A week­end at mag­i­cal Fringe Ford : a beau­ti­ful home­s­tay nes­tled amongst the hills in Wayanad. 

It’s one of those mag­i­cal places you go to and don’t want to come back. At least, I didn’t.

The road to Fringe Ford is a long and wind­ing one. Around 5 kms through cof­fee plan­ta­tions to your right and hills to the left. It goes on and on and you start peer­ing around every cor­ner to catch sight of your des­ti­na­tion. Except that it’s where you least expect it. Down below, between the clear­ing of the tall trees, you get a teas­ing glimpse of a cot­tage sit­ting pretty in the cen­tre, sur­rounded by green all around. 

This is Fringe Ford : “Get lost where no one’s gonna know. No Where to rush, but every­where to go. No stress, no traf­fic, no road.” Just per­fect.

Just you and beau­ti­ful lush for­est around you, the birds fly­ing around every­where and the occa­sional jun­gle call — are you in paradise? 

The name Fringe Ford was given by an Eng­lish­man who bought the land and built it into a plan­ta­tion. After that it changed hands a few times till it was bought by Ahmed, a nat­u­ral­ist, who let the land go back to the for­est. The 520 acre prop­erty shares its prop­erty with the wildlife sanc­tu­ar­ies of Wayanad and Thol­paty. It’s no won­der then that you take a few steps out of the prop­erty and you’re into the thick of the jun­gle already. 

The bun­ga­low is low roofed, with Man­ga­lore tiles and cosily done up. The rooms have huge win­dows that give you a great view of the scenery around. And even the bath­rooms have long win­dows : just in case there’s a wild cat pass­ing by that you don’t want to miss dur­ing your daily ablutions :-)

The food : I don’t even want to get started! Short of propos­ing to the 70ish year old chef, I could have done any­thing to stay there for­ever! Deli­cious cur­ries, biryani, ghee rice, chicken and the most exotic of them all : a local fern that is chopped into a most yummy sabji : I was in culi­nary par­adise! Every meal was looked for­ward to with great antic­i­pa­tion and I pos­si­bly ate about 3 times my usual capac­ity (which is already quite great :-)! 

We walked around quite a bit. Once, when we felt really guilty about bing­ing so much, we even went for a run down the wind­ing road. We went into the for­est, spot­ting birds, insects, wildlife and pos­si­ble leop­ard drop­pings. And at the end of the walk, the green foliage gave way to a gush­ing water­fall. We had to mar­vel at nature’s bril­liant design. You walk, walk, walk and then sud­denly, in the path — there’s a water­fall! Of course, it was hard to resist the cool waters gush­ing over the rocks and into the path. 

The colours of the for­est are vivid and beau­ti­ful and there’s so much to stop and gaze at that even a 5 km walk can take you a few hours. The way the sun lights up the leaves, the tiny but multi-hued insects on the for­est floor, the wild mush­rooms cel­e­brat­ing their exis­tence in the world and the trees tow­er­ing up into the sky. Every lit­tle thing elic­its won­der and awe — espe­cially here inside the for­est where you get a glimpse of the real raw beauty of nature.

There are many other treks : from the easy to the hard. If you’re not feel­ing lazy enough, the hosts will gladly take you on these walks.

A word of warn­ing: the folks at Fringe Ford spoil you ter­ri­bly. There’s always tea, nim­boo paani and other treats in between meals, as if they weren’t large enough. And then you can also lounge around in the beau­ti­ful court­yard, below the mango tree and watch the hills in the dis­tance (some­times you can see wild ani­mals climb­ing up and down the slopes), grab two winks or catch up on some reading. 

The only crea­tures I kept a lit­tle clear of were the ducks that seemed to be very pos­ses­sive about their ter­ri­tory and advanced rather dan­ger­ously when I ven­tured near. I scam­pered out of the way quickly and main­tained safe dis­tance thereafter.

I can see you already ask­ing for details, so here they are:
The near­est cities to Fringe Ford are Tha­lassery (60 km) and Can­nore (75 km) 

If you’re going by road, from Mysore, you head towards Gun­dalpet : Sul­tan Bath­ery : Meenan­gadi : Man­an­th­vadi : Talapoya to Fringe Ford. The drive time is around 6 hours from Bangalore.

Email :
santosh@getoffurass.com
bookings@fringeford.com

Do email San­tosh for more details / book­ings and you can also give him my reference. 

The tar­iff is Rs 2650 per per­son includes 1 break­fast, 1 lunch, 1 din­ner, tea and snacks.

The tar­iff includes pick-up from Talapoya (Mass nurs­ery). There are no extra charge for guides accom­pa­ny­ing on treks in the prop­erty. For sight see­ing trips out­side the prop­erty there are min­i­mum charges.

Web­site: Visit Fringe Ford

When to go: Except dur­ing the rainy sea­son. We went in Feb­ru­ary and the weather was great : clear blue skies, warm days and cool nights. And you can still go dur­ing the rains, but you won’t have much to do except eat and watch the rain : which in my book is not a bad option either! 

Album: Par­adise Found! Fringe Ford