Mudumalai Tiger Reserve

It’s in August, we planned to go out for a wildlife safari. The idea came to my mind when I and my cousins, along with my uncle had a brainstorming at the Shanghumugham beach Trivandrum. I am very fond of travel and never want to miss such occasions. If you love wildlife, you should never miss the Mudumalai Wildlife national park.

The Mudumalai Wildlife park is known for its flora and fauna. You can see wild elephant, gaur, deer and primates like the bonnet macaque and langurs inside the park. Predators include the tiger, leopard and the dhole - the Asiatic wild dog. The nearest town is Gudalur (16 km). Coimbatore is about 160 kms from the park

The planned route is as follows.

Trivandrum -> Cochin -> Malappuram -> Nilambur -> Gudallur -> Mudumalai -> Bandipur -> Gundalpet -> Nagarhole -> Wayanad -> Muthanga -> Calicut -> Trivandrum.

Duration: 3 days
Crew: 5 adults
Wagon: Hyundai Santro Xing

We started from Trivandrum on Friday Night at about 8.00 pm. There was heavy traffic due to weekend. We reached kollam at 9.30 pm. Had the Dinner from a hotel at karunagapally. There was a discussion among ourselves whether to drive at night or not. All the members were active and decided to drive at night. As time went, roads became clear and reached Cochin 1.00 AM. From there we took the route to nilambur (malappuram) and touched there at 6.30 AM.

Nilambur is a high range area and it’s the land of sandal forests. You can see tall sandal trees on both sides of the road emitting the soothing fragrance of sandal.

At about 9.00 am, we crossed the Tamil Nadu border at Gudallur. At Gudallur, a TN police official snatched 200 Rs from us for no reason and didn’t give any receipt for that as per IPC (Indian Police Corruption).

From there ,we drove towards masinagudi, since Mudumalai is enroute to masinagudi. On the way we saw the picturesque Nilgiri hills (OOTY) on the far side and the climate became very cool. The Mudumalai sanctuary is on the northwestern side of the Nilgiri Hills (Blue Mountains), in Nilgiri District, about 80 km north-west of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, on the state boundaries with Karnataka and Kerala in South India. The park was created in 1940 to become the first of its kind in southern India. The sanctuary is an extension of Bandipur National Park (874 km²), Waynad Wildlife Sanctuary (344 km²), Sigur and Singara reserve forests.

There were lot of Gray langurs and other local monkeys on either side of the road.

At the end we entered the Mudumalai National park area.

The road was surrounded by very thick forest. We can see elephant crossing zones marked on either side of the road. On the way, we spotted sambar deers, barking deers and peacocks. We were quite afraid due to the silence prevailed in the area other than the wild noises.

At the checkpost we were given warning about the elephant crossings. Couple of days back, a women and a 25 year old guy was thrashed to death by an elephant during day time.

At last we reached the Mudmalai National park premises at 1.00 pm. We joined the safari at 3.00 pm. There were lots of people from Bangalore. During the safari we spotted elephants, peacocks, deers, monkeys, wild pigs and of course the tiger claws.
We all prayed for a tiger view but didn’t get one.



At the evening, we moved to Bandipur National Park and had an adventurous night safari.

More on this on the next post about bandipur (night safari)