About Wayanad, My Native District

Wayanad, the land of mountains and paddy fields blessed with natural wonders is one of the unexplored places of beauty. Wayanad district is situated in Northern Kerala, where Deccan plateau begins. Some believes that the name 'Wayanad' probably originated from two Malayalam words "Wayal" which means paddy field and "Nadu" which means land. So Wayanad means the land of paddy fields, in fact there are lot of paddy fields in Wayanad in between the hills and mountains. Geographically the western part of Wayanad touches the Western-ghats and the other parts is the edge of Deccan plateau. State boundary of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil-Nadu meets in Muthanga, a place covered with dense forest and wild animals; the Eastern border if Wayanad.

Wayanad can be reached from the districts Kozhikode, Kannur, Malappuram, Mysore and Ooty. The distance to Wayanad from these places is about 100kms. Nearest airport is Karippur. No railway lines touches Wayanad. So industrial development has not yet happened in Wayanad, which in turn helped in protecting her Natural beauty. People outside the state, especially from the IT capital Bangalore and other places like Chennai select Wayanad as the place for a two or three day tour and trekking.

People from other districts of Kerala consider Wayanad as an undeveloped place where Tribal people leads an ancient and undeveloped form of life. But I have seen a lot values among the people who belongs to various tribes whom are unique by their way of life and skills they possess. The tribal people who live in small communities under a head (His title is “Moopan”.) have their own rules, for maintaining peace and leading an un-interrupted social life. Each of these tribal communities does have their own language, but lacks written form. Some of these languages do have a close resemblance with Kannada, the language of Karnataka. Regardless of the perception of others, they have strong awareness of the rest of the world, strong views on politics, and other happenings around world. But people outside their community don’t know anything about them and they don’t interfere much with the rest of the world, so their uniqueness is preserved.

Chances of tourism in Wayanad are a lot. The tea estates surrounded by mountains with rich greeneries and covered by clouds makes Wayanad a heavenly place. Chembra peak is one of the main attractions of tourists. Chembra peak, surrounded by tea estates have a small lake at the top. Some of the places worth for visiting are Pookot Lake near Vythiri, the curved road through mountains which reaches Kozhikode, Kuruvadweep; an island formed by the a river spreading into two and joining together forming a land of 900 acres of rich vegetation, Muthanga; a wild life sanctuary where we can see a variety of animals like elephant, bison, deer, pea-cock, wild boar and many other. Edakkal cave is an ideal place for trekking and site seeing. The ancient wall paintings inside the caves are wonderful. Soochippara and Meenmutti waterfalls and the tea estates near these locations make the place unique.

A lot of other places of Wayanad still remain unexplored. The climate of Wayanad adds to the beauty. The temperature remains always below 30 degree, so life is easy. The best place for me to live is always Wayanad. The more places I visited the more I loved Wayanad, making me to think of going back to Wayanad again and again. The most beautiful days in my life or those while I lived in Wayanad.