The Wild Western Ghats

Sahyadri as its also called , is the mountain range towards west of India . The dense forests of the range constitute of many species of flora and fauna. This range has one of the most breath taking sites and one of the wildest places that a nature lover must visit.

This time our visit here was a special one. It was supposed to be a bachelors party!! and a wedding to attend in mysore ... well ya ... bachelors party and in a dense forest with wild animals ... i know !! but it was all for our friend Karthik !! thats what he liked and we thought we'll "sacrifice" this once for his happiness ... he was getting married after all ;)

So here goes , as usual the planning had started few months back starting from Thailand , to have a "hangover" kind of bachelors party .. but then no one drinks in the gang so why waste flight tickets :P oh ya , the gang by the way , if uve read previous posts is the same gang of friends together from school days ... ya "chaddi dosts"... so you can imagine how much pain taking planning we would have done .. ya a total of 15 minutes!! and we set off!! :)

Destination - Ooty - Masinagudi - Mysore

Ooty - Nothing beats a night drive to ooty , having one of the most dangerous ghat sections and in that cold and misty night ... me ayub and muneeb getting belted by karthik ofcourse ... We left bangalore very early.. around 2pm .. plan was to reach ooty that night , the problem was the bandipur route that takes us to ooty closes at 9pm sharp, miss that and we have to stay in the car for the night. As expected the journey was very quiet and peaceful , with few fights between friends and being non smokers we had to stop the vehicle regularly to get our dose of coffee though Karthik was driving all the while!! We hit the Bandipur check point at 8 : 45 . There we refilled the necessities for a long winding ghat section ride .. yummies and a lot of poppins.. cant get started on poppins now , it has a long histry with muneeb .. ill write a complete post on it later ;) .

The road to ooty is admist the dense bandipur jungle , from the karnataka border. Once we hit tamil nadu , the forest range is called madhumalai. There are two roads , one through Gudalur , a long one and the other a steep climb with 32 hair pin ( sorry if am wrong with numbers , it was very dark and coudn read properly ) bends , via kalhatti . This route has wild animal habitats through out and steep climb and narrow bends make it all the more dangerous . Hence closed at night .

Well you know , it was a bachelors party , and we were supposed to attend a wedding on the way back so we did not take any chances , we took the dangerous but short route ( nothing that gandhiji cant manage ) and reached ooty by 11.


Day2 - To Masinagudi .
Our destination was "The Wilderness" , a small resort in the dense forests .  

Perfect weather to drive . The route back from Ooty to masinagudi is scenic. On thw way you can see many wild animals and birds , so make sure you have enough time and drive slowly to spot these and enjoy the ride . 

Wilderness : The resort has 5 cottages and can accommodate around 20 at a time . Great location a midst of the dense forest , hospitality is good and great tasty food . There is a stream flowing just behind the resort and the safari camp and few other tourist places are very nearby , making this one of the ideal places .

We decided to chill out , have fun there instead of roaming places and get exhausted as we had seen almost all the places there and enjoyed the nature . 

It had been years since I had seen a fire fly , which was a very common occurrence at my home garden when I was a kid . Just like sparrows they all vanished ... Night brings jungle to life ... the sheer vastness and types of sounds you can hear gives you a different feeling all together , and the sounds of elephants trying to barge in their old feeding grounds and being scared away by the humans , also gives u a different feeling - 

A mistake that we are continuously doing and its about time that government takes action stopping illegal resorts and other human interference, that  is invading these forest lands .

Well too much serious talk.... coming back ... it was an amazing experience and as for the details < sorry bachelors party  :) >
From here we visited Mysore , to attend Aruns wedding and we were back to Bangalore .

A fun filled emotional and probably the last trip that we as a school gang might have gone :)