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 .