23-24 May 2011 - Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary and Tiger Reserve, Kerala

On Monday, 23 May, Gopal and I, Sara, and our driver Prabhu left Coonoor and drove toward the Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary and Tiger Reserve in Kerala.  We arrived in the evening, and the park was not allowing entrance, so we went back down the road a very short distance from the park gate to a farm stay named 'The Dense.'

Here's a shot of the evening sky from The Dense.

Our room, with Gopal on the laptop on the patio.

Gopal and I had the bed; Sara slept on the floor; Prabhu chose to sleep in the car.

This little building was the other room available.

This is the dining room.

The owner of The Dense, Mr. Srinivas, stopped by to see if we needed anything.

Ready to eat dinner.

This little house gecko was on the ceiling of the dining room.  We had another on the ceiling of the patio.  They make a  clicking noise and are very cute.  

The dinner they provided was very good.  Here's Sara serving herself.

We would have loved to spend another night at The Dense, but they were booked.  We were fortunate  to get the room that night.  We liked it very much and highly recommend it.

We arrived at the front gate of the Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary and Tiger Reserve at 6:30am Tuesday, the 24th.  We drove in about 6 kms to the entrance gate of the reserve.

Annaimalai is another name for the reserve.

The state line was right where the entrance gate was for the reserve.

So, Parambikulam is yet another name for this reserve.

We saw many Indian Peafowl

Our mini-bus tour

A family of spotted deer

This area is full of teak forest

This shows teak forest, and the dark things in the back there are bison.

This is a dam in the reserve.

And this is Shanmugam, our bus guide.  He was a really nice young guy.

Bear in mind that the weather was in the 90s, we were always thirsty, and the sun was hotter than blazes.  After this reserve, we hit the road toward Munar to see a Kerala hill station.