Greenex Farms Wayanad

... to us at check-in. The only other tourists in our jeep were a couple from Texas who were in India on a business trip to Bangalore. There was supposed to be an Indian family coming in a different jeep, but they had not yet arrived, so their naturalist rode with us as well. We started out and the rain began to come down, making the rest of the ride cold and wet.

We drove through the broken roads to enter the park and immediately saw many spotted deer ...

... and a world away from the India that i had come to know.
We made particularly good friends with two IRISH dudes.....that were definately up for the Craic !!
but they were also extremely intelligent and right on our wave length (see what i did there!) .......and insanely generous.........we spent most of our time with those guys .........we would always bumb into each other during the day for a game of pool or cards....but in the evening ....we would ...

Thirunelli is in beautiful beautiful Wayanad in Kerala, India. I went there driving with my wife and my mother. The drive from Bangalore is beautiful and takes about 6-8 hours. One travels through four wildlife reserve forests on the way. If you are lucky, you can spot a wild animal. we had a miraculous near miss with a tusker. He stepped into the road a foot behind us. It was very scary and exciting at the same time. I have seen elephants before, but those were the tame ones, but ...

... Nagarhole.

There are two routes from there, one which goes to Gonicoppal and the other which goes through Nagarhole. Two wheeelers are not allowed inside the national park so those who want to bike will have to go to gonikoppal and come to irpu through srimangala.

We went through the national park at around 40Kms per hour hoping to see some wildlife. We were able to see some elephants and deer but not lucky beyond that.

There are quite a few Cauvery homestays ...

... The staff are incredibly friendly, going out of their way to be helpful. I arrived full of cold and was provided with chest rub and lots of cups of tea.

The bedrooms are spacious and comfortable with attached western style bathrooms. Bucket showers but hot water. They also have Tata Sky which is great when rain means you can’t go outside.

Traditional Kerala Food is all cooked on site and is delicious. All the fruits and vegetables used are grown on the ...

... visited lakkadi view which was around 40 kms from enteeveedu. A picturesque drive down the Kozhikode-Bangalore highway took us towards Lakkidi (one of Lakkidi's lesser-known claims to fame is that it boasts of receiving the highest rainfall in the country after Cherrapunji); the gateway to Wayanad.... The drive took us via coffee estates, farms growing beetlenut and pepper and stretches of forest. It was a ...

... these tribal populations who still practice age-old customs and rituals in particular with the use of rare herbs and medicinal plants. The people are forest dwellers who live in harmony with nature and practise arts and crafts, organised farming, music and dance although some are nomadic. The isolation of the area has enhanced the development of their unique ways of living. I felt blessed to have had the chance to interact so closely with some of them even if it was just on ...

... it costs around 2000 Rs for a day there. Like most I too don¡¦t like to spend so much on accommodation, when I am only spending the night in hotel. On the way when I was checking my mails using my laptop, I got a mail from my friend Annie saying that her friend has a second home in Wayanad and she can arrange that house on rent for 10 days and the cost was also nominal, through her I came to know that a company called HolidayHangouts.com are selling second homes in Wayanad and Annie ...

... wanded about and got at one with nature, but the highlight of the 3 days there was an impromtu safari that Jonny suggeted at 10.30 at night. We had just finished dinner when he told us to come and look for elephants. We looked at one another, not sure whether it wa a joke, but the following 2 1/2 hr we spent racing around the back lanes looking for the pachyderms. Well, we found a few wild ox, then plenty of dear but things got more intereting when we got ...

... back onto terra firma. The recreational highlight of our trip so far has to be Ooty's aptly named theme park, "Jolly World". Sadly Jolly World was suffering from a power-cut at the time of our visit. This fact didn't seem to trouble the park attendants, and they felt it unneccesary to advise us of this when we paid our hefty 5 rupees for admission. The unforseen closure of the shooting gallery, and the ...