Mudumalai is a quiet and peaceful place nestled in the Nilgiri range of mountains, far away from the hustle-bustle of the city life.
The best way, rather the only way to reach there is by Road. Take the newly done Mysore highway all the way past Mysore until Gundlupet via Nanjangud. The roads are good till you reach Gundlupet. Once you pass Gundlupet and get off the State highway, you hit the most worst road that one could ever come across and this road that passes through the Bandipur-Mudumalai sanctuary is supposedly a National Highway,but expect the unexpected.
After a bumpy and jumpy ride of about 30 odd kms, the sanctuary of Bandipur comes into sight.
Bandipur and Mudumalai are divided by the Moyar river gorge. Bandipur falls in Karnataka while Mudumalai is in Tamil Nadu. From Bandipur, you need to go further for about 30-40 minutes till you reach the village-town of Masinagudi.
The road (8 km stretch) get very narrow from Masinagudi. There are numerous resorts that have their boards with directions once you cross Masinagudi.
Jungle retreat is where we camped. Its one of the resorts that is in the interior and close to the forest area.Approach roads to this place is pretty bad, but the resort is a good one.
The rooms/cottages are spread over a wide area and it involves a lot of walking around to get around within the resort. There are no telephones to call for room service. Nor do the mobile’s network reach . In all, its a totally isolated experience.
If you want to cool your heels off, this is an ideal place. Also one could go out on guided tour (safari) inside the sanctuary. Not much possibility of spotting a tiger, but you can do this if u need that been-there-done-that list.
Make sure that you have accommodations before you set out to this place.
Ciao mate,
This is one of the early stories at Ghumakkar, Apr 2007.
It didn’t see many readers back then, so reposting. :-)