Canopy Hill, Vattakanal | trekking,camping,kodaikanal trekking and camping
Canopy Hill Vattakanal
Vattakanal is a small village that is a few kilometres (6 kms) from Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, and is located in the southern tip of the Palani hills. The village is locally known as “vatta” which means circle. The trek to the Vattakanal village is one of the lesser - known treks in the Western Ghats It lies on the eastern coast of the Western Ghats.
Scenic Trek To Canopy Hill, Vattakanal :
Vattakanal is in inside the Kodaikanal Wildlife Sanctuary ,A word of advise; this trek should be done ONLY with an experienced or a local guide. As the trail passes through some dense foliage and chances of losing sight of the trail is fairly easy.
Day 1: Trek from Kodaikanal Wildlife Sanctuary to Vellagavi
If doing independently you can take a bus to Periyakulam or Theni From there you can take a bus or auto till the entrance of Kodaikanal Wildlife Sanctuary (or Kumbakkarai waterfall).
Start of the trek : Kumbakarrai waterfall is a major tourist attraction, right at the entrance
of the forestcross the waterfalls to enter the forest. The first hour will be for warming up to the place and
will be easy on the eyes with a couple of deeply hidden waterfalls.
After a welcome break, the trek begins to become taxing. Constantly steeping slopes combined with the thick jungles of the Western Ghats makes it a strenuous one. The trail was fairly flat initially with huge trees to give you shade at moments, offering clear views of the hills on the other side. But most of forest have shed their leaves, giving the entire landscape a fairly brownish-yellow color.
The view you will get when the forests rarely open up is majestic. Spotting wildlife is highly probable with Bison, wild goats, porcupines being the more common species. Forests with intermittent mist give it all a spooky touch and walking the trails feel like a true adventure.
After trekking for well over 10kms, we reach Vellagavi, a 50 house village with no road connecting it to the rest of the world. They have to either come down to Kumbakarai or go up to Vattakanal for selling the fruits and spices.Oranges, Butter Fruit, Papaya, Banana, Guava, Passion Fruit, Jack Fruit are some of the many varieties of fruits you can find here, which make the entire experience worth it all. Deep in the jungle, an aptly named campsite Into the wild is where you would set camp for the day.
DAY 2 :
Walk to Vattakanal to finish the trek.
continue with our 8 km of 2nd half of the
trek to Vattakanal. trek will be much more relaxed and easy then yesterdays.
the trek was under cool shade of the sky-scrapping Eucalyptus trees with an unforgiving winding path which is continuously
steep and equally spooky with the mist. After a
3 hour trek, the warmth of lemon tea in the cold weather of Vattakanal
concludes a satisfactory trek. The trek ends at Dolphin Nose in Vattakanal.
Dolphin's nose. It is a huge slab of stone, protruding
out, giving an impression of the nose of a Dolphin. You will also find a lot of
monkeys while walking till the forest entry point of Vattakanal. Be careful,
anything suspicious that you may hold to them will invite their attention.
Echo Point marks the end of the trek and your adventure, perhaps. Echo point offers some amazing landscape views, albeit one has to be extremely careful while posing for that one photo. One wrong step and you will fall down to thousands of feet.
The valley wakes up during the monsoon, and is a treat to your trekking senses.
How To Reach Canopy Hill, Vattakanal :
The closest town to the base camp ( Kumbakarai Waterfalls ) of the hike is Theni. The distance between Theni and kodaikanal is around 85 kms one way which takes around 2.5 hours drive.
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