Monday, January 21, 2008

Exploring Amirdhi!

12th Jan, A very special day for me....:)

To speak about this Amirdhi, Its a place every Vellorian must have visited atleast once for the sake of outsiders atleast, who would ask about it for sure at some point. and yes i was asked by my friend once and i promised him that i wil take him soon.
(are u there dinesh? :D)

So it was my personal interest too as i dint visit it in the 20 long years(my vellore life) which is just abt 30 kms from my home. have been told it has a few animals. nothing more i remember. also the other thing i had was the ride for 30kms and that was actually enough for me even if this amirdhi wouldnt show me anything.
so we all started almost on time as surprisingly our peter too was ready on time, a pleasant shock indeed.

it wasnt much work for the sun. the climate took care of us. after some 10 kms, it was the single road which took us for long. i actually calculated a lesser duration with just the count of kms but the road made me wrong. Peter and sara had some clue already about the route, we managed to get help from strangers to reach the place amidst the beauty all the way to the left and right of the single road.
almost when we were near amirdhi, the road was split by a small river and we had to walk our 2 wheelers with us. that actually gave us a clue which none of us picked!!! :)

ofcourse i started capturing images long back.
into almost a dense forest, we bought snacks but no tea shop :(, the gate was there.
we paid for the tickets and were instructed to return by 4.30. it was already 3.30 after the one hr interesting ride.
getting inside we again could get some view of the same river but nothing else disturbed my eyes and saravanan inquired me abt the falls there. i had no idea on that. Peter took us inside a gate where we cud find a small zoo, no way we could feel any maintenance. peter dint stop. asked us too to walk fast as it would take long to reach the falls. oh! there is a falls and even direction board was there which i recognized only now.
after a ten minutes of walk with the dense forest to your left and right, a valley view too, hearing the chill sound of the falls in the way, we did reach the falls.
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i dint imagine such a shocking surprise waiting for me. none of us had a second thought in getting into to the water though we dint have any gadgets, not even a towel.
water wasnt threatening and not even deep enough for a perfect swim but it was all fun fun and fun after that for an hr. we started from there finishing with a final jump from the rocks by me and Lak.
hey pls note i can swim :)


Back to the zoo, we checked all the animals,birds.... like porcupine, wolf, crocodile, pea cock, vulture, eagle, python, monkeys, deer, wild cat, rabbit, ofcourse parrot ;) .... there. we were suddenly rounded of by a gang of monkeys for the snacks in our hands. peter/lak did save us with a cane.believe me they are anytime treacherous when seen as a gang with same eatable in your hand
when we throwed the eatlable to a peacock there, was stunned to see a monkey taking it from soil and 'wiping'it perfectlybetter than any human would do before eating :)
its all over at amirdhi. and then i saw the board mentioned abt the plan of the"Amirdhi Mini Zoo" now i know its actually a mini zoo with a falls.

ask me now, am ready to take anyone there :)
Note: Zoo pics below Courtesy : Saravanan

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

a mini zoo near my home town...surprising..wonder how I missed this. I thought amirdhi is just a reserve forest. Now, I've got a tour plan for next week end. Thanks.
elu k