish, but they are smart, ate the earthworm and went off. It started getting dark, we went back to salim ali centre. Ate our packed dinner. Went to sleep. It was raining whole night.

Next day, day 6, Got up around 8:00AM, it was still drizzling. We brushed, asked our guide to boil the eggs through some villagers who stayed near salim ali centre. We ate chappattis, eggs, bread, and jam. Bliss went outside, did some Kalipayattu practice, followed by Rain Yoga. Since we need to be awake on full moon census night, We rested ourself in salim ali centre. Babu reached salim ali centre around 12:00. We ate our lunch around 1:00PM, relaxed a bit, packed our stuff, vacated salim ali centre around 2:30PM and headed to Full Moon Census.

You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Kari Mala Gopuram Trek

Day 4 - 30th Sept, 2009
Since this one is the toughest among all the parambikulam, we planned to start early. Informed our guide on the previous day to arrange the food parcel before 7:30AM.

We were all ready by 7:00AM, we ate our breakfast at lakshmi hotel, who charged at par with any normal hotel in bangalore. Our lunch parcel got delayed because of the morning breakfast rush in the hotel. We got our parcel around 8:30AM. Guide farooq replaced guide murugesh for this trek. By the time we reached the parambikulam dam, it was 9:00AM.


Karimala Gopuram trek starts from the dam. As our guide informed about the leech population in this trail, we had applied lot of dettol mixed with tobacco powder. Few, who didn't like the tobacco powder smell, applied only dettol. Babu made some nice sticks for us from the trees.
We started our trek. The trail is steepy from the beginning of the trek. We had to stop couple of minutes after every 10 minutes of climb. Too many Leeches all around. As soon as you slow down your pace or stop at some place,minimum 5 leeches claim on the foot. We were all busy in removing them as we walked. Bliss walked ahead of all of us.Wanderer and Moon Light were at the end. Bridget started counting the number of leeches she removed from her shoes. She got around 200 leeches altogether till she reached back the base.

As we walked very slowly on the steep, We reached the middle of the trial around 1:00PM, which was late as per our calculation. We all had our curd rice with yummy Ginger pickle. Took some rest.Since Wanderer was low on that day, Wanderer decided to stay at the rock and asked us to climb the peak and come back. Guide Babu stayed with her. We headed up after lunch break. Since we need to climb down before the sunset, we increased our pace. It was drizzling quite often. As we all had our rain coats on, we kept walking inside the ever green forest.

Last few kilometers there are no trees, But Lot of grass were there. Our guide said that elephants come here for this grass especially. We saw couple of marks which indicated that baby elephants palyed over the grass land. On the grass land, the trial is actually maintained by the elephants. We followed the elephant pug marks and climbed the steep by holding the grass, which gave very strong support. We saw a small black viper snake. Our guide used the stick to clear the grass, it went away. Since it was 2:30PM already, the last mile to the peak we didn't cover :(.






We relaxed on the grass land, had a nice view of the catchment area, clouds passed across us. Had the chocolates :), took lots of photos and some videos.
Then guide gave a signal to start otherwise we can't go back before sunset.We started climbing back. As always, Climbing down was easy, but the load goes to knees. We made small steps to avoid much of load on the knees. We came back to the rock, middle of the trial, where Wanderer and guide Babu were waiting for us. Took 10 minutes break, shown all the photos and videos. Left the rock, headed back to the dam. We saw swinging tree, we tried to swing like a tarzan... and then started walking down.
This time, Bliss was coming at the end. His policy is to be the first when you enter the forest and to be the last when you come out of the forest, to make the most of it :) We reached around 6:00PM. The SUMO that we arranged for the morning safari was there at the base. We took some snaps and went to the tiger hall in SUMO.

You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Karian Chola Trek

Day 3 - 29th Sept, 2009
After 40kms in two days, we pushed the karimala gopuram trek to 4th day and went for the light karianchola trek on the 3rd day, 8 kms overall. yeah, 8 kms a day is light for us after the tramway trek :). We finished our breakfast in parambikulam village, we didn't pack anything for the lunch. Planed to have lunch near eco centre. In the middle of the trek, there is a stretch of evergreen forest in this trek. Walking inside evergreen forest was altogether different and nice!. We saw variety of trees in the evergreen forest. We saw few orchids, variety of mushrooms. Each tree is fighting for their share of sunlight and growing up. It was cool walking inside the evergreen forest. Guide Murugesh and Babu answered our questions about the trees and flowers.

We crossed over a water path inside the evergreen forest. We caught some crabs. check out the blog entry on crab catching.

We saw one big tree, Seven of us held hands to cover the bark of the tree.

We heard loud voice of elephant. Our guides babu and Murugesh alerted us, checked the presence of the elephants on our trial. The voice came from left side of the trial. They said we might get into trouble if we go in this trial and they found alternate trial on the right side. In the alternate trial, we collected honey and drank directly :) check out the blog entry on honey collection.
At the end of the trail, We found a cycus tree with fruits.
After the trail, a path led us to the eco centre. We reached the eco center and had our lunch at Minivet cafe. We ate fish and eggs to get some protein for our muscles for the next day's Karimala gopuram trek :)

You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Cochin State Forest Tramway

Day 1 & 2 - 27th and 28th Sept, 2009
As our guide said "Bus to Parambikulam village will reach tiger valley IB at 7:00AM, be ready by 7:00AM", we were ready by 6:45Am itself, got all our luggage to the road, waited for our guide and the bus. Guide came their around 7:30AM and the bus came around 8:15AM. We took some photos in the meantime. We loaded all our luggage, reached parambikulam, had breakfast in Hotel Lakshmi. Our guide informed the plan for next two days. "We'll dump the luggage in a room in parambikulam village, pick up the necessary stuff for next two days, we'll pack the cooked food for the lunch, we'll buy the rice, vegetables, etc for today's dinner, tomorrow's breakfast, and tomorrow's lunch."
He got the rice and vegetables from
the couple of shops which serves whole parambikulam village, gave part of it to thatha and asked him to make the curd rice and tomato rice for that day's lunch. He packed the rest of the items into two package. Few of us went and dumped our extra luggage into a room arranged by our guide. When we all set to leave for the trek, it was around 11:30AM. We got our lunch packets, filled our water bottles, and carried one 5 litres water can. Guide Murugesh joined us.
We started our journey to tramway trek, to cover 40 kms in 2 days.

We saw a malabar squirrel on top of a tree. we saw lot of pug marks of tiger,
elephant, Indian gaur etc. We saw
different kinds of trees and flowers. Till certain distance, leeches were not there. Sunshine got the first leech, then everyone checked their feet and saw few leeches on their feet, applied salt, threw them out. Then applied dettol liquid, tobacco powder, salt on the feet to prevent the leeches. Bliss hijacked the guide murugesh and reached the river side lunch spot well ahead of time. We all took our own time to reach the lunch spot, refreshed our self on the flowing river water, ate curd rice and tomato rice that we had packed in parambikulam village. Our guides gave one pack of the rice and vegetables to the tribal
who will cook next day's lunch for us.
We played a bit in the water




We started our walk after lunch. leech
attack was there in some stretches.
After 4PM, few of us were tired, took break in between. Finally we reached the Muthuvarachal, end of the first day trek. We off loaded our luggage, our guides got water and started preparing the dinner. River flows all across the trial. There was enough sun light for the day, so we went to the riverside, took bath, refreshed our self. Came back, drank hot black tea :)
This was the first day of the trek and we walked 20kms in day :), which is totally different than our normal day routine. Archillies suggested to have a stretching session to relax the muscles to avoid any strains, which might spoil rest of the trek plans. With the instructions of Bliss, we all stretched our muscles. We felt relaxed after that session. In the meantime, our dinner was ready. In that location, electricity is not there. Cook managed to cook with the help of battery powered lamp and torch. We all ate chapattis, veg curry, bananas. when the guides and cook finished their dinner. We all got our luggage and reached the night stay, which is less than a km from the dinner spot. It was pitch dark, hissing sound everywhere, we all carried our torches, followed one another, reached the place. That place was very very basic. No electricity, wooden cart were there to accommodate five to six people. Water was filled in the water tank by our guides. Since that place is not being used regularly and closed most of the times, it was smelling a bit. As we are all tired, we slept immediately. It rained all night.

We got up at 5:00AM, finished our
morning duties, climbed down to the
place where we ate our dinner.
Breakfast, Khara bath, was ready for us. We ate Khara bath with banana and pickle. We got the black tea. We applied dettol, tobacco powder, salt, etc to prevent leech attack. It was drizzling a bit. We took our rain coats out, started our 2nd day journey.

Our body got used for the walking, So second day journey was good. We reached the lunch spot. Lunch was ready, we ate our lunch. We met a 80
years old tribe, who worked in the
tramway. Now he is working with the forest department to clear of the trees to maintain the trail and sometimes some work in panjayath to run his life. His family only served us the lunch. To buy anything, they have to come to parambikulam village , which is 10kms away. We saw few remnants of tramway, took few snaps. Guide took a diversion from the main track to cut short the distance. So, we walked up the hill and down the hill few times. On the way, we saw few sambar deer across the river bank. Sambar deer is very sharp, it could sense us and went inside the forest.

We wanted a break for few minutes, we all just rested on the raod, which is used very minimally to avoid the disturbance to the animals. All the private vehicles are not allowed inside and it is well controlled by the forest department. Rarely you can see the forest department jeep in those roads. Our guide told couple of stories "Long time ago, a tiger got annoyed by the two wheeler sound and killed the guy who drove the bike". "A bear fought with a man, pulled out one of his eyes with lot of flesh. He was taken to hospital, but unfortunately he passed away few days later". We heard few stories like this from our guides and we identified few birds on the walk.






Bliss was busy watching birds with the Binocular.
All together, Tramway trek was a nice
experience except the animals part.
We didn't see much of animals as we expected. One more thing, not whole forest is not natural forest. Lot of trees were cut in the olden days and taken away by different people. So the forest department planted lot of teak wood trees in early 1960s to fill up the vacant places and maintain the density across the forest. We ate the candies, peanut chikkies, Chocolates, etc on the way to keep us moving.
Fresh air everywhere, greens everywhere, no noise pollution, instead we heard the music from the birds all the way.

Finally we covered 40kms in 2 days :)
You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Early Morning Safari

Day 5 - 1st Oct, 2009
After 4 days of trek, we had covered 66Kms. day 1 - 20Kms, day 2 - 20Kms, day 3 - 8Kms, and day 4 - 18Kms. We saw lots of spotted deers, few sambar deer, couple of indian gaurs, only one group of elephants on the safari road and couple of peacocks. We expected to see more. So, we enquired our guide, he replied that you can see lot of animals in the early morning around 5:00AM to 7:00AM. On day 2, We asked a person in the Information center to arrange for a SUMO. He had managed to arrange the SUMO. As the forest officers open the entry gates late in the morning and close at 6:00PM in the evening, we had requested the driver to come and halt in parambikulam village on the previous evening.

We were ready by 5:00AM, our guide didn't turn up by 5:00AM. As the parambikulam village wakes up at 4:00AM in the morning and couple of tea shops were open, we had our sip of tea, and few bananas. Guide came around 5:30, he may know that the gate opens at 5:30 only, we got into the SUMO and headed to see lot of animals.

As soon as we crossed the gate, we saw a rabbit crossing the road, few spotted deers. Few kms away, we saw few sambar deers at a close distance. Since it was little dark, we could not take clear photos. Few kms away, we saw few indian gaurs, which included a calf drinking milk from it's mother.

Then, we saw few elephants groups at different places.
We saw Grey-headed Fish-eagle on a tree
We reached Kanimara Teak, took lot of photos with the tree,
Few kms away, we saw a tusker and his mother
Then, we saw a group of indian gaurs
We saw lots of spotted deers everywhere.

We saw few peacocksWe saw racket tailed drango, king fisher, minivet, wood pecker, treepie, and few other birds, but could not capture it in photos. Most of the photos included in this blog entry were taken my Moonlight. He felt that he was missing extra zoom lens for his Cannon 450 DSLR. May be we should buy it before our next trek.
You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Crab catching

In the karianChola Trek, we crossed over a water path in side the evergreen forest. Our guide babu quickly observed that there are crabs in the water. He caught some crabs in his bare hands and showed it to us. He asked us to hold it gently at the center and not to apply pressure on the crabs.

Look at the sharp eyes...

We all took turns and held the crab, took photos. Since these crabs are small ones, it didn't bite us.

Believe me, we left it back safely in water :)

Elephant Family

Honey collection in the forest

In the KarianChola Trek, we heard a loud voice of elephant. Our guides babu and Murugesh alerted us, checked the presence of the elephants on our trial. The voice came from left side of the trial. They said we might get into trouble if we go in this trial and they found alternate trial on the right side. We had already covered 5kms of the 7kms trail.

In the alternate trial, Murugesh sensed the honey bees on a tree. There are two varieties of honey namely "Kurunthen" - small honey bees build the honey comb at the openings of the bottom of the tree and "Marathen" - big honey bees build on the top branches of the tree. He identified the tree, where the Kurunthen honey bees built the honey comb. He used his aruval, cleared the access of the opening in the bottom of the tree.He inserted his hands, got the honey comb. Honey bees were small, didn't bite him.
Here is the close picture of the honey bee comb.
we all got our share of tasty, pure honey direct from the honey comb :) It was tasty :) It was our first experience to collect honey and drink directly from the honey comb. That too in the forest!

We enjoyed it :)
You can read more about our parambikulam experience from the main blog entry on the parambikulam trek blog entry .

Parambikulam Forest

Sept 26th - oct 4th 2009
Considering 2 long weekends, Seven of us had planned for parambikulam forest trekking, merged those two long weekends and took additional 3 days leave. One of our friend dropped out and six (Archillies, Bliss, Moon Light, Bridget, Wanderer, Sun Shine) of us were ready to leave. Yeah, we got our new nick names :)
All the credit goes to Bliss, who picked this place, planned all the treks
for the seven days in parambikulam bu referring the parambikulam web site, co-ordinated with the forest officers, got permissions, sent money order to book the treks, etc.

This was my first long trekking experience, so I packed more than enough stuff in my
newly bought 4 feet trekking backback :). All others too carried equal amount of baggages.

Day 0

All set and we left bangalore on september 26th early morning, 6:15AM, in a train to coimbatore.We ate dosas in train and played cards. Wanderer was very lucky that day and kept winning. Taught some card playing tricks to Sun Shine. Moon Light reached coimbatore already, met Bliss parents, packed our lunch and waited for us with the tempo traveller near the railway station.

We reached coimbatore, loaded out lugguages into the tempo traveller. Bliss's Mom got hot horse gram rasam to clear our throat. It was very good, I had 2 glasses :) Moon Light got few PET bottles, we stopped at a shop and loaded 12 water cans, 5 litres each. Also Bliss parents got 20 litres water can from home. altogether 80 litres of water for 8 days. Bliss's parents gave some instructions to Bliss, asked us to take care of Bliss, and bid us a bon voyage :)

As Parambikulam Wild Life Sanctuary (PWLS) closes the entry gate at 6:00, we had to reach the place at the earliest and send the tempo traveller out of PWLS. We ate our lunch inside the tempo traveller. We reached the PWLS information centre around 4:00PM, paid the remaining money for the whole package. As they detected some tigers in venkoli peak, they didn't allow that trek for us in our list of treks. So, we picked salim ali centre trek instead of venkoli peak.We saw couple of peacocks and few yellow head, long tail monkeys near PWLS information centre. They allocated a guide for us and opened the gates for us to enter parambikulam. We saw lots of spotted deer. Few people call them as Photo deer, as they pose for the photos :) We saw the 400 years old kannimarra teak on the way.

We reached tiger valley stay around 5:30PM, sent our tempo traveller back, after we were on our feets. We took couple of torches, and couple of cameras. our guide took us to the ThunaKadavu Dam, and a short walk across the dam. The view of ThunaKadavu dam in the evening was awesome, we saw a bison grassing near by the dam, we sighted few birds. walked across the dam, and reached the forest officers building. Our guide got us black tea, my favourite drink and which was the only drink possible to make anywhere inside the forest :). Bridget sat near the water and was alert in case of sudden surprises by the crocodiles :). Guide gave some information about the tunnel that is connected between the Parambikulam dam to Thunakadavu dam.

It started getting dark, so we headed to our tiger valley accommodation with the help of torch, saw coupld of wild boars. Guide informed that sometimes it gets wild and attacks human. So, beware of it.Bliss ate some fruits and went to sleep. We got our food, cooked by tribals and delivered at tiger valley stay. Lots of chappatis, white rice, 1 veg kurma, 2 full Nattu-Koli (country chicken), 8 boiled eggs, egg burji :) We ate whatever we could and gave the rest to our guide. We tried to sleep early to get up early, but another family stayed in another room in the same block. They made lot of noice, didn't listen to our requests to keep silence. When I managed to get sleep, our guide knocked our doors, shouting "their are bisons/Indian Gaurs around the building. Come out and have a look". Some of my friends went out and saw bisons/Indian Gaurs. I and Moon Light slept instead. Even Bliss went out, saw the Bison, came back and said "What a wonderfull Bison?" :)

Next seven days were roamed across most of the trails in parambikulam forest and totally we had covered around 100 Kms on our feet in 7 days :)

Few things to note:
1 - Carry BSNL connection in one of your mobiles, only BSNL network is available over there.
2 - Most of the guides speak tamil. So, better if you have some tamil speaking guys in your group.
3 - The restaurants in parambikulam charge as equal as a normal hotel in Bangalore.

There are lot more to write, each treks deserve a separate blog entry and some activities such as honey collection & drinking, crab catching , etc deserve a separate blog entries.
Check out the links to read about each one...

Day 1 & 2 - Cochin State Forest Tramway Trek
Day 3 - KarianChola Trek
Day 4 - Kari Mala Gopuram Trek
Day 5 - Early Morning Safari in Parambikulam forest
Day 5 - Salim Ali Centre
Day 6 - Moon light census
Day 7 - Tellikal Nights
Day 8 - Out Talk with DFO