City dwellers, in search of peace and
solitude, keep certain places, closer to nature, identified, where they frequent
during the week ends. While at Coimbatore, we were also exploring such avenues
when we learnt about a water fall close by at a distance of about 30 kms. It is
fondly called "Kovai Kurtalam" because it is said to resemble the famous Kurtalam
falls of Tamilnadu, though a little smaller. Coimbatore is referred to as "Kovai" in the vernacular parlance. The mountain stream culminating into a fall is
under the foot hills of the western ghat mountain ranges, surrounded by rain
forests. Since we had a full day to invest, we thought of visiting a place known
as Isha Foundations Dhyana Linga, more or less on the same route. This
centre is claimed to be offering spiritual inner realisation. They have created
a spherical structure with congenial atmosphere for meditation. However our
focus was neither spirituality nor meditation but were simply drawn there out of
our curiosity for some kind of appreciation of the activities thereat. The
locale was quite cherish able. After having our lunch in their canteen, we drove
out.
Now we were heading towards the "Kovai
Kurtalam" water falls. There was an easy and direct approach but we preferred to
reach there driving through the countryside, with winding roads, connecting
obscure villages. One reason for this was availability of ample time and our own
inner desire to understand the hinterland. On our way there were paddy fields
becoming ready to be harvested followed by a plantation of Curry Leavs (Sweet
Neem), Turmeric, Banana plantations, Areca nut Plantations and so on. It was
really enjoyable to have a real feel of these crops growing in that area. We
stopped at some places to capture the landscape in our cameras.
While passing through the outskirts
of a village we could find an open shrine dedicated to the serpent Gods who are
believed to protect the village from epidemics etc. This is a kind of animal
worship (zoolatry)/nature worship prevalent in the pre modern societies all over
the world. This still continues notwithstanding the advent of all ‘isms.
There was a small town, the end of
the habitational area, on the banks of a rivulet formed possibly by the same
waterfall we were heading for. We had to cross a bridge beyond which lied the
forest area with their check post and barricades. We had to buy our entry
passes.
The journey continued through the forest area with paddy fields in
between and the mountains coming closer to us. Shortly we were inside the
thickly forested zone and we found that people were required to park their
vehicles in an opening created for the purpose.There were separate parking areas
for four wheelers and two wheelers. Two wheelers were in much larger
numbers.
From this point onwards we were
required to walk down the distance of about 2 kilometres through the jungle
path. Interestingly the forest department people have created a suspension
bridge with the support of the tall trees for quite a good distance. We thought
of using it while returning. The walk also provided some beautiful sceneries of
mountains and water gushing down the hills. The wild growth on the pathway was
also home to several insects. Some colourful spiders attracted our attention and
we could not resist from approaching them for a closer view.
At the end of the pathway, to our
left was the waters from the mountains making its way through the rocky surface
and to cross over it we were to pass through a narrow bridge. Immediately
thereafter there were stairs climbing deep down. We went up to a distance and
had a glimpse of what could be expected at the end. The water has been made to
fall down taking a broader shape for which some man made constructions were
visible. We thought not to venture deep down fearing that we would need to exert
a lot to come up.
Instead we settled before the bridge and enjoyed looking at
families, boys and girls who had made space for themselves, where ever they
found it convenient.There were some monkeys too to keep company with.
Around 5.00 PM we thought of
returning when my nephew joined us after his explorations. Some of the
photographs here are his contributions. While walking down the jungle path we saw a sort of melee at a distance, for some one had thrown a pebble at a
beehive and the bees in turn attacked a group. They ran for their lives while we
stayed back for about 15 minutes. When the bees seemed to be at peace we
continued and reached the parking place. We drove out and reached Coimbatore
after visiting an Emu farm en route.