A day of tranquil

Reading a blog on Panchapalli & Bettumugilalam followed by a discussion with my friend, made us want to travel and see both the places. Decided to start on a Saturday morning by 6 a.m. We were fashionably late in starting  and decided to take the Hosur Road - Attilbele.

A huge banyan tree on the road to DenkaniKottai, lured us for a stop by 8.30 a.m. Its time for breakfast and what an audience we had. Domestic and Jungle crows were all around hoping for a bite, and my friend was busy in identifying the birds on the tree and their calls. The one I remember him mentioning here clearly was spotting a Hornbill.

From there the trip to Denkanikottai was uneventful, though we were a bit worried looking at all the dry water bodies on the way. At Denkanikottai, we stopped asked for the directions, as the trust on the directions in our hand was a bit low. We saw a one way board on the road we were supposed to take, instead of asking, we followed our heart and happily went on a 20K trip in a different direction. There was hardly any traffic road and we did not cross 30Km speed. We spotted a whole series of birds on the way, The birds, I remember from this stretch are red whiskered bulbul, red vented bulbul, black shouldered eagle, Blue Jay, white breasted kingfisher, pipit, pond heron apart from the egret family. It took a driving of about 20Km, before realisation dawned that we were on a wrong course. Looking sheepish, we decided to take the same path by which we came and ended up in Denkankottai. Checking with a couple of people made us realise that the road, where we saw the one-way board, is a two way road.

So we start on the road, no further than 200 mts we find the arch mentioned by every one, and take a left. Down 10km on the road, we see a huge tree with small white flowers, and lots of black & Blue shapes on them. When the car came close the blues and blacks turned into an army of butterflies, which started hovering around the tree. Needless to stay, that the car was parked aside, and I got enchanted by the butterflies.  It looked something straight out of a Disney movie. Got to know that what we are seeing are blue tiger and common crow. After watching the butterflies for long, we continued on our way to Panchapalli. Though we were expecting less water, what finally was there was an extremely dried up hardly a couple of pails of water. Considering there was nothing much we could do there, we decided to continue on the road, till we reach the mountains visible in the horizon.

Bettumugilalam is what was the next destination. The drive was lovely through a forest, and a huge man made lake on the Elephant migration path was the only place worth  stopping and watching. A place according to me is one where one can sit with a book and spend a whole day, or just watch the kingfishers. An extremely tranquil place, which is being invaded big way.  The journey to Bettamugilalam is where the comment . the journey is worth the time but not the destination is extremely apt.