"Pillayar Suzhi" - some letter/some symbol which tamil hindus write on top of the paper before writing anything. KG kids to retired old people (not atheists ofcourse :-P) almost everybody uses it believing in it to give a good beginning. Although this is superstitious, I am using it for my title as it is fancy ;-) And ofcourse the trip to Gavi was a good beginning.
August 2012, Myself and three of my best friends from school days decided to visit this place "Gavi". So the team consisted of 4 members myself, Dinesh Vasudevan( will be referred as Dinesh in all my travelogues from now), Nagendra Babu(will be referred to as Nagu in all my travelogues), Saravana Rajendran(will be referred to as Sara in all my travelogues from now). So we always wished for a trip of this kind from our 11th std and finally it came true after we all got our so called white collar jobs ;) :P
So we called the forest department and booked for a day visit to Gavi before starting from Chennai. As we did not have our travel tickets booked,we went to CMBT on that rainy day and boarded one of the worst buses of SETC at 8 PM. The bus started and we were all chit chatting for sometime and slept thinking that we would be in Kambam (Foothills of Kumily) by the time we wake up.
We all got up in the morning around 7 30 a.m after a long sleep and the bus was riding through a highway and my eyes were searching for a signboard to know where we were. And it was shocking and disappointing to know that we had not even crossed trichy :-D And we reached Kambam only at 12.30 PM noon. We switched to another bus and finally reached kumily around 2 PM.
As soon as we got down, rain started to pour. We ran searching for a hotel and we finally checked in to the Ray's Inn. There was this guy Ray thomas who welcomed us and gave us a really good room for an affordable price. We refreshed and went out for lunch and the expectation of my friends to see some good looking mallu girls was a real disappointment in that town :( Note :- I am very very good boy, first bench from UKG :P So i did not have such expectations ;-) ) And As soon as we came out of the restaurant, we met this auto driver"Vinod". We booked his auto for rest of the day for 400 bucks and asked him to show us some really good places. And this was one of the best,memorable and adventurous rides we ever had. Especially in a hill station it is really adventurous to travel in an auto.We were expecting to see some really good location.But Vinod stopped the auto in front of an old house and we were heavily disappointed. he asked us to pay some 10 rupees per head to the people who lived there in the house and took us to the backyard of thee house and we started walking deep into the backyard. In a 10 minutes walk we saw a stunning scenery before our eyes. It was like a view point with grasslands spreading everywhere and we could see both Tamilnadu and kerala and also the huge chellarkoyil waterfalls to our right. We were sitting there for a long time looking at all those places playing with each other.
Next we decided to go for an elephant ride. My friends nagu and Sara were quite afraid But still went ahead and took an elephant ride. Although we speak of wildlife conservation and all those, it is really worth a ride for at least once in lifetime. And the elephants were treated really well compared to many other places which offer elephant rides( like Mudhumali,Wayanad etc).
Finally it was the EOD, so we had our dinner and went to sleep early that night as we had to wake up early the next morning. We had arranged a jeep to travel to Gavi. We woke up quite late around 5 PM and got ready as soon as possible and started from there. We opened the jeep top and all the four of us were standing throughout the ride.Soon we crossed the pamba river by jeep and entered the Periyar Tiger reserve at around 6 30 PM.
Then "Real ride" started. If your are ever going to visit Gavi in july-august then this jeep ride is going to stay in your heart forever. You will never forget this ride. You put your eyes on any place you will either see lush green trees and grass or you will see water running through the woods. We saw many mesmerizing viewpoints on the way. We got a good driver who even stopped and showed us animals too. We could not see many as we were late. If you want to witness herds of elephants sliding through the hills and grasslands, do enter the forest before 6 am. There are also chances to witness the "Man Eater" ;)
And we experienced all these except for the "Man Eater" :( But still a jeep ride in the forest region climbing up the hill with Ilayaraja songs at the background will undoubtedly be an unforgettable page in everybody's diary :)
We finally reached the forest guest house around 8.30 AM. We had a great buffet breakfast.As soon we were done we were introduced to our forest guide "Prem Kumar". He is from one of the 12 tribal families who live in that forest and he had many stories and information to share with us during our trek. Every group started with their own guide.Surprisingly 90 % of the people who had come there were from alien countries. The place was not popular then among the local people,although now that place is very popular because of the Malayalam movie "Ordinary".
As every group started walking, Prem asked us whether we wanted a normal 2 hours walk or an adventurous one and we chose the latter. And the very first thing which we had to do was really adventurous and frankly i did not want to do that and i was terribly afraid we had to walk around a hill top over the slope to get to the other side of the hill. With help from Sara, I managed to do that we finally had to descend from the other side of the hill. With few climbs and descends over the hills we entered into deep forest. We also witnessed the view of Sabari mala Iyyappan temple which was completely covered by mist and also the hills in which the magara jothi is believed to appear. We were following each other and the stories told by Prem were really amazing and also it helped me divert myself from the fear of falling down the hills :P As we kept walking inside the forest we had to descend the hill though the forest.
When all my friends were walking in two legs, I was sliding and catching hold of the roots and branches of the plants and trees and even went back to the stone age walking in four legs :-P And the scary part of this whole trek is the "leeches". We were able to see our shoes completely covered with leeches. My friends even started bleeding. But our guide was amazing. We were feeling hard to walk with our shoes.But this guy just walked with a paragon slipper and he never cared about the leeches sucking his blood and he kept walking. Finally he even made us cross a river and then he asked us to descend down a water fall :D:O. My friends started descending before even i started thinking of it. I took few steps down holding the huge roots of a fallen tree. But then my fear asked me to go back up to the top of the falls. And So i did :D And seeing me afraid everybody came back ;) ( Nice Friends :-P That moment when you start saying thank god with a sigh and then realizing that people are around :P;))Now we had to take a shortest possible route as we had already crossed the time limit which was given for our trek. So we took the most steepest route to climb up the hills to reach the guest house again. It was very hard. Nobody had the energy to climb and we slowly reached back the guest house around 3 PM. We had our lunch ( We ate as if we did not eat for months :P)
Then Prem and his friend took us in a boat to the most beautiful water falls which I have ever seen till today. There was not a single person there. Wherever I kept my legs, I was able to see my legs through the water.The water was crystal clear like the water in a glass mug.My friends got excited and had a bath in the falls and i was taking pictures of a water snake :D thinking it was dead. As i kept taking the pictures i noticed in the camera screen that the snake changed it's head direction and i thought i was just going to die :-P but then prem's friend told me that the snake was injured :-P After a while, we reached back to the same guest house. Prem gave us a bag of fig fruits from the forest(Too tasty and you will never get that kind of fig in our cities). Then we had to say bye to prem and his Gavi as we departed.
As soon we reached the hotel, we checked out the hotel and went to the bus stand and got a bus to kambam. We did not have our tickets booked. So we were in a confusion and then we met a person(forgot the name :-D ) in the bus who was very helpful and he called the SETC office and even few private travels and gave us information on the buses, their schedule and seats availability. As he told ,we got a straight bus to Chennai as soon as we got down from that bus. Two of my friends slept early and myself and dinesh were talking for a long time about his first channel and third channel (If you know what i mean:-P)and soon we slept too. 8 am next morning, we got down in Chennai CMBT and we were all going towards our homes thinking about those places and people we met and also were trying hard to digest the fact that we had to go to office after reaching our homes :'( ;-)
Useful Links: http://gaviecotourism.org/php/ViewContent.php?lid=4
Next we decided to go for an elephant ride. My friends nagu and Sara were quite afraid But still went ahead and took an elephant ride. Although we speak of wildlife conservation and all those, it is really worth a ride for at least once in lifetime. And the elephants were treated really well compared to many other places which offer elephant rides( like Mudhumali,Wayanad etc).
Finally it was the EOD, so we had our dinner and went to sleep early that night as we had to wake up early the next morning. We had arranged a jeep to travel to Gavi. We woke up quite late around 5 PM and got ready as soon as possible and started from there. We opened the jeep top and all the four of us were standing throughout the ride.Soon we crossed the pamba river by jeep and entered the Periyar Tiger reserve at around 6 30 PM.
Then "Real ride" started. If your are ever going to visit Gavi in july-august then this jeep ride is going to stay in your heart forever. You will never forget this ride. You put your eyes on any place you will either see lush green trees and grass or you will see water running through the woods. We saw many mesmerizing viewpoints on the way. We got a good driver who even stopped and showed us animals too. We could not see many as we were late. If you want to witness herds of elephants sliding through the hills and grasslands, do enter the forest before 6 am. There are also chances to witness the "Man Eater" ;)
And we experienced all these except for the "Man Eater" :( But still a jeep ride in the forest region climbing up the hill with Ilayaraja songs at the background will undoubtedly be an unforgettable page in everybody's diary :)
We finally reached the forest guest house around 8.30 AM. We had a great buffet breakfast.As soon we were done we were introduced to our forest guide "Prem Kumar". He is from one of the 12 tribal families who live in that forest and he had many stories and information to share with us during our trek. Every group started with their own guide.Surprisingly 90 % of the people who had come there were from alien countries. The place was not popular then among the local people,although now that place is very popular because of the Malayalam movie "Ordinary".
As every group started walking, Prem asked us whether we wanted a normal 2 hours walk or an adventurous one and we chose the latter. And the very first thing which we had to do was really adventurous and frankly i did not want to do that and i was terribly afraid we had to walk around a hill top over the slope to get to the other side of the hill. With help from Sara, I managed to do that we finally had to descend from the other side of the hill. With few climbs and descends over the hills we entered into deep forest. We also witnessed the view of Sabari mala Iyyappan temple which was completely covered by mist and also the hills in which the magara jothi is believed to appear. We were following each other and the stories told by Prem were really amazing and also it helped me divert myself from the fear of falling down the hills :P As we kept walking inside the forest we had to descend the hill though the forest.
When all my friends were walking in two legs, I was sliding and catching hold of the roots and branches of the plants and trees and even went back to the stone age walking in four legs :-P And the scary part of this whole trek is the "leeches". We were able to see our shoes completely covered with leeches. My friends even started bleeding. But our guide was amazing. We were feeling hard to walk with our shoes.But this guy just walked with a paragon slipper and he never cared about the leeches sucking his blood and he kept walking. Finally he even made us cross a river and then he asked us to descend down a water fall :D:O. My friends started descending before even i started thinking of it. I took few steps down holding the huge roots of a fallen tree. But then my fear asked me to go back up to the top of the falls. And So i did :D And seeing me afraid everybody came back ;) ( Nice Friends :-P That moment when you start saying thank god with a sigh and then realizing that people are around :P;))Now we had to take a shortest possible route as we had already crossed the time limit which was given for our trek. So we took the most steepest route to climb up the hills to reach the guest house again. It was very hard. Nobody had the energy to climb and we slowly reached back the guest house around 3 PM. We had our lunch ( We ate as if we did not eat for months :P)
Then Prem and his friend took us in a boat to the most beautiful water falls which I have ever seen till today. There was not a single person there. Wherever I kept my legs, I was able to see my legs through the water.The water was crystal clear like the water in a glass mug.My friends got excited and had a bath in the falls and i was taking pictures of a water snake :D thinking it was dead. As i kept taking the pictures i noticed in the camera screen that the snake changed it's head direction and i thought i was just going to die :-P but then prem's friend told me that the snake was injured :-P After a while, we reached back to the same guest house. Prem gave us a bag of fig fruits from the forest(Too tasty and you will never get that kind of fig in our cities). Then we had to say bye to prem and his Gavi as we departed.
As soon we reached the hotel, we checked out the hotel and went to the bus stand and got a bus to kambam. We did not have our tickets booked. So we were in a confusion and then we met a person(forgot the name :-D ) in the bus who was very helpful and he called the SETC office and even few private travels and gave us information on the buses, their schedule and seats availability. As he told ,we got a straight bus to Chennai as soon as we got down from that bus. Two of my friends slept early and myself and dinesh were talking for a long time about his first channel and third channel (If you know what i mean:-P)and soon we slept too. 8 am next morning, we got down in Chennai CMBT and we were all going towards our homes thinking about those places and people we met and also were trying hard to digest the fact that we had to go to office after reaching our homes :'( ;-)
Useful Links: http://gaviecotourism.org/php/ViewContent.php?lid=4
