Pulicat Lake

Bird Watching and Photography

I decided to write about Pulicat Lake since there are lot of confusions about reaching the exact place and lot of blogs telling you different routes. This same confusion is what delayed our visit to this place. At last on a Republic Day, Jan 26, 2013, we decided to hit on the road with GPS as our navigator. 

We started from porur junction and proceeded on the Tada Highway. There are more than one entry points to Pulicat Lake since it is a long stretch spanning across TamilNadu and AndraPradesh

• On TN side: Take right from Ponneri and enter into Pulicat Lake

• On AP side: After crossing Tada take right from Sullurpeta towards Sriharikota

The Sullurpeta-Sriharikota is the main Pulicat viewing area. Do not expect any enclosed area of something similar to any other bird sanctuary. The lake is on both sides of the Sullurpeta-Sriharikota road. You have to visit the place right after the rains so the lake is has water to take a boat ride. When the waters are low the birds are pushed inside the lake and you cannot reach them through your telephoto lens to binoculors. So do visit on right time and ask the local for a boat ride.

On the day of our visit was the "Pulicat Day 2013" which is organized by AARDE foundation. We saw many posted on the way and expecting to see some events organized by them. But unfortunately we reached the AP side of the lake and the event was organized on the TN side. The event organizers were kind enough to explain us the route. But we were not able to make it.

There are also other areas of Pulicat Lake famous for Flamingos which is greatly explained in this blog. 

Thenmala - A Day well spent

Thenmala Eco Tourism

We read about Thenmala Eco Tourism and decided to visit the place during a marriage trip to Sivakasi. The place is 66 kms from kollam, Kerala. It could also be reached from Tenkasi crossing TamilNadu border. There are frequent buses from Tenkasi bus stand to Thenmala, but make sure to get down at Kallada Junction. Here you could see the "Kallada Irrigation Project" Dam and all the eco-tourism zones in a walk-able distance from here.

The Thenmala Ecotourism Promotion Society has maintained the place well under the following zones:

• Leisure zone
• Adventure zone
• Culture zone

Culture Zone:

This is the first place you should visit so you could collect the tickets to all other zones. This facility provides dormitory accommodation as claimed by their website. But when we asked for a room, the officials said we are not providing any such accommodation. So if you are planning for a stay please confirm well before you reach there. But we strongly recommend not to stay since there are not much places to visit in the surroundings unless you want a pleasant stay in leisure. Please refer the eco-tourism website.

Adventure zone

This zone boasts a lot of adventure activities but were not up to the expectations of an average adventure lover. There are lot of activities mentioned in the website but during our visit only river crossing was active. Archery and trampolin were there not maintained or active. We surely not recommend this place as an adventure spot but could be a good place for activities for kids. Find the tariff details here.

Canopy walk

River Crossing

Flying fox

 Leisure Zone

The Leisure zone includes a butterfly zone and a aquarium where you could see some good varieties of fishes.

There is also a Deer rehabilitation centre which did not visit. It is a good place  to spend a day with the nature around. Please visit the place if you are travelling near kollam or Thenkasi.

The Nemo ;-)

Pirana

Maredumilli, AP

The choice

When The wolfpack was planning for a short trip (2-3 days) and Papi hills,AP popped up as only the option. But on advise from people who've already been there, we decided against the place as it was portrayed as a boring place - "especially when it's hot, you'll be sweating, sitting on the boat for a full day doing nothing, and the huts where you get to camp in the night are not that great! Try Maredumilli for a change,the place is good." Hence, Maredumilli.

Day 1

Meetup

Rajahmundry was fixed as the meetup point of The Wolfpack (we're from 3 states - TN, KA and AP). This is 80Kms from Maredumilli - known for it's wonderful tiffin, the stuffed bhajjis and bondas :-)

Pesarettu - Andra's Special dish

We hired a very decent room with clean bathrooms and an LCD TV  for 500 bucks (negotiated down from 650 bucks) freshing up at Sri Baba Residency Lodge, right opposite to the railway station. In the buffer time we had before the last guy arrived, we had called up some travels and booked a cab - a non A/C Tavera for 3 days. We paid 1500/day as the rent (incl. driver's fee) and paid for the diesel. We already had the Govt. cottages booked for 2 nights at Maredumilli. So the trip was all set.

Maredumilli

We started from Rajahmundry at around 11:00, stopped by the Bhupatipalem dam reservoir to take some pictures and carried on. 

At Bhupatipalem Dam

We checked in at the Vanavihari guest house by around 13:00 when it was drizzling. The weather was very pleasant and quite a change over from that in Rajahmundry.The receptionist gave us a pamphlet of the local attractions and said

"All these places are on a 16Km stretch on the road to Bhadrachalam. You can go see these places yourself and if you want a guide, we can arrange."

But we already had a contact there who would take us for some treks - the man who claims to have invented the bamboo chicken and commercialized it in the last few years; the Vizag district DFOs had invited him to train locals there on cooking bamboo chicken. He also helps the forest officials for tiger census.

There's a cafeteria at the Vanavihari complex but we heard the food was bad. To our luck, we had our guide to cook all meals for us - delicious chicken was awaiting us at his home. We had our lunch while it was raining hard and when the rains calmed down a bit, we went to see the conventional tourist spots - the Jungle Star Camping site and Swarna Dhara waterfall. We skipped other places as it began raining again at around 17:30. We went back, dried up and came back to our guide's place at around 19:00 for some camp fire + bamboo chicken, while he was telling us about his part in familiarizing the dish.

Bamboo Chicken

The Bamboo Chicken

According to him there are only 3 real ingredients for this dish - Turmeric, chopped small onions and ground green chillies (while people unfamiliar with this add different masala to make it spicy). The salt would come from the bamboo. The marinaded chicken is loaded in the bamboo pipes and sealed on both ends with leaves that are used to make plates. The pipes are then dropped in the fire and there are specified times when these pipes should be inverted - so the salt water can drain or it would spoil the chicken. These pipes can retain the heat for upto 5 hours after being taken out from the fire.

After all the details of bamboo chicken having been told to us by our guide and chef, you can imagine what an delectable dinner we would've had. We had planned for a trek at Vijjuluru, a neighbouring village (though we couldn't see any houses at all!) and so we had to report at the guide's home at 7:00 next morning.

Day 2

Vijjuluru

We are not hard core trekkers but we love traverse through all sorts of wilderness. To our delight the forest was dense (you should see it yourself) yet the trekking trail was almost flat with no deep ups and downs but you have to cross through streams. Our guide said if there were heavy rains, each crossing of stream will be a daunting task. But we were lucky the water level was low so we could just walk through. We crossed through many streams and halted in a very beautiful falls. Our guide was sweet enough and made arrangements to bring our breakfast to this place itself. Finishing our breakfast we cut through the forest hoping to sight some wildlife (Deep inside we don't want to spot a cat anywhere in our proximity). After about 2 km of trek our guide sensed some elephant herd had crossed the place recently and he did not wanted to compromise on our security. We accepted and decided to return back. On the way back we had a good dip the short waterfall and started back for lunch. We spent the rest of the evening roaming around a coffee plantation.

Trekking at Vijilluru

Crossing the Streams

The Waterfalls

Day 3

The Archery practice 

On the day of our return we decided to visit the estate of our guide. We drive down a lonely road, then walked across another lush green forest trail and reached beautiful farm land with a huge tree in the middle. We had our return tickets booked from Rajmundhri at night so we don't want to waste whole afternoon in Rajmundhri. A toss of coin decided our detour to Kakinada and reached the beach during the evening. The kakinada beach was close to the port so we could spot some ships but the beach was very untidy. We drove back to rajmundhri to catch our trains to our homes.      

Kakinada Beach  (HDR) 

Must Do:

• Stay in the Vanavihari (The only government provided guesthouse in Maredumili)
• Eat Bamboo Chicken
• Trek through Vijjuluru