PRISTINE BEAUTY - ELAVEEZHAPOONCHIRA

Holidays are hard to come by and when I get some of these god-sent holidays, the first thing that comes uninhibited into the mind is – Travel. This time I decided or rather, we decided – my friends too are travel crazy – that the visit should be to Ilaveezhapoonchira. This word in Malayalam refers to a mythical pond which is blessed through out the year by flower showers, minus the leaves from the surrounding trees, where Panchali – a princess in the Hindu mythology used to bathe.

It was raining a drizzle, as we negotiated the steep, climbing and pothole filled road after taking a right turn from Kanjar – a sleepy little village. It needed the listening skills of a Submarine sonar operator to identify the phut – phut noises made by the diesel engines of the three wheeled contraptions – popularly called the auto rickshaw, which you will find right in front of your windshield if you are not too careful. It was half an hour before the vulcanized roads came to an end and you climbed into a four wheel jeep, which jumped from one stone to another and tilted dangerously from port to starboard. You had to constantly remind yourself that you were in a jeep rather than on a rusty icebreaker on an expedition to the Artic. Another half an hour of bone wrenching ride and we reached the top station where the District Tourist Promotion Council has a guest house that neither has power nor a telephone connection.

You can hardly see a meter in front of you in the dense fog, and we had our plans laid out for in the morning when we had uninterrupted views of sun rise and the rolling plains slanting out to the Arabian Sea to the far west.

This is one of the most unexplored hill stations in Kerala. At a height of 3200 feet you are sure to be breath taken by the panorama that unfolds itself from the dense curtain of fog, and the ethereal feeling that the fog brings into the frame. This place, many will argue, can be changed into a prime tourist destination, but an honest and humble opinion will be to let Ilaveezhapoonchira to live at its own pace, where you can still walk around without seeing plastic water bottles, carry bags and other litter that’s so commonly associated with any tourist place in India.

Take a short trip; even a single day will be more than enough, to this place where one can enjoy the nature at its pristine best.