Wayanad Reviews

Food, sight-seeing and shopping
One must have Kerala parotta with a traditional kerala style curry. The restaurant at Hotel HaritaGiri is good. The best food is available at Vythri resorts. Wayanad provides a lot of options for sighseeing. There are water falls (Soochipura, Meenmutty etc.) and dams and Pookote lake. Edakkal caves are beautiful but involve some amount of trekking. For the religious there are temples too. Wayanad is known for the Kuruva tribe and there is an 950 acre island called Kuruva island which is worth a visit. Do not leave Wayanad without buying some of the local tea and honey and the various oils. If you are fond of handicrafts made out of coconut shells, they sell some cool stuff.

Activities & things to do
As I mentioned earlier one can choose spend their day visiting the various tourist spots or just lie down on a hammock in the middle of a jungle and enjoy the sounds of birds and water streams near you or do a combination of both. We did sightseeing one day and just enjoyed the jungle the other. If you are an avid trekker this place is ideal for you. There are a lot of options and trails for hiking. There is a place called viewpoint (Lakkidi) which is the gateway to Kozhikode (Calicut). Its basically where Wayanad ends and Calicut starts. It provides a fantastic view of the entire valley of Wayanad and apparently the jungles and mountains end here and its just 60 Kms to the sea.

Travel tips, How to reach, travel warnings etc.
From Bangalore its a 6 hr drive through Mysore, Gundlupet, Sulthan Bathery and Kalpetta. Vythri has a lot of jungle resorts. One can choose to stay in a jungle resort in Vythri or in Kalpetta. We stayed in a jungle resort which was great, but the approach road is through a jungle and only a Mahindra jeep can do it. There is another route which is baiscally going through Srirangapatna, Hunsur, Nagarhole, Tholpetty and reaching Kalpetta. THe drive is very beautiful as there is a 70 KM drive through the jungle, but about 18 kms of the road is bad.