Wayanad Trip - A look back (Day 2)

10 Aug 2008, Sunday

Its was a pleasant morning and every one excited. Some of us had a playing session at the hotel. That day we planned to visit Muthanga Wildlife Santuary and the Kuruva Island. We had to really rush bcoz, only the first few team might be able to see some animals over there. All of us get ready at around 8:30am. We got seated in the bus and headed to a nearby hotel for breakfast.


Breakfast
After having a great breakfast we headed to Wildlife Sanctuary. The sanctuary is at Muthanga.


Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary

An ideal destination to watch herds of wild elephants, the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary is contiguous to the protected area network of Nagarhole and Bandipur of Karnataka on the northeast and Mudumalai of Tamil Nadu on the southeast. It is established in 1973. Rich in bio diversity, the sanctuary is an integral part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve , which has been established with the specific objective of conserving the biological heritage of the region.

The sanctuary is rich in flora and fauna. The management lays emphasis on scientific conservation with due consideration for the general lifestyle of the tribals and others who live in and around the forest. Elephant, spotted deer. Bison, tiger, cheetah, wild bear etc. can be spotted here. Elephant rides are arranged by the Forest department.

At around 9:45am we reached Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary. They wont allow big vehicles inside the sanctuary, so we had to rent a few jeeps for us. For each vehicle the forest department will assign a guide for us. We payed some 1500 bugs as entry fee including the camera charges. We need to pay extra amount for the jeep for rent. The advantage is that the jeep drivers are very experienced guys.

Monkeys are common sight

On the way inside the sanctuary we saw a few deers, peacocks, elephants and some other animals as well. The jeep stops at some specified locations, we took some snaps from there. There are a few challenges the drivers have to overcome, for some distance the road is full of mud, so the tyres tend to slip and hence losing out control. So if some vehicle got stuck, then its a tough task. In the below pictures you can see one of our jeep got stuck in the mud.

We finished the adventurous ride at 12:15pm. From Muthanga we can buy original honey.

We were lucky enough to find a few deers

We can go, right?

Oops! Where is it heading?

Common guys, Push hard!

We survived, here we go !

Way back from wildlife sanctuary

Lunch
After 1:00pm we went for lunch. The food that we had from Wayanad is really nice. After having lunch we traveled to Kuruva Island.

Kuruva Island
On the way to Kuruva Island we danced in the bus, transforming the travel into an entertainment session as much as possible. We can always get some lush green scenery when we look out of the bus.

It was unfortunate that we cannot visit the Kuruva Island, the island was almost flooded with water.

Way to Kuruva Island

Its 330pm , so we had no time to visit other places, so we decide to head back to our starting point. We had to reach Thiruvananthapuram in the morning. We reached Thiruvananthapuram at around 7:30am on Monday. Altogether it was a nice journey.

Ready for the final destination