When the summer heat hits you hard, what do you do? We turn on the Air Conditioners at home to keep ourselves cool… when the A/C bill shoots up, we know it’s time to pack our stuff and head to a naturally cool place.
Good morning fellow Toastmasters and guests,
… and that is exactly what we did during this summer. We headed to a cool place called Wayanad. The “we” is a group of 10 people including my parents, wife, daughter and the extended family. The “we” included people all the way from 6 feet height to 2 feet height.
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Wayanad is nature’s hidden treasure. It is hidden between the borders of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamilnadu. On one side, there is mesmerizing Mysore and on the other side, there is astonishing Ooty. Wayanad is sandwiched between these two cool places.
We stayed in a place called Hotel Haritagiri. That is a great place to spend time with family and kids. We went to Wayanad for a 3 days’ vacation. We could’ve spent all the 3 days inside the hotel and we would’ve still enjoyed the vacation.
We had rented a Tempo Traveller to go around. On the first day, we went to a place called Edakkal Caves. The drive to Edakkal Caves was refreshing. Wayanad is dipped in green… with beautiful trees, plants and bushes… along both the sides of the road, like a beautiful girl wearing fresh green saree.
We parked our van near the visitor’s entrance. Edakkal caves was standing on top of a tall mountain. At first, we thought we can easily climb the mountain. So, we started doing a brisk walk. After some 30 minutes of climbing, the brisk walk became a slow walk and then, in a few minutes, literally we started crawling. All of us started gasping for breath. We breathed so heavily that our ears realized that there is a heart inside us.
As we climbed up, the path became very steep and narrow. Our legs started to ache, some of us started feeling dizzy and finally, our legs came to a grinding halt. It looked as if Mother Mountain is looking straight into our eyes and roaring “Kabali-da”.
When we were too tired and ran out of steam, we spotted a “Tender Coconut” shop. We felt happy like a thirsty traveler spotting an oasis in the middle of a desert. I asked the shop owner “Brother… what is the price?” in Tamil, he responded back “Rs.50 Sir” in beautiful English. I internally thought, “Boss! Given the thirst that we’ve, even if you had said each one costs Rs.500, we would’ve bought them”. I ordered 10 Tender coconuts and all of us finished drinking that. Immediately, we got replenished, refreshed and rejuvenated.
We started climbing the mountain again. In about 30 minutes, we reached the cave. The cave was formed by large rocks sticking their head to one another. It felt as if someone had powered up 100 ACs simultaneously. The cave was so cool. The rocks had algae all over them. Each of the rocks had scribblings, drawings and some writings. It looks like they were written before 5000 years.
When you look down from the top of the mountain, it feels as if you are standing on top of a 1000 storied LIC building and looking at Anna Salai. The kids ran around and played for a while. We spent some time there and started climbing down. Since the mountain was steep, the downward descend was also difficult. In about an hour, we reached down and got into our Tempo Traveller. Everyone looked like punctured balloons. We had late lunch in a nearby restaurant and reached Hotel Haritagiri to take a good nap. We spent the rest of the day in the Hotel itself.
In the next 2 days, we visited a few more places like Banasura Sagar Dam, Kuruva Island, Karlad Lake. Three days of vacation evaporated like three minutes. Wayanad had much more to offer, but we had very less time to enjoy the full breadth and width of Wayanad. I’m sure this feeling will be there, even if we visit Wayanad a few more times.
Fellow Toastmasters and guests, when you are looking for a great place to have a stellar time with family… when you are looking for a peaceful getaway from the buzzling city life… when you are looking for a place to soak into the beauty of nature…. Wayanad is the place to go!
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