Trekking to Agasthyakoodam – day one. [repost]

(A view of the mystic mountain with a large number of unique flora and fauna & the mysterious pygmy elephants!)

Agastyakoodam aka Agastyarkoodam – is a majestic peak with its lores, herbs and wonders of mother nature which makes us understand how silly we humans are. Situated at the southern tip of Indian subcontinent, the area claims to have the cleanest air (in the world) attracting certain wealthy wealthy venture capitalist settled there.

This write up is a repost of my 2 post seris from freebird.in & I will beposting the 3rd post on steemit. Due to many reasons, the 3rd and final post of the series was never done in last 8 years. Part of the reason is that I want to keep the region untouched and unspoiled as it is today. Only 3600 people are given permission to visit the pristine forest in an year.

On 27th January 2010 I got a call from a friend asking are you ready for the trip ? Oh, I had completely forgotten about the whole thing and had a most productive day ahead with numerous calls and emails and finally packed up and reached the Cochin KSRTC bus stand by midnight. Had a packet of biscuit and cashew nuts as dinner and me and Rejish started our 5 hour bus journey to Trivandrum from where have to start by 6 AM. Surprisingly the bus managed to reach the destination in less than 5 hours and we could sleep for another 1 hour at friend’s place. Finally we managed to start at 7 AM and reached Banacaud by 9:30 AM. Completed the formalities with the forest officials, packed our lunch and yes we are ready for 3 day wanderlust.

EDC is Eco Devlopment Committee which is an iniative of the forest department and local communities which are often tribal communites.

The area is kept clean and well preserved by the forest department and the EDC – In a land where government departments functioning the way it is supposed to be is quite unheard of, this is something we must appreciate. The officials were friendly and I could drag them to a small talk about my sleeping bag which is quite small compared to the ones they use.

Athirumala in the local language means the mountain at the border.

As per our plan the journey ends at Athirumala which is 17 kms from the base camp at Bonacud. And most of it is through dense forest and atleast 5 kms of the path is difficult terrain. And with a bag weighing too much with equipments it was not fun. From the camp at Athirumala its 6 kms to the Agastyakoodam peak. And we plan to climb the peak on the second day. I must say that splitting the journey to 3 days was an excellent idea as we got ample time to enjoy the wilderness.

(en-route Agastyakoodam)

(friend with his make shift walking stick)

This part of western ghats is called the “abode of biodiversity”. The green virgin forest filled with herbal plants gives one the impression that we are in a huge herbal garden. The Agastyakoodam is related with Buddhism and to the wise man Agastya who formulated grammar to Tamil and he is believed to be an Ayurvedic expert too.

Peculiar Trees

The area has lots of trees which looks different from other parts of Kerala. The cauliflorous tree – ie tree with flowers on its trunk - was the most unique one.

( cauliflorous tree – closeup )

Extremly strong winds are another peculiarity of the area. Here we can see the grass dancing in the wind. But this is nothing compared to the wind at the peak !

The seven member gang :

The view from where we had lunch

The difficult part of the trek starts at a place called Attayar.

(Camp at Attayar The board that says Athirumala was kept here and in one of the next photos we can see it being carried to the final camp.)

The difficult terrain was compensated by the breath taking landscape & chance encounter with a colourful snake, lots birds etc.

** the Athirumala board which traveled with us 🙂 **

landscape between attayar and athirumala – one can even see the historic dust on my lens. Well, I am going to clean every piece of equipment this time. All has years of dust on them and water inside. Yea, my D80 still works fine with all the water and dust.

a variety of Thulasi found in the area. This is just a sample from the mysterious collection of herbs starting from Arogyapacha, Vathamparathi etc

The above photo is taken from an area of where the forest is thick and dark. We can find small holes in the rocks along the path which was used to grind herbs. The area also has peculiar stones which looks like remains of some ancient life forms.

Passerby has left turmeric powder on it and it turned yellow now.

The final camp at the bottom of the peak follows this dense forest area and we got the majestic view of the peak from here.

We reached the final camp around 4 PM. We were tired but not really exhausted because we were walking at an average speed. Soon after tea and a leisurely bath at the nearby stream we came back and settled at the camp. And we were all set for the climb early morning next day. And the destination was a 1886 meter, heritage mountain with its lush green herbal garden and myths.

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To be continued. The travelogue is originally posted here : https://freebird.in/trekking-to-agastyakoodam-day-one/