It was after an year that we could make it.
It was initiated by Kalyan, as he is always the person more desperate for treks ;)
He was very sportive to forget all the incidents @ Hebbe trek and get charged for another Trek in just one year...
Out of the people who were involved in the Hebbe trek:
- Phani was busy with his career moulding business,
- MS (Sreenivas Machavaram) being newly married, was busy with his life moulding business ;)
- I do not know exactly what Sarath was busy with (may be a girl friend, as he resembles Tyson of Happydays in looks)
- Kalyan, myself and Yugan were happy to be part of this 2nd adventurous Trek (of Kalyan).
- Sridhar escaped last time due to some personal works, which only MS will have details. This time he was ready to spare his valuable time for us (despite his busy Film shooting schedules... ;) )
- Sreenath is always interested in trips and he accepted our invitation immediately and took part of our trip. He helped the team go for stretched targets.
- Rammohan also took part of this exciting journey to add a great value to our trip. He has always been a helping hand to everyone in the trip as he has been in life.
We visited the following places:
on 3rd we did a trek to Chembra peak till the lake atop
Soochipara water falls in the afternoon
On 4th we went to Pookod lake first and did pedal boating
Went to Banasura dam next and did speed boating
went to Kuruva island nearly at 4PM, walked in the stream and spent an hour in the island and returned by boat
On 5th we went to Bandipur for a safari.
We felt we should have spent more time in Kuruva island instead of the speed boat in Banasura. Overall, we had very good time. If I get a third chance to go to Wayanad, I would spend a complete day for Chembra peak trek and another complete day in Kuruva island. Other places are good, but these two give great feel of being with nature. One common problem with both these places is you cannot visit them if it rains.
The trip pics are available in the following links:http://picasaweb.google.com/suryaramaprasad/WayanadWithQCLFriends
http://picasaweb.google.com/suryaramaprasad/WayanadWithQCLFriendsCont
You can watch the slide show here:
The trip went like this ...
We started around 12 in the after noon of 2nd, after everybody assembled at Sridhar's room. We booked a Tata Sumo, it was very comfortable for 6 of us, despite that we were trying to capture the front seats from others. The driver was very nice and friendly.
Our first stop was at Kamath, for lunch at 1:30 PM. There was a very big crowd in Kamath, but in 10 minutes they could show us places. They followed a waiting list too, a good way of managing the hungry crowd. We packed some famous sweets for our journey.
We took a break at Mysore out skirts at 4:30 PM, and had coconuts, which he charged 15 per coconut, may be because we did not bargain or may be because of the Mysore Dasara Demand, we could not understand. We reached the Kerala Check post at around 6:30 PM, took teas.
We reached Sultan Bathery at around 7:00 PM, and started calling all the hotels as per the contact available from the document given by Gautam, available at http://www.geocities.com/ssrprasad/bangalorewayanad.doc . Almost all the hotels were booked because of the heavy holiday crowd. Luck favored Kalyan, and his call to Royal Palm Holiday homes located at Kalpet has a positive answer because of a cancelled booking. But they could accommodate us only for two days. We needed a three day accommodation. This made us check for alternatives, we called Chakkalakkal Tourist home and enquired about rooms for 6 people for the three days. They said they have accommodation, and we went there. We faced the worst in our lives there. They have 2 rooms, no extra bed, hot water comes only at 7:30 AM to 10 AM, not ready even to provide an extra blanket. They do not know English, one drunkard came, who could speak Hindi, but was very arrogant. We would never forget this experience.
This made us call up Royal palm guy Tenny (this was our final conclusion of his name, and through out our stay we called him Terry, Denny, Tony everything else, but he was patient enough to answer to all those names, and help us with everything) and enquire about hot water, blankets etc., he ensured its a deluxe accommodation, and everything will be taken care. We went to his place, we liked it immediately. He even promised to check for an accommodation himself for our stay on Saturday night. And it was 9:30 by the time we settled.
We went for dinner at 9:30 PM to The woodlands which was closed, as we were very late ;) We searched for another hotel Harithagiri nearby, and had dinner, which was not bad, as per the standards set by other hotels later during our stay.
We woke up at 5:30 in the morning, which was a record. Everybody woke up immediately after hearing their names and did not take even a little extra time. We started for Chembra peak trek at around 7:00 AM. We had breakfast at a small hotel in Mepadi, which was decent enough for the price we paid.
At around 8:20 AM we reached the Trek starting point, which is located 7 KM from Mepadi. Kalyan was disappointed to hear that the height we 
need to climb is just 600 metre and we went 7 KM by vehicle. He wanted the Trek height to be more and at least walk this 7 Km before the Trek ;) We had to pay 500 as an entrance fee for a group of 10 people (even though we were just a group of 6). We had a 1KM walk to the exact trek start point from the place we parked the vehicle. There was a view tower at that point, we spent some time talking snaps.
Near the view point, we spotted some tea plucker
s, and came to know that tea plucking has also been made simple, its no more plucking, but is leaf cutting. There is a scissors attached to a small collecting box, into which the leaves fall after the cut. Once the box is full, they empty it into the bigger bags on their backs.
The trek started behind the view tower through a dense bushy and rather flat region, and the slope increased slowly. We took our own times to trek the route, stopping 4 to 5 times, asking the people returning about what is ahead. We had a good chat with Phani after reaching half way, when he called us on my mobile. He gave good news that he is going to come on 8th to Bangalore.
After some time, we reached a small pond, and thought that w
as the heart shaped pond described by Tenny. We were disappointed by the scene, as the pond was rather shaped like an 8. We ran out of water, we took only 3 litre for 6 of us, But we wanted to go little further to the next level and check if we can find any good scene. We started going ahead. After another 15 to 20 minutes, we reached the heart shaped pond, and were very happy at our accomplishment. We could see that we climbed only around 60% of the peak, and around 3 of us wanted to climb it completely. Due to the lack of water, very bad situation of others and also majorly due to lack of confidence, we decided to spend some time there and start our journey back.
We took some good snaps, spent some time near the pond, and started our return journey. The return journey was comparatively easy. Everybody came down at their own pace. Some were helping others and took longer. Some were running for a while and stopping for others to join them. At the end, we came down in two groups, in two routes. Even though the 2nd group were slower, they took a short cut and that reached down earlier than expected. We encountered a small snake on the way down.
We went back to Mepadi and had lunch at hotel ... Paris (New Paris I think). All of us took Kerala Parotha and vegetarians took tomato fry, non veggies took ch 65, and fish. Our they did not expect full fish. Driver commented, the fish was cold and not good to eat.
Next we went to Soochipara, and there too, we encountered heavy rush. Being all male, we went to our comfortable dressing, and went into the water, near the fall. Yugandhar and Sreenath did dare to go very near the fall. Sridhar also went nearer. Rammohan, myself and Kalyan were sitting 1/2 metre away from the fall in the water, but were completely drenched by the foggy water drops coming from the fall. At around 6:30 PM, we started our return journey. We liked the Amla sweet (made by dipping bigger Amla's in honey for around 2 weeks) at the stall near the water fall.
We went early this time to dinner around 8 PM to The Woodlands as we had problem the day before. But, our bad luck went there earlier than us. We decided to go for the restaurant behind instead of the self service hotel in the front. We gave our orders, and waited for half an hour after which we got cold tomato soup and comparatively better sweet corn. We got our order of Gobi Manchurian dry, but they did not consider to keep plates or sufficient number of forks. We did not get the mineral water we ordered. After another half an hour, and consistent fight with the serving staff, we could got the items we ordered. But, we ordered only half of what we needed first, as we wanted to re-order the items which we liked. After going through this terrible phase, we decided not to order anything else. We made sure we give a Re. 1 tip to insult the staff, as they have insulted us. Kalyan did speak to the manager and informed him what has happened after coming out of the restaurant. We had some ice creams to fill our stomach as there were no other options at that late time. We felt very bad when we saw our driver buying some bananas to fill his stomach.
We went back to our accommodation, and 
Tenny was generous to find another accommodation for our stay for the next day. He talked to The Regency and arranged two rooms for us to stay on Saturday night. We had a good sleep that night and woke up at 5:30 AM, bid good bye to Tenny, and started for Pookod lake trip.
We went
to Pookod lake exactly at the time of opening, took tickets, and queued for boating tickets. We took 3 two seaters, spent good 25 minutes in the lake. Even though their charge was Rs. 30 per two seater for 20 minutes, they did not complain on the 5 minute delay. Some people were walking on the path around the 
lake, we felt we had a good time on boats, so did not chose to 
go for the walk. We bought honey, the Amla sweet we liked the day before and kalyan also bought Eucalyptus oil.
We enquired the other vehicle driver, came to know that Ba
nasura dam is just 22 KM away from Pookod lake, and wanted to cover that also before the noon as we were planning to go to the Kuruva island by lunch time. We could not understand whether his calculation was wrong or we went in a wrong route, but we took very long to reach Banasura. We stopped for coffee/tea also in the middle, as we did not have breakfast that morning. When we went to Banasura, we came to know that they have speed boats. We had to wait for half an hour for our turn, had a 15 minute boating for Rs. 250, which we enjoyed very much.
The route to Kuruva from Banasura also took surprisingly longer time, and we reached Kuruva at 3:30 PM. We had lunch in a small stall, and went to the site at 4 PM. Kuruva is a beautiful place, and we have to go on a ferry (2 minute journey) to reach the island. As everybody should return back from the island at 5 PM, the ticket counter to the ferry closed. We enquired with the person managing the ferries that bring the people returning from the island. He asked us to stand for a while and was asking each and every ferry to take us in. All of them refused. We got fed up with this, and already we have seen some people crossing the river at a different place, by walk across the river. We wanted to try it, as that is the only way we have got to visit the island. After having little hardships, we could cross the river in around 20 minutes. As usual, Yugan and Sreenath were leading us, me and Rammohan in the middle, Kalyan and Sridhar were at the end, helping each other.
In about 45 minutes (talking pics, enjoying the nature), we reached the other end of the island where from people are supposed to cross the r
iver by walk and visit the small small islands. We liked the island very much, as it was no way less than a dense forest, with a small walking path. We felt sad for not coming to that place early in the day. We did not have time to cross the river and see what was there the other side. We started back on our return journey through the island. After coming to the first side of the island where we crossed the river walking, Kalyan persuaded the boatmen to take us to the other side. They took Rs. 60 for 6 of us and took us to the other side.
We had tea, and other had coconuts after reaching the shopping location. We started looking at a small shop with some playing toys for time pass. They told they have got a bigger stall with show pieces, we entered in to that which was beside this shop to the rear side. Everybody instantly liked the bamboo products sold there, and wanted to buy. Our hero (Sridhar) managed to bargain with them in Telugu ( :D yes, that is the funny part, he starts talking to people in English, once they are unable to follow him, uses one or two Kannada words he knows, if it doesn't work, he starts talking to them in Telugu ). We got around Rs. 25 discount each on items that cross about Rs. 200.
We called up the Regency guys and told them we are coming in an hour, and went there. After reaching there, due to our past experiences, we just dumped our belongings in our rooms (which were kinda not bad), and went for dinner. There was buffet available in the same Regency hotel for Rs. 95 per person. They did not have much varieties, but items were good. We decided to go for that, as even after spending heavily, we did not have luck before. There were One soup, Parota, ghee rice, one veg curry, one non veg curry, and also ice cream. We had a happy dinner. We went for a short walk on the roads, came back and decided to wake up at 3:00 AM and go for Bandipur safari the next day.
As usual, Rammohan was the first guy to wakup, he waked me up, I went to kalyan's room, waked him up, came back and slept unti
l Rammohan was ready. After I got ready, came to know that the entire other room slept till that time. After everybody was ready, we checked out and went for Bandipur. We reached at around 7:00 AM at the Bandipur reception area. We got tickets for the 8:00 AM ride. Spent some time here and there, went to the ride. We could spot deers (roaming around the reception area itself), wild pigs (-ditto-), one peacock, wild elephants, and a mongoose. We came back, and had another round on our vehicle on the main road, could spot some wild elephants again little bit away from the road.
We decided not to visit any more places, had break fast at some nearby restaurant, returned for bangalore. On the way in Mysore we could watch the Jaguar flights performing for the Dasara festival. We tried to stop at two places for lunch, but did not like ambiance of those places. We came to some mall in the outskirts of Bangalore and had a pizza feast. We ate heavily, reached my home around 5:30 PM. Went to Sridhar's place and spent some time together.
Some great points about the trip :The mail train exchanged about the trip which crossed the number 100 for some of us.
Everybody woke up on time during all 3 days.
After taking many pictures at Chembra and making everybody give great poses at Soochipara in the water, around 100 pictures from my camera have gone bad, and did not get extracted from the SD card.
