Way to Wayanad!

• Whenever I sit and think about the things I like the most, Forests and wilderness, stand tall among my other worldly obsessions… This obsessive nature of mine with the nature, landed me in one of the famous forest reserves of the nation along with four of my friends..
  The place is Kerala, in the district of Wayanad which is located in the northern part of Kerala, apart from forest reserves, Tea-shops and Mamooty fanatics ( the southern Keralites support Mohan Lal; this fact was told by my friend, a native of the Land.
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• So, this trip was planned when I came to know that my friend’s uncle is a forest ranger who is in charge of the sanctuaries. This trip was possible only because of that man, who, I haven’t seen yet... Leaving behind the loads of work to be finished, the bags were packed amidst tension.. Five of us, boarded the train at Chennai Central, we have to land at Kozhikode (Calicut), form where, the expedition starts. We decided to compromise on comforts to avoid any monetary constraints in that place, so, we traveled in unreserved compartments. Luckily, we got seats but very soon the seats were occupied by twenty other people, who promised to get down at the next stop, we experienced little discomfort and irritation at this juncture. In addition to the our fellow occupants ,The wooden seats ripped off our pleasure of ‘being seated ‘ .I was thinking of the railway budget, that promised cushioned seats for even unreserved compartments! But alas!, we were little too early for enjoying it!.
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• Rubbing-off the discomforts we experienced during the previous night, we finally landed in the god’s own country, the next day morning around 8:15, We had our first sight of array of coconut trees along the water bodies, autos , streets filled with chatterings of the native language!.. We finished our ablutions in the Railway Rest-room., which was very clean for a railway rest-room. After that, we broke our fast in a restaurant suggested by a native , The food was pretty cheap, we had variety of non-veg dishes. Five of us are very good eaters, we were surprised when we saw the bill!.. Delighted, we discovered that the food is cheap in this land...
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  We had to reach a place called ‘Sulthan Bathery’, quite an unusual name for a place, the reason for this name is, Tipu Sulthan used this place for storing his weapons, hence the name!. And yes, this is so close to Mysore , this place can be reached via Mysore also. The Bus Network was a bit uncertain at that point of time, so, the locals suggested us to take a detour to another place called Kalpetta and, from there to Sulthan Bathery, we humbly followed their instructions. One of my friends found the Hair-pin bends little uncomfortable as his stomach suffered a violent churning. Quite a talkative person he is, was rendered silent and inactive during the journey till Kalpetta! I am used to traveling in mountain ranges right from childhood, so I was pretty much comfortable than my friend.. This journey swallowed a good chunk of the Day, and we landed finally at Kalpetta...From there we have to fetch another bus to Sulthan Bathery, The native friend, had relatives in this place (sulthan bathery), so, he was instructed to visit them, which made us to have an acquaintance with them.. As we reached the place, we enquired about the exact geographical position of my friend’s relative’s place and headed towards it with some fruits…His relative is a Doctor who owns quite a big hospital in the town, so, it took very little time to find that place. As we reached the place we had a warm reception and greeted by the hospital smell and chattering of the patients with assorted problems!
  After a brief introduction of selves, we were guided to the house, which was in the backyard of the hospital. The house was fairly big and showed signs of a very good architecture, with a mix of modern and native art!...We had a brief stint of lounging in the room, allotted to us. Later, we were treated with lunch, which had a impressive menu and it was purely “KERALISED”.My palate had encounters for the first time with some new stuffs, like, chamandhi podi mixed with rice and chicken gravy mixed with chopped capsicum donning pepper flavor, I crowned the latter , the best among its fellows!.. After that, we let ourselves to chat about for a while and we took snaps of the house along with its inmates... My friend was instructed to call anytime for help by his doctor relative! After this good reception and hosting, we headed towards the main itinerary of our plan, staying the forest! We are supposed to take bus which was scheduled at 5:30in the evening, for which we had to wait for 1 and half hours, which would delay our entry into the forest!, which means we wouldn’t be allowed to enter into the forest!..So, we opted to travel by a jeep. We headed to this place called, Muthanga!.This place is known to be free of tourists and promising for those who visit here, hoping to see some animals. This place is 13 kms away from sulthan bathery. The journey was quite enjoyable as the busy town life faded away and made its way into the wilderness. The jeep halted after 15 mins in the check-post, we reached the place finally!
  We acquainted with the officials , Mr.Gopalan was in charge of this particular area .After a formal speech , we were asked to speed up our pace , as it was getting dark already!.. we were supposed to stay in a ‘Watch tower’ deep inside the forest for the night and next day, we were to trek for 10 kms.. Delighted with this impressive schedule, we packed dinner for the night in a local restaurant named ‘Malabar restaurant’, the menu was simple, Parrotas and curry!.. We had tea and took bath in a dormitory, and left our baggages in the rooms and took only essentials in a separate bag which contained all our things needed to spend the night inside the forest!.
  
  We were , guided by person named ‘Rajeevan’, who will be accompanying us during trekking,, so we started our journey deep inside the forest of Muthanga. The jeep took us some 14 Kms inside and dropped us in the watch tower and left immediately to avoid any mishap in the darkness of the forest… the dusk slowly gave way to Night, we could only hear distant chirpings and funny musical compositions of various birds... The watch tower was looked after by the tribes of the forest, there were two of them, who updated the visitors on the prowling of animals.. last evening the tribes claimed that they spotted a tiger near-by the watch tower, my heart gave a lurch, as I loved to see a tiger right from my childhood in its natural habitat, I was disappointed to miss the opportunity to spot it… we settled in the top of the tower, while the guide stayed in the ground floor…the
  Watch tower was surrounded by a man-made trench to avoid the inmates being disturbed by wild animals!, especially elephants!.. The night replaced the dusk, as we settled and we rubbed ourselves with copious amount of Mosquito repellant creams, but then, guide just said that this forest is free of mosquitoes and there is no need of such vigorous pre-cautionary efforts against things which really don’t exist.. the animals are lucky!...the watch tower had no electricity , we had to stay in dark, only source of light we had, is our torch and the fire made by the tribes to cook food...we chatted for a while about the forest with guide,Rajeevan..He is visiting this place after 2 months, he is working for 12 years and he spotted the tiger only 3 times! And these were some info we gathered from the guide, actually he wasn’t a talkative person, he retired soon in his room after dinner. The dinner, as I said already, was simple and we ate it under the light of three slim candles! We then searched with the lights in the direction of any peculiar noise from the forest! Chatted for a while... And were prepared to sleep in the terrace, we spreaded four newspaper sheets, for five of us to lounge. We lied down gazing the night-sky which was bathed with countless stars! A beautiful sight! We spent some quality time in identifying the constellations taught to us in school. Occasionally, we heard strange noises. We woke up to find the source, this hapened once or twice ,at a point of time we got tired of it and slept-off!
  
  Here are some facts about Muthanga


• Area: 344 sq km


• Location: Bordering the Mudumulai Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu and Nagarhole and Bandipur Sanctuaries in Karnataka .


• Climate: thanga enjoys a healthy climate. During the hot weather the temperature goes upto the maximum of 35o C and during the cold weather the temperature goes down to 15o C. The average rainfall is 250 cm per year.


• Getting There: the nearest airport is the one at Kozhikode, nearly 120 km from Sulthan Bathery. The nearest railway station is also Kozhikode, about 97 km by road from Sulthan Bathery.