Nammathu Samayal: A Trip to Wayanad

Trip Date : (18, 19, 20 Oct 2015)

I love road trips because that much I hate train food. Road trips are adventurous and you get to meet lot of new people and gain a lot of experience. You can feel the place much better basically.

We planned for Vythiri during the dussera holidays.

We had to pick my daughter from palani, She was in her vacation in my inlaws' place. So our trip was basically from Palani - Wayanad (Vythiri). We started the trip on Sunday early morning by 6 am.

We took the Palani – Pollachi – Palakkad – Mannarkad – Manjeri – Thamaraseri – Vythiri route

There are more routes from Palakkad to Vythiri. It is better if you decide the route before you start, because when you ask the route to the passersby, they will give their own suggestion and confuse you. So better freeze your plan and start.

If you are planning from chennai, I think you have to take the Mysore -Bandhipur route.

We had breakfast before Mannarkad in a small restaurant. The food was so good and simple. We had appam. It was soooo soft.

The drive was so nice. The climate was good and everywhere it was green. We stopped in a place to drink some sugar cane juice, there I clicked some of the below pics.

By afternoon we reached Vythiri and had a nice lunch.

We had planned our stay in Rain country resort. It is in Lakkidi exactly.

The resort is quite inside the main road for about 4 kms. For some distance it is thar road, then mud road. The experience is so thrilling. It is definitely an adventurous drive.

The resort is spread in very big area, with around 22 cottages. It has different types of rooms. Independent and semi independent. All are perfect wooden vintage cottages. We chose the basic stuff after reading good amount of reviews. The resort is best for honey mooners.;)

There is a natural stream running across the resort. And a big pond. It was amazing. We had a nice bath in the stream in the evening itself. We ordered some snacks too and enjoyed them along with the bath.

We simply walked around the resort and had dinner and slept early, as the day started early. I took some long exposure shots.

Next morning, we got up early and planned to go for a trek. There is a trek route inside the resort itself. It’s about 1 km simple trek. The climate was so chill and good. Good that it dint rain that time, then it will be too slippery. We spent some time in the top, took some pictures and came back. There were many leeches, they bit us. So better carry some salt in hand. If you put salt, they leave you immediately.. Otherwise you have to pull them out forcibly.

We came back and again had a nice bath in stream. Every time drying the wet clothes was such a head ache. So I made her wear same clothes all time she went to stream. Breakfast was ready by that time and it was dosa with sambar and poori – alu. Yumm.

Since my husband was driving all along Chennai – palani – vythiri, we had planned to arrange a Jeep to take us for sightseeing that day. Since we started only around 10.30, we could cover only one place. In vythiri, there are many tourist attractions, but all of them are very distant, you need to travel around 25-30 kms to cover one place. And even that place.. you need to walk a bit. So we can cover only 2 or 3 places per day if you start your day early. My family doesn’t like shuttling here and there on holidays. So we decided to go to one place and return to resort.

We fixed to go Sooji paara waterfalls. It was around 40 mins travel from resort. Also we have to walk / climb down / up around 2 kms inside to reach the falls. We cannot take bath in the falls as the water force is much more. We can play around the water for a while and watch the scenic falls and walk back.

Walking back is the toughest thing. The steps are too steep and it was quite an experience. It was test for our stamina. In that place we tasted the pickled pineapple. This was delicious. I cant wait to make it at home. Pickled gooseberries, honey soaked gooseberries are also the highlight. Also saw such thing with Raw mango.. wow..