Day 1: It took us about 10 hours to reach Top Slip, but it was well worth the long journey.

A beau­ti­ful and ver­dant place, Top Slip is basi­cally the place you need to head to if you want to explore the Anna­malai for­est range and Indira Gandhi wildlife sanc­tu­ary. It is about 40 kms from the town of Pol­lachi (which is another 40 kms from Coimbatore).

Old jun­gle say­ing: Take good binoc­u­lars. You can’t trust only your eyes in the forest.

The name Top Slip was given by the British Raj, when in those times, har­vested tim­ber used to be slipped down a nar­row canal to the plains. The sanc­tu­ary is a birder’s par­adise. And we missed hav­ing an expe­ri­enced birder with us as there were so many we could not iden­tify or even see for that mat­ter. The thick foliage made it all the more harder. Some­times, we would just stand at a spot and lis­ten to more than half a dozen bird calls from dif­fer­ent parts of the forest.

The jour­ney is rel­a­tively pleas­ant and except for one stretch, the roads are not too bad either. Besides, Tamil Nadu def­i­nitely seems to have bet­ter roads than our very own Kar­nataka. The route we took was Ban­ga­lore : Salem : Coim­bat­ore : Pol­lachi : Top Slip. It’s a rel­a­tively low key des­ti­na­tion and thank­fully so. Except for some buses with vis­i­tors who would appear and then promptly dis­ap­pear again, it wasn’t too crowded.

Old jun­gle say­ing: Take a good guide, prefer­ably one called Baby!

For for­est treks, you need to be accom­pa­nied by a guide. We got hold of a good guide thanks to Shankar who had been there before. He went by the name Baby. When I asked him his full name he replied, ‘D Baby’. And he was really ‘the’ Baby who knew the for­est like the back of his hand! He took us on three for­est treks (all off the beaten track) — one in the evening, one in the after­noon and one in the early morning.

Old jun­gle say­ing: Don’t snore at night if you don’t want to scare away all the animals

On the first night Baby led us to the Ambuli watch­tower which affored a beau­ti­ful 360 degree view of the for­est. He stayed with us for the night and said all of us snored so much that it was no won­der that even the wild bisons, which he had spot­ted that evening, were scared off!

Besides walk­ing around, we also landed up eat­ing a lot! The can­teen in Top Slip is not worth men­tion­ing but thank­fully Baby helped us find another cook at a nearby guest house called Ambuli, who pre­pared a few meals for us.

The first night we stayed in the watch­tower in the for­est, Baby picked up our din­ner from the Ambuli guest house and got it back for us. All of us made our­selves com­fort­able on the top of the watch­tower. After watch­ing a glo­ri­ous sun­set, we had a deli­cious meal of cha­p­at­tis, omlettes and veg korma. It’s amaz­ing what fresh air does to one’s appetite (and not that I’ve ever needed any encour­age­ment when it comes to food!).

Day 2: The night passed rather unevent­fully. The high­light was Baby’s com­plaint that he was kicked twice in the night and we found the cul­prit was none other than our six footer : Sathish VJ.

Old jun­gle say­ing: exer­cise daily if you don’t want to be out of breath when escap­ing a bear chas­ing you!

The next morn­ing we were up early to watch the sun­rise (par­tially cov­ered by a hill) and sight wildlife. We man­aged to catch sight of a few birds includ­ing the Mal­abar horn­bill and the Indian Treepie and Baby spot­ted a Mal­abar squir­rel for us. I spent some time walk­ing around the area and look­ing at birds and spot­ted the minivet, bee eaters, swal­lows, para­keets and bar­bets do their early morn­ing dance.

Dur­ing all the walks I also realised why it’s impor­tant to exer­cise daily! Espe­cially, going up sloped, which left me pretty breath­less… Baby, for some rea­son would keep com­ing up to me and telling me, “7 more kilo­me­tres, 3 uphill!” in a rather threat­en­ing tone. I am not sure what thrill he got out of the whole exercise.

Some­where along the way we spot­ted fresh excre­ment of a pack of wild dogs and Baby sur­mised that they had killed a sam­bar in the morn­ing. It’s good we just missed them. After about 2 hours, we made our way back to Top Slip again to get some rest and more impor­tantly — breakfast!

After another after­noon trek, we headed off to the ele­phant camp at Kozhika­muthi around half an hour away by vehi­cle. Pri­vate vehi­cles are not allowed so we had to go by the rather noisy offi­cial van. Unfor­tu­nately, it had become dark by then. There was a cute baby ele­phant pranc­ing around. He would advance mis­chie­vously towards vis­i­tors and then coyly walk back when his mas­ter shouted a rep­ri­mand, just like a kid!

Day 3: On the third day, we headed for an early morn­ing trek at around 6.30 am : Shankar play­ing big daddy and mak­ing sure every­one was up on time and Baby reach­ing on the dot.

He led us into the for­est again and about an hour later we reached a beau­ti­ful val­ley. Lovely wild flow­ers and thick shrubs dot­ted our path as we made our way down. Another hour later, we were back at Ambuli guest house where we had a fill­ing break­fast, thanks again to the cook there.

After break­fast, we bun­dled back into our vehi­cle and began our 10 hour jour­ney back home to Bangalore.

Use­ful Infor­ma­tion:
Jour­ney: Ban­ga­lore — Top Slip is 10 hours one way with a few breaks. You can also take the bus to Coim­bat­ore and another one to Pol­lachi.
Acco: Min­i­mum fuss accom­mo­da­tion includ­ing dor­mi­to­ries. Has to be booked well in advance through the office of the Wildlife War­den, Pol­lachi, Tamil Nadu. You can stay at the Ambuli guest house, but it might need some spe­cial request.
Treks: You can take a safari or trek inside the for­est. You need per­mis­sions and also a guide along with you.
Sights around: The Ele­phant Farm and Parambiku­lam Dam.
Tips: Do take a pair of binoc­u­lars. It will be of great help!

Top Slip Photo Album