Day 4: 02/11/2010
Woke up early in the morning and got freshen up & went to 'Periyer Tiger Reserve' paid the entry fee and parked the vehicle in parking lot. Reach the ticket counter to found out that all tickets for morning boat ride is sold out, then thought of going for trekking, but for trekking you have to book ticket near Ambadi Junction Info Centre. As the next ride was at around 10 am we thought why to waste time and planned to leave Thekkady. While we were returning back an auto driver told us about Elephant camp near by where we can do elephant ride.
woke up early(6am) for boat ride at periyar lake...reached ticket counter by 6:30...all ticket sold out...what next????? then this guy came up n gave info what u can do in Thekkady...!
Then we headed to Elephant Camp. Our elephant was getting ready for ride, mahout was clean the elephant.
ready for ride!
We took the shortest ride available that was for half-an hour. It took us through the estate perimeter one round. Elephant have pool where they are cleaned everyday.
early in the morning mahout cleaning his elephant
After the elephant ride we went to take breakfast. Returned back to the home-stay and vacated the place and started towards Kanyakumari. The roads were in bad condition after the monsoon. After driving for around 30km we crossed the bad road and moved into good roads. Now we started descending and the weather was getting hotter. Oh we missed the chilled weather of the hills. By around 3 pm we reached Pathanamthitta almost covered 150km and stopped for lunch.
Most time in this part we had to ask people for road direction. Now the tea estate has been replaced by rubber plantation estate. Most of the hills are covered with rubber trees. Once we reached Adoor and entered on to MC road, it was 4 lane road, newly built and in superb condition...you can easily hit 100km. But driving on this road was monotonous, we were missing the ghat roads where you are more careful looking out for the next curve. Sun was setting down and we were still to reach Trivandrum. by 6:30pm we reached Trivandrum. We planned to halt at this place but as kanyakumari was 90km away instead thought of driving for another 3hrs and reach our destination.
The roads in Trivandrum were narrow, it took us almost 45mins catch the NH47 which will take us to Nagercoil. NH47 is one of the busiest road of south India, traffic density flowing in this road is too much to handle.
Taking rest after riding in the busiest NH47 road ...u can't take ur eyes away from this road....if u want to come out safe!!!
After lot of struggle with the traffic we came across the Tamilnadu side of NH47 where the traffic was less compered to that of Kerala side NH47. We reached Nagercoil by 9:30pm and stopped for dinner. Kanyakumari was just 18km away from us. As the fuel was low, we tank up the bull and headed for Kanyakumari. Our luck run out just 4km away from Kanyakumari when 3rd time the rear tyre went flat. It was almost 10pm and all the shops were closed, getting it repaired was out of question. Then came the TN police vehicle, asked what we were doing here 1000km away from Bangalore, we told them that we were on photography tour of south India. The police officer told us to park the vehicle somewhere and go to Kanyakumari. Luckily one guy from Karnataka came to our help when he saw vehicle no plate and asked us to park the bull in-front of his house. We parked the bull near his house and got one auto who dropped us at Kanyakumari. Got a decent lodge near the beach side. By that time it was almost 12am. We were too tired and hit the bed to catch up the sunrise next morning.
Route : Thekkady-Kottarakkara-Trivandrum-Nagercoil-Kanyakumari
Distance Covered : 370KM
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