We got to know about the night trek
by our senior colleague. So had planned to accommodate the night
jungle walk. When we reached Jungle booking office, in Kumli, we got to know
that there is huge discrimination for Indian tourists vs foreigners, who
usually tip heavily to the guards and guides. Though we missed morning 7 O’clock
‘green walk’ we did book for the night one, at 10 pm. We started acquainting with
forest in our afternoon jungle trek, which is a 6 km walk in the woods,
accompanied by a guard, at 11 am. He showed us variety of birds, several
animals. He took us to the place where elephants were socialising. We stayed
there, near elephants for nearly 20 min. By then we had fair idea of Periyar forest
canopy, its ground and tree density.
At sharp 10 in the night, we met Kuttiyan,
our forest guide and guard Maani. To our surprise, we had another couple as ‘trek-mates’.
We four trekkers were taken into woods by them. Kuttiyan had a powerful focusing
torch, a rifle, and a wireless walky-talky. Kuttiyan had a trained eye to spot
animals. His hawk eyes- showed as many spotted dears, samba dears, bisons, barking dears, mouse dear, wild pigs, porcupines,
mongoos, bats and many more animals in pitch darkness. He used to
torch at the animals and their eyes glowed, making their presence visible to
us.
Video recording using samsung note is given below. Concentrate on sound - forest at night.
They used to search for the animals near water bodies. He showed us flying ant nest. We heard sounds of many birds, Particularly owl cry.
Details of the night trek -
timings 6pm, 10 pm, 1 am.
cost - 750 per person.
distance ~ 5-6 km.
