We left on Friday after work (6pm). I had bought a new hat specifically for the adventure. Ben had also prepared himself for the jungle experience - he had a crate of diet coke with him.
The Journey to our destination of fringe ford (www.fringeford.com) was likely to take between 6-7 hours, so we expected to arrive sometime after midnight.
After taking an hour to get to the outskirts of the centre of town, we stopped at a petrol station, Velo our driver got out, and we were left for 15 mins before he returned to inform us that we didn't have the required documentation to cross the Karnatakan-Kerala State Boundary, so we turned around and headed back to a meeting point, where we waited another 40 minutes or so for the paper to arrive.
Basically we wasted a good 2 1/2 hours in Bangalore before departing, and so we eventually arrived at Fringe Ford at 4.20am on Saturday morning! We did see a wild elephant on the road though.
Doug, Me and Adam relaxing
Me and the View
Sppider (about size of my hand)
Praying Mantis
We got up at 10 to the sound of the wild, and geese. The view was really spectacular, the little house complex opened out onto a grass ledge with spectacular views of the surrounding Wyanad and Tholpaty reserve forest and mountain range. Really nice, and very tempting to just sit there and look at the view all day. Breakfast was delicious, sitting at a table on the edge of the drop-off with the view straight ahead. Rice pancakes, honey, toast, freshly made omlettes.
We didn't do too much in the morning, we read a little bit, Ben washed his chocolate bars and we went for a short walk along the property's main road. It was actually a really nice walk, and we saw some good wildlife. Ben tried to reason with a goose before getting attacked by it(see video), and we also saw all manner of insects (loads of funnel web spiders, praying mantis, hopping spiders, birds, and cool plants).
Me, Ben, Doug and Adam set off for a trek
View
At the top of the watchtower hill
After another delicious meal at lunch time, we trekked up the mountainside for 45mins - a really quite steep climb - to the watchtower. Which offered a spectacular 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. It was tiring to reach, but a cooling breeze and a wonderful, if hazy, panorama was a just reward. Coming down was easier, and we had a chilled out evening. I beat Ben at chess, but lost to him at Connect 4.
(For those interested current scores.
Catan Ben 4, Me 2, Doug 1, Adam 1, Mike 1
Chess Me 1
Connect 4 Doug 2, Ben 1)
Sunset on Saturday
Jungle walk
Main road into the complex
Funnel Web Spider
Me and the Mountains
The same fantastic view at breakfast time, and we spent to the morning trekking out to a local waterfall, and enjoying a refreshing swim/shower.
We saw a lot of elephant droppings over the weekend, but no elephants came calling on us - better luck next time I hope.
View
Lunch
View from the house
Breakfast time view
Breakfast
Breakfast
Ben's nemesis
View from table
Trekking
Contemplation
Reading
From top of Watchtower
From top of Watchtower
Reading a great book
The House
Waterfall fun
We drove back after another fantastic lunch, and it was really nice to see the sights of Kerala, the rice fields, tea and banana plantations, and the settlements, houses, people, fishermen and cattle of India. Really felt like we saw some of the real India.
Paddy Fields and Banana plantations of Kerala
Sunset on Sunday drive
It was nice to get out of the city, and we are off to Mumbai(Bombay) at the weekend, so some more updates soon.
Video to follow tomorrow hopefully.
3 comments:
Amazing photos - looking forward to hearing all about it
what confused me most was the washing of chocolate!
Looks fantastic - glad you are getting some Big Scenery too. Bit less enthusiastic about the wildlife - way too many spiders, and I used to be terrrified of geese when they get all hissy at you - probably still am, no recent experience.
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