Wayanad – Day 1

Journey to Kerala | Wayanad – Day 1 | Wayanad – Day 2 | Wayanad – Day 3

We woke up to chirping sound of birds. It was a welcome break from the busy day schedule. Went for a small walk with cameras dangling around our neck. There were plenty of birds around us.

When we came back, Sathish (our jeep driver for the next three days) was waiting for us. We told him all the places that we wish to visit, and he promised us to show maximum number of places with enough time for us to spend in those places.

In Wayanad region, all the tourist places are scattered across the district. Hence, one has to travel a lot, it’s more like a chicken run. And a better suited vehicle for that area is a Jeep. Our first stop was Vythiri view point. From Kalpetta town, after 10-12 KMs starts ghat section which takes one to Calicut. The view from this place is awesome. One can see the twisty roads down below & vehicles crawling like ants one behind the other.

From there we went to Pookoot lake. We decided to walk around the lake instead of boating and spent more than 2 hours. Shashank got busy shooting birds and I took photos of water lilies. From there we started towards Edakkal caves. On the way to Edakkal, we visited Karapuzha dam. It is still under construction. But still there was some water to attract some birds. After a short photoshoot there, we started towards Edakkal.

Edakkal is the place where prehistoric rock etchings are found on the walls of these caves. The Petroglyphs in Edakkal caves dates back to 1000BC. The caves are somewhere in the middle of the Ambukuthimala. One has to do a bit of hiking to reach the caves. And the Ambukuthimala peak is further high ad steep. Since we were running out of time for the safari in Muthanga wildlife sanctuary, we decided against going to peak & headed towards Muthanga.

We reached Muthanga wildlife sanctuary in time for the safari. We dumped our luggage in the wood-house and plunged in to the forest to have look at the wildlife. We spotted plenty of deer, a herd wild boars, and a lone tusker munching supper. We watched him having food for more than 10 minutes. He got bored and went inside. We returned to our rented wood-house. Retired to bed early after a quick dinner. Day was great, I was enjoying every second of it.