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 .