My last visit to Wayanad had been in December 2018. We travelled from Mysore to Wayanad and stayed in Tholpetty, a wildlife sanctuary on the border of Karnataka. Ensconced high up in the Western ghats, Wayanad is full of wildlife sanctuaries. Deer and elephants can be spotted almost always. We stayed in Tholpetty for two weeks in the midst of nature, wrapped up by the forest. It is one of our memorable holidays in the years of long distance.
I was supposed to write down at least the highlights of my time in Wayanad so that my future self would not forget the details. But somehow it took all this while. Part of this was prompted by the movie Pakalum Pathiravum which is set in Wayanad. Unfortunately, now that four years have gone past, this is more of an attempt to recollect my scattered yet fond memories. I really don’t remember when we did what, but I do remember everything that we saw and did all the same. While the timeline is a jumble, the experiences are still vivid. So I am just going to focus on those.
I remember us taking long walks around Tholpetty through roads that flanked the forest and crossed gurgling streams and the locals warning us not to venture into the forest every time they saw us traipsing about. I cannot forget Sandeep who became like a younger brother to me by the end of those two weeks. He regaled us with accounts of foraging the forest and encounters with animals, showed us around his settlement, and took us to a snake temple featuring a giant termite hill which looked as if it had come straight out of Nagamandala. The bus rides to Thirunelli temple, Banasura lake, and Kuruva through the forest hills and lush paddy fields, the trek to Iruppu falls through coffee and pepper plantations nested in the lap of strolling hills, unniyappam from the famous tea stall near Thirunelli, and quail eggs and tea from the tea cart near our resort are precious memories. I also loved our safari rides through the forest although we could not see any tigers.
However, my personal high point of the Wayanad stay was the bird sightings. I am an amateur birdwatcher. I would never call myself an avid birder or even a serious birdwatcher and I don’t even own a pair of binoculars. But I like to observe birds. It began with a column featuring the birds in our locality in the Sunday special of one of the regional newspapers. I was only ten years old and I was hooked. Not to mention that I was a socially awkward child who did not have many friends until I switched schools in high school. Ever since that article, whenever I spot a new bird I feel great joy.
To this day, I haven’t seen as many birds in my whole life as I saw during those two weeks in Wayanad and we saw most of them from our cottage verandah. The crimson-backed sunbird that always flitted around our garden, the heart-spotted woodpecker, Tickell’s blue flycatcher, Jerdon’s leafbird, black-naped oriole, and orange minivet were firsts for me but they were there every day. What surprised me the most was a gathering of different birds and they were all in pairs. There were pairs of greater racket-tailed drongos, woodpeckers, bulbuls, minivets, and orioles and it looked like they were in the middle of some important discussion. The moment they sensed my presence, the whole flock moved together away from me in a wave. They did this dance every time I tried to go near the current formation.
Later, I found out that these birds were feeding together and the motley group that I saw was called a mixed hunting party or a bird wave. This winged dance that I was lucky to witness was a beautiful and unforgettable sight. We were also lucky to spot the Malabar pied-hornbill and the Malabar grey-hornbill at Thirunelli and on our way back from Iruppu falls for the first time.
One of the exquisite features of Wayanad is its green paddy fields. We saw a lot of those in that fortnight. But the most memorable one was the vast green landscape speckled with a huge congregation of black-headed ibis.