Experienced in Oct 2022
Neelakurinji is a beautiful purple coloured flower. What makes it unique is that each plant blooms only once in 12 years. This time, in early October, there was a massive blossom on the hills and meadows of Chikmagaluru. Later in a few weeks, there was one in Kerala - on the hills of Kallipara, near Munnar, Idukki. Being in Kerala, I thought its the best chance to view this beautiful blossom. So we decided to visit the place on a weekend.
We started early at around 430 am from Thrissur and drove towards Santhanpara village.
Views on our way:
As we reached closer to the place, almost at 2 km radius, there were flocks of tourists to see and experience the blossom. I felt that the village is not really equipped to welcome such a huge inrush of visitors. Although there were a few policemen deployed, that was not enough to manage the crowd.
We managed to park our car almost 2 km from the foothills of Kallipara. We then walked towards the starting point to trek uphill. Being a day off, there were tens of thousands of tourists to visit the blossom that day.
We trekked up the unpaved road, which was also slippery due to usual afternoon showers. It was a bright sunny morning and weather was quite pleasant for the trek. After a 2 km trek up and we reached the hillside where the purple blossom of Neelakurinji can be seen. The plains of neighbouring Tamil Nadu can be from the top of the hills.
It was a delight to see the little flower blooming all around the hill. I felt that this purple flower is indeed magical as it drew attention of tons of people from all around flocking in to get a glimpse of it.
Although it was treat to my eyes and mind to witness this rare aesthetics of nature, there were indeed some awful scenes that broke my heart!
People plucking flowers and littering the entire area!! - We say that Kerala is the most literate state in India. We cannot just be learning academic lessons and scoring in exams, one has to be also mentally literate. We should know what is right and what is not; and more importantly, what is wrong and should not be done... It is a shame that lots of people who have come to visit this place have plucked flowers and adorned it on their hair to click selfies!!! Isn't it common sense that we shouldn't pluck flowers? Also, hundreds of plastic bottles, plastic covers, wrappers of snacks and chocolates all dumped everywhere on the hill! How pity, I wish our people are 'taught' to maintain our surroundings neat and clean and avoid littering in public places! I felt absolutely 'proud' :( Shame on us!!! We still are damn so ignorant in preserving the beauty that nature has blessed us with. We don't deserve this and I felt that God's own country has some real devilish residents who absolutely do not care for nature, fellow beings or anything in life! Again, its an absolute shame on all of us.
It was raining so heavily after we trekked down and started our way back home. The Cheeyapara waterfalls showed its ferocious aggression in the heavy rain. The calm waterfall that we saw on our way in the morning turned out to be a violent tsunami like impact by evening due to heavy rain.
Calm Morning View:
Aggressive Evening Mode:
Our moments of Neelakurinji visit:
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