An Excellent Trip to TopSlip

After coming back from a trip that was full of awesomeness, I was sure to write a post on it but it comes with a great delay. This trip also marked our 8 years of love,  happiness & togetherness. :) Yes! The travel happened to start on our wedding anniversary (Oct 24th, 2013). We wanted to choose a place closely as traveling with our infant baby Arnav to a longer distance was far from possible. And we have our animal lover Akil who should also be equally entertained. With this, our search narrowed down to 'Nearby place with animals'. After further thought, we found the ideal place to be 'Top Slip' forest. Pollachi was the closest town and Great Mount Resort (GMR), a great place to stay. Pollachi is about 60 kms from Coimbatore and TopSlip is about 35 kms from Pollachi. We started our travel in our very own DZire and with the help of Google Map, travel to Pollachi was easy though the resort was marked incorrectly. The ambiance of GMR was nice and so were the people.

In the night

The resort is built amidst 5 acres of coconut lagoon. Of course, Pollachi is known for it. They have a wide variety of food and for me, this was the ultimate. There were also lot of holiday activities for the kids.

View from our room

Elephant Safari

The next day, we started off to Top Slip. We hired a driver for our car because of the route and road. The road to Top Slip is so very bad and heard that its been like this for years. Elephant Safari and Elephant Feeding are the two things we can see here. Elephant Safari is available between 12 noon and 5 PM. For this safari, a small metal cot and a bed is tied on top of the elephants for us to sit. 5 adults are allowed in a trip. This number can be less also. Trip fare was Rs. 800. A little expensive but its worth for the enjoyment it gave Akil. The kumki elephant name on which we went is Venkatesu. Akil became a fan of this name for some time and was not ready to come out of it. We didn't expect to see any animals during this ride. They just took us through the safest route. 

There is specific timing to see elephant feeding but time varies day to day. On the day we went, it was at 6 PM. After the elephant ride, people usually go to Parambikulam which is a km away from Topslip. Parambikulam belongs to Kerala government and Topslip to TN government. There is a van safari arranged at Parambikulam forest as well and journey here is for 3 hours. I wasn't sure if I will be able to manage Arnav for 3 hours in a van and so we dropped our plan to Parambikulam. We waited and opted for van safari in Topslip. 

There is only one hotel at Topslip and this is run by TN government. We can't expect much here. There is also a shop that sells tea, honey, oil etc from the forest. This is also run by the government and tribes over there are the sales people. Government runs a school for the tribes. There is also a museum to be noted. There were loads of monkeys in the waiting area. Akil had biscuit packet in hand and here is a conversation between our driver and Akil.

Driver: Akil, hide the biscuit packet in your hand. Monkeys will take and eat it

Akil: No Driver Mama... Monkeys will eat only bananas and not biscuits 

Driver tried to take the biscuit from Akil's hand. Akil hid it from driver. Meanwhile, a monkey jumped from behind and plucked it from Akil.:-D

There is also a tribe who chases the monkeys with a stick to go away but sometimes its out of control. The tribe was an old man and he said that he has been doing this for more than 40 years in the same place. Doesn't that sound astonishing!!! Their life is so different.

The van safari started at 5:30 PM and we were all again ready to see elephants. Route to elephant feeding area by van is horrible. Van is not maintained well. Van driver was too harsh in driving. But it all vanished from mind when we saw huge herd of elephants.

Returned back to the resort by 7 PM and the next day, we spent fully at the resort. There were lot of things to recreate ourselves and one to specify is 'Vaidya Sutras', a spa within the resort. 

Overall, it was a great trip for the kids and a good break for us from the monotonous daily routine.