Day 2

Having experienced a much happening Day One, which by the way was expected to be a less active day in the entire trip, except for the drivers, myself and my brother, one could not settle for anything less on day two. The day two started with a nice little glass of tea, brought by dinesh, everyone including the ones, who would have ideally slept for some more time, managed to hit the ground after learning for their past experiences that their glass of tea would be at stake, if they don't do so. After a nice glass of tea, everybody waited for their turn to freshen up, while Dinesh and my brother were busy finalizing the route for our next planned destination, Mudhumalai. We hit the road around 9.00AM, after deciding to have breakfast on the way, as we neared the exit check post of the sanctuary, there stood a thank you and come again board with a tiger engraving on it, on seeing the board we all felt kind of dejected for not being able to see one in the wild. We were almost an hour into finding a place that is decent enough to eat something, but considering the geography of our route, every one could sense that we are not even close to being half successful on that regard, so we decided to stop in a small village which came across, for tea. My brother promised everyone with a good lunch, which helped settle down some of our frustrations that morning.

After having some tea and biscuits, we hit the road driving towards weynad wild life sanctuary; the drive was interesting as it was amidst forest, almost after an hour and half, we reached the weynad wild life sanctuary. Dinesh, Myself and my brother went to the visitor center to register for the jungle ride, and upon enquiry, we came to know that there exist a discount for members of wild life association, my brother being a valid member of the association was offered tickets at a discounted price, which helped save some money. We were given an individual jeep for the jungle ride with a designated driver and a guide, unlike our group ride at Nagarhole, which felt kind of good. It took them sometime to warm up the jeep, after some moments, we all boarded the jeep. The jeep was semi closed and had enough opening to allow us to look for animals. The guard stood in the back of the jeep, which gave him an edge over us on sighting animals.

The driver drove us through the designated forest routes; the forest looked dense following the monsoon rains, which threatened to impair our animal sighting. We came across some deer's, antelopes, wild boars, squirrels, peacocks and hens but nothing really substantial. As we continued to drive, we met a different group in the opposite side, who were about to complete their ride, when asked about their luck so far, they replied, not as they would have hoped for. The rest of our ride was less yielding, as we didn't come across anything substantial; the forest was nice and dense which pushed us to get down and take some pictures of our own. After a nice hour long drive amidst jungle, we reached the ride's ending point.

We relaxed for a while and then started with the rest of our journey to our final destination of the day, Mudhumalai Wild Life sanctuary. On the way, we planned to visit a falls, named iruppu, which is located in kerala and Karnataka border, when we reached the falls it was around mid noon, we all had to walk for about 20 minutes through a valley to get to the falls, but I must say the walk was worth it, as the falls looked beautiful, every one except me had a hour long shower in it. I considered myself unlucky for not being able to participate in the fun, as I had mild cold and did not want to aggravate it, May be I was little paranoid that day. Rest of the folks did enjoy the falls thoroughly, and we started back to the car to continue our journey towards mudhumalai.

When we left the falls if was around 2.00 PM, since we couldn't find any nice restaurants in the vicinity, we decided to move on and postpone our lunch for an hour or so. After an hour into the drive, we came across a big town named, sultan batheri, it had lot of restaurants and we picked the nicest one, the meal was good and everyone liked it. We then fueled our cars and hit the road, around 5.30 we entered the ghat section of the road leading to mudhumalai, it didn't take long before we came across a big herd of elephants grazing along side of the road. The road being a national highway was under some maintenance work, workers who were there working at that time got frightened and started shouting at the elephants and made them leave that vicinity, shortly after they were sighted, but we had enough time to take some nice snaps of the herd

The jungle was lush green and looked amazingly beautiful, following monsoon rains. We enjoyed the drive all the way to mudhumalai. we reached mudhumalai at half past 6.00. All the arrangements for our stay were made by my dad's old friend, who is the forest ranger for that area. We all met him at his office that evening, his office assistant offered us tea, after sometime myself, my brother and badri went to his quarters to convy our regards to his family, I handed him the gifts, which I had brought form the US. As we prepared to leave his quarters, we thanked him again for his help and hospitality.

The guest house that was allocated for us was located in the middle of the forest, isolated, it had an on board kitchen with a cook, so all the required items for the dinner that night has to be bought and taken by us. As we all unanimously agreed to have chicken that night, myself and vatsa, who by the way, were the only two who knew cooking, undertook the task of buying the required stuffs for dinner. After buying everything, we started towards the guest house which was roughly 15 kms away. The office assistant came with us to do all the initial arrangements.

We reached the guest house at 7.30 PM, the location of the guest house scared some of the rookies, as they felt like they were brought to an isolated world. We handed the stuffs to the cook and gave him a go ahead to start with cooking. The guest house was big and had two big bedrooms separated by a hall and a big dining hall with a big dining table, capable to seating 10 people in a serving.

The cook came with a bad news, he complained that the amount of ginger that we brought is not sufficient and demanded more to be brought at once. Myself, dinesh and the cook's assistant left to get more ginger, the time showed 8.30 PM, already. when I asked the assistant about the shops working hours in that vicinity, he sounded skeptical. As we all feared , all the shops were closed for business for the day, not knowing what to do next we stood helpless before the assistant came with another idea, he told us he knew of another place, where we could buy some ginger. Agreeing to his idea i asked him to navigate us to that place, I didn't take us long before we got there.

The place looked pitch dark without any lights, the only light source was the cars tail and parking lamps, we could see some huts, about 10 of them. The assistant got down the car, dinesh also decided to go with him, so he too got down and started following him, both, when they left the car was roughly 2 seconds apart, and they disappeared from the cars parking lamp instantly. 5 minutes passed by, suddenly I could hear some loud ground stepping, and it felt like some one is coming towards the car running, and rightly so, it was dinesh who came running towards the car, I could see him gasping for air,as he came closer. When I asked him what happened, he had a story to say.

He told me that he was following the assistants food steps until the assistant suddenly disappeared into the darkness. Not knowing how to proceed he had stayed frozen for some 5 seconds, before deciding to retrace his steps back to the car, which I should say was they right decision, as it is very easy to get lost in the jungle, that too when you are unfamiliar with the terrain. He also said his heart was in his mouth all the way back to the car until he saw the parking lamp of the car. I could sense a sign of relief in him, as he boarded the car. This was considered by him as one the most scariest moments in his life.

Unfortunately, all our efforts went in vain when the assistant came back with empty hands. We then drove back to the guest house, where a nice dinner was in the offing, it seems the cook had found some left over gingers in the store room, and used them to complete the dinner. We all sat together and had the dinner, after dinner we chatted briefly, while my brother and dinesh were planning for a drive in the jungle, after hearing from the assistant that animal sighting at this time of the night is inevitable.

A group of 5 decided to leave, while Myself and badri decided to stay, as we both felt sick. The rest of them left around 11.00 PM. I learned from them the following morning about how exiting their previous night trip was. They said they had a very close encounter with an elephant, during their ride. It seems they had come across an elephant round the corner of a turn, my brother who was driving decided to irritate the elephant with the engine sound, and had pressed the throttle back and forth, the elephant as expected got irritated with the sound and started charging towards the car, and on seeing this my brother had tried to move away and for some reasons, may be because of the excessive throttling, the car switched off leaving everyone in danger of being stamped by the elephant, which was yards away. Arun who sat on the window facing the elephant, told me that he almost died in the moment, and just because the car got started in the first attempt, they were able to avert the elephant marginally.