25-12-2014
1220 KM
It's around 5 PM and it's very cold. We were desperate to reach Munnar directly, but with this freezing cold, we couldn't stop our selves sipping a glass of tea. While having tea, we tried discussing about the night halt with the tea shop owner. Initially everyone suggested lot of high priced hotels and resorts. After understanding our travel plan and some of the past experience of our trip, we got to hear the same lectures, that we heard all these days. The owner of the tea shop is trying his best to get a place, where we can put the tent for tonight. While he is busy connecting us to his contacts, let me order one more glass of tea and start putting our experience of the day till now.
After all those adventure last night, we got up around 5 AM. It was warm inside our villa along with sleeping bags, but unzipping the villa door, it was very cold. Though we were very determined to start our journey early, Santhosh very much supported me on sleeping for some more time. And what was that excuse?? Wrapping the tent in the dark, would be difficult, as if we had never done that before. What ever might that be, I also wanted to sleep for some more time. Finally it was 6 AM, some kids approached the ground and gave us a buzz to remove the tent from their football ground. There was no other choice and it was quite bright out by that time. Out of excitement and curiosity those little kids started peeking in and asking lot of questions, while we were removing our tent. Of all those, I would never forget that one question, "You sleep here, You see Preta, Mohini in night? White Saree in Tree? She no disturbing you?" (Preta in Malayalam means the spirit and Mohini is female spirit). First Santhosh and me looked at each other and thought of laughing loud. But Santhosh gave a very funny answer saying "Mohini spent the night with us inside the tent as it was quite cold out". It did not take much time for those kids to believe and we became hero for them. With that impression those kids invited us to play a game with them. Though it was difficult for us to run with riding gears, we both played for 15 minutes. It was tiring game. With a warm see off from all the kids over there, we started our journey towards Athirapally falls which we missed yesterday. Athirapally falls is called as Mini Niagara of India.
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| Playing Football with Kids at Mohini's Place |
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| Playing Football with Kids at Mohini's Place |
After riding around 10 kilometers, we realized our speedometer was not functioning, who knows Mohini might have snatched it last night. In search of a place to get freshen up, we reached Vettilapara Bridge. There was a quite good platform over the river Chalakkudy and we decided to take bath as it was even safe. While we were getting refreshed, one big Mallu family reached there to make it a breakfast point. It was Christmas, so Sajesh and entire family were on a family trip. The family invited us for breakfast and we didn't want to commit a mistake by missing the opportunity. It was "Idiappam" with "Chicken Curry" and "Coconut Chutney" for me and as usual Santhosh had to make himself happy with only "Idiappam" and "Coconut Chutney". I would really thank Sajesh and family for making us experience authentic Kerala breakfast. Sanjesh was an ex-IAF person and was able to communicate with us better. Tummy full of breakfast, followed by a tea with entire family made us share our travel experience with them. With an appreciation to our travel plan, the family started for Athirapally waterfalls.
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| Sajesh and Family Breakfast Place |
Having full luggage tied on to the motorcycle, we weren't comfortable parking it in the general parking lot at Athirapally waterfalls. The place was too much populated with tourists and there was a bit of insecurity with in us about our luggage. We some how convinced a soft drink cafe owner to take care of our Shakila. Since the ticket counter is not at the entrance to water fall, we had to walk extra 200 meters to collect entrance tickets. On the way to the ticket counter, we met Jesus and Tania a french couple, who were travelling by Royal Enfield from Cochin. We exchanged our travel experience so far. We suggested the route to reach Goa covering all the good places of Kerala and Karnataka, which a traveler can enjoy as there was a bit of disappointment on their face because of tourist crowd and behaviour of local people towards foreigners. With some memorable photo clicks, we decided to meet up at Mahe for the new year celebration.
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| With Jesus at Athirapally |
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| With Jesus and Tania at Athirapally |
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| With Jesus and Tania at Athirapally |
"au revoir" (Bye, see you again) were the last words with Jesus and Tania. We trekked down around 500 meter to capture some good frames of the smoking water fall. While capturing some of the pictures using tripod, two of the forest guards approached us. They offered us a trip to the forest on the river bank at INR 200/- each. But the trek was towards the down stream, but I was interested in a trek towards the up stream, which would have been taken us to Parambikulam Tiger Reserve Forest. It was the same rain forest we were travelling yesterday. It was a straight deny to their offer, we thought it would not be worth to trek down stream as we could see lot of civilization on both side of the river.
We are always lucky as I am writing from tent tonight. Yes, after reaching Munnar, we found the ground easily. After a bit of survey, we finalized the place for tenting. As the ground was too near to the city, we decided not to camp fire tonight. We got inside Munnar city in search of a nice local dinner, but tourist place; all we got was crap. Though all the connecting roads to Munnar were very good, the roads inside Munnar were in a very bad shape. It was bad for us to try the roads by geographical direction as we ended up wrong route all the time. Its never advisable to try shortcuts in Hill stations as you may end up in dead end. The temperature started falling down as it was getting darker and we thought it would be difficult for us to spend the night in side tent even with the sleeping bags. It took me some time to understand Santhosh's behavior, when he asked me to stop the motorcycle near to a long queue. Next moment with out discussing anything, Santhosh joined the queue. I was still confused and finally realized the queue ended up at the only liquor counter of Munnar. Santosh shouted "Satish Brandy Brandy" and I shouted back "Ondu Quarter Saku" (one quarter would be sufficient in Kannada). Right after buying Brandy, we came and set up our tent quickly. I don't have any knowledge about the outside temperature, but it's freezing inside our villa and I am struggling even to hold the pen to write. It's time for us to take a sip of brandy and every sip was worth to fight the cold tonight. Good Night!!!
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