The next day we had the morning to ourselves, we took a stroll to the nearby village- this is where the cook in our retreat lived. Spent sometime with a couple of stray pups there and then walked back till the forest check post nearby in the hope of catching some mobile cellular connectivity. No such luck though. Effectively there was no way our friends could reach us..so we just had to wait in the old fashioned way and hope to see them as they drive up to the retreat. By around 3 Pm it started to drizzle again and thats when we saw the familiar Black Bolero drive up and sure enough Shyam and Hamsa had reached!! A noisy welcome and some hurried chatter followed :) After which we asked the cook to fry us some more goodies with the ginger tea. Sure enough we had piping hot bread pakoras served up..made extra yumm by a secret ingredient he added- some yoghurt!! it added a slight tang to the pakoras and we made note to try it next time we were making bread pakoras at home!! :) Shyam is an avid photographer too...so needless to say the remainder of the day was spent discussing what all AJ had already sighted and what else we could hope to see the next day!! By the time our conversations ended it was already 10 PM and we decided to retire 'early' in the hope of heading out into the forest for some wildlife sighting the next day :)
The last day in Valparai we woke up at 6:30 and headed to the forest checkpost at 7AM, we drove thru some 12 KMS but the very preggy me couldn't take any more driving thru the narrow winding roads, so we didn't go all the way to the famed athirampally falls and instead headed back midway. We had very dismal luck with wildlife sightings and only saw some more lion tailed macaques, some malabar giant squirrels and a forest lizard that very obliging posed for our wildlife photographers!!
We spent the afternoon back in the retreat and ended up catching up on more conversations as always. The next day it was time to leave and we headed to Coimbatore with Shyam and Hamsa who dropped us at the station in time for our Shatabdhi back to Chennai. They headed to Bangalore from there.. alas the trip to this unseen haven had come to an end!! We surely must make another trip there sometime! :)
The last day in Valparai we woke up at 6:30 and headed to the forest checkpost at 7AM, we drove thru some 12 KMS but the very preggy me couldn't take any more driving thru the narrow winding roads, so we didn't go all the way to the famed athirampally falls and instead headed back midway. We had very dismal luck with wildlife sightings and only saw some more lion tailed macaques, some malabar giant squirrels and a forest lizard that very obliging posed for our wildlife photographers!!
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