TRIP TO THENGUMARADA BY WWS

DAY 1 : FRIDAY : 28/08/2009
We, the founder members of WILD WING SOCIETY made a trip togather to thengumarada on 28th of august 2009. People started from coimbatore in an invader and a commander jeeps towards sathyamangalam and we all had our breakfast togather in cafeteria of BIT. After finishing our breakfast, we saw the exhibits put up by GEO of BIT. Then we met Mr.Chandrasekeran, Central bank manager in his office at sathyamangalam. We had a good discussion about welfare of APW and our future projects. We then started from sathy to thengumarada, we picked up an APW named sugi chandran in sujilkuttai checkpost and started entering the forest. We spotted many spotted deers during that drive. The route which leads to thengumarada has a wonderfull river called MOYAR which must be crossed in order to reach the village. It was a great experience to cross such a big river in our jeeps. I enjoyed river crossing by sitting on the bonnet of commander jeep. We had our lunch on the banks of that river and then proceeded towards the trekking shed in thengumarada.On our way, we found a chamleon in middle of the road, we suddenly stopped and ran towards it. Our guys started shooting the creature with their cameras. Suddenly came the reptile man sabapathy who took the cameleon in his hand and made it walk on his forearm, seeing his courage, me and ragul too took that cameleon in our hand and made it walk on arms. Then we reached trekking shed by 4pm atlast and we unpacked our gadgets and informed the cook ragendran about the menu we expected for our dinner and then got geared up for a drive into the jungle. We went on the route to palamarapatti. Our people were readily loaded with their cameras and binocolors and seeking for birds and wildlife around. I was actually sitting on the roof of our jeep and searching to sight wildlife. We saw a huge number of bird life and prakash anna with his invaluable experience thought us a lot about birds. We just spotted chittals and Indian gaur that drive and came back to moyar river and took a nice bath in the river and then came back to trkking shed and had our dinner. We were really surpriced tasting the food. It was one of the best food we have had during our trips in wild. We really enjoyed the food and had a good argument with ragul and went for a night drive by around 10pm in kallampalayam road, we had a very poor sighting of animals, saw chittal, sambar, jungle cat, numerous number of hare. We were very tired when we returned and we slept off.
DAY 2 : SATURDAY : 29/08/2009
It was around five O clock that i heard the pecock’s call early in the morning, when i just opened my eyes i found that sun is getting geared up for it’s show that day, as spotting animals is easier very early in the morning, I just tortured everyone to get up and get geared up faster for a ride into the jungle. As soon as we got ready, we had a good tea served by our APW who accompanied us. Finally we started our ride around five thirty. We drove towards a place called as thulukanpatty that morning. We had a good sighting of a lot of bird activities that morning and had some spectacular sights of hawk eagles too. Then on our way we spotted all the herbivores like chittal, Indian gaur, sambar deer and more but we never spotted anyting new. We really enjoyed seeing the wonderfull terrain around the place, it was totally a dry thorny shrub jungle with wide diversity of flora and fauna in it. One we reached the camp of thulukampatty, we were very eager to spot tigers which have a good number of population there. We all got down our jeeps and started walking into the jungle in search of some thrills and adventure. Suddenly there was ragul who came with a bigger size star turtlein his hand. We all enjoyed the beauty of it and took photographs and left the turtle in its own place. I was screening the mountain ranges nearby with the binoculours for any wildlife movement, suddenly i found a creature moving which seemed like a vulture sitting on a rock. But, after viewing it well, i found that it was a sambar stag lying down near a rock. Then we were returning back from thulukampatty to our guest house in thengumarada. While returning, we suddenly stopped seeing some movement inside a bush and very surpricingly found a large herd of black buck with a single majestic stag. I was really very happy to see that and had a good time enjoying it’s reflex. Then when we were about to reach the village I suddenly came across my most wanted animal called FERAL or CAPE or TODA BUFALLO. We very well know that these animals are very aggressive towards humans and charge towards people often. But i was very much interested to take a photograph of the bull in that herd which had such a big horns in an un imaginable form. I got prakash anna’s camera to me and started walking towards the herd. One cow just turned back and saw me and warned me of charging by giving an angry posture. I stopped there and was waiting for the bull to come out of the bush and give me a good pose for my camera. But suddenly the entire herd started running and i missed the opportunity. Then we drove back to the guest house for our break fast which was upma with chatni. It was too good. We relaxed for a while and packed ourself for a nice bath in moyar river. We reached the river bed where we found two people catching fish there. We suddenly went to them and purchased all those fishes for our dinner. Then we had one of our greatest bath ever had in my life, we totally had a great fun bathing and enjoying ourself till 1 0 clock in the afternoon. Then we returned back to guest house and had a small nap for two hours and after finishing our evening tea we started for our evening jungle drive to a place called mangalapatti where the special task forces have their camp established. We crossed the river through our jeeps and we travelled along the banks of moyar within a few minutes we spotted a large heard of gaur and many chitals and black bucks as usual. The journey was so pleasant and nice as we were driving between two hills of nilgris and thalavadi. We suddenly saw a man amid of the jungle standing with a big camera and a bagpack. We just thought he was just a wildlife entuciast like us and just drove off. Later we came to know that he was a great elephant scientist named Ajay Desai. Then we stopped at a place and enjoyed the bueauty of the spot and started to drive back to the camp. As we progressed we saw a night jar sitting on the the mud road posing for us specially. Then after making cool shots of it, we drove back to guest house and had a nice fish curry and rice which we all enjoyed eating and we had some discussion regarding our agendas for the future and went for a night drive and slept off.
DAY 3 : SUNDAY : 30/08/2009
This Sunday was typically different from what we usually had, we got up very early in the morning and went for a drive towards palamarapatti where we had a very nice journey into the jungle and we enjoyed the landscape and had the same herbivore sightings as usual. We stopped at palamarapatti camp and found some watchers staying there after their raid. We had a chat with them asking about that place and starded driving back. With just a turn back, i saw some eagles circling up a long distance, soon when we saw through our binoculours we found that those were vultures which i was eagerly waiting to spot. With ultimate satisfaction of sighting it we drove back to our place with few more animal sightings on the way. After we reached guest house we had another important meeting to discuss activities of WWS and we planned our next night to be at hasanur which is a hilly terrain and has a cooler climate compared to thengumarada. We packed our things from thengumarada and started towards hasanur and reached the resort at hasanur by eve. We unpacked and had a good chat and started for a drive in kollegal road upto germalam checkpost where we thought that we would find some carnivore sighting and ultimately we had no luck that eve for them. When we were very upset and returning back from that drive, we had a great display by a juvelline elephant feeding on bamboo, we stopped both our vehicle to look at it. Once we went near, we saw five more elephants standing inside. There was a very small calf too in that herd. We suddenly herd a trumpet by a female elephant which seemed like it has got agitated because of our presence. Soon after that that juvelline came out towards our jeep with erect ears charging and chasing our jeep. We just drove back to our place and slept happily with such an experience with jumbo.
DAY 4: MONDAY: 31/08/2009
This was our final day and we went for a drive in a road to thalamalai and then returned back to Sathyamangalam.






LIST OF BIRDS WE IDENTIFIED
Red vented bulbul
Red whiskered bulbul
Night jar
Scarlet Minivet
Ring necked dove
Spotted dove
Rose ringed parakeet
Blossom headed parakeet
Geen pegion
Imperial pegion
Black drongo
Shikra
Green bee eater
Blue beared bee eater
Vulture
Black eagle
Serpant eagle
Hawk eagle
Brahmini kite
Bush chat
Bush quail
Padridge
Peacock
Crow phesant
LIST OF ANIMALS IDENTIFIED
Chittal
Sambar deer
Black buck
Barking deer
Mouse deer
Four horned antelope
Indian gaur
Indian elephant
Wild boar
Jungle cat
Feral buffallow
Star turtle
Chamleon
Hare

PROJECT-LIGHTING MALLIAMMAN DURGAM

LIGHTING MALLIAMMAN DURGAMThis was an activity organized by GEO along with help of some likeminded individuals who were really passionate about helping people. It was in orkut from where we got all the contacts of such kind hearted people. They were very much interested in helping people who are in rural areas and in un accessible areas. So GEO guided them towards MALLIAMMAN DURGAM which was really in need of such kind of people’s attention towards it. They totally arranged everything to mobilize the fund and they ordered for a solar street lamp which was worth of 21000 and they we also planned to renovate two more solar street lamps which were not working for the past three years. So, two more batteries and two CFL bulbs worth 10000 was sent by them through a travels to sathyamangalam from Chennai. GEO members totally organized everything right from receiving the materials of solar lamp. Our mamooth task was to take those materials uphill. We were unable to reach the villagers of malliamman durgam to inform them regarding the need to take those materials uphill. We struggled a lot to convince people and make them carry those materials uphill giving them daily wage. We had four people from Chennai and a technitian who came with them from Chennai. We received them in sathyamangalam by 12 am on Friday and made them stay in kadambur forest guest house which was 25 km from sathyamangalam. An expert team from GEO started by 4am Saturday to kadambur and along with technitian and people from Chennai we climbed up the hill. It took around five hours for us to reach the village. Throughout the way, we had no souces of water except one natural well which had water throughout the year. Draining out all our energy we finally climbed up the hill where we were very well greeted by the villagers. They helped us in all the way to get our self settled and ,we started our work by installing the lamp with the help of technitian and by evening four it was clowdy and was wristling. We were very sad that this would hinder us in erecting the light that night itself. But by 6pm when the sun went down, we saw the light glowing. We also saw a cute smile among the people of that village who were very happy to see a light in their village, they all greeted us heartfully and thanked us. I would definetly say that it was the day when i really felt happy at my heart. All those people gave us a great send off from that village. We came back with the hope that malliamman durgam will benifit atleat to some extent from our activity.

STATUS OF RURAL EDUCATION IN TAMILNADU

People, on our visit to a tribal village MALLIAMMAN DURGAM which is really a remote inaccesible village which doesn even have a mud road route for it.People need to travel around eleven km uphill to reach that village. A primary school which has been built in that little settlement is not merely because of the efforts if the government officers, it was the villagers who were really dreaming to have a school for their village. Materials which were brought for the purpose of building the scool were from a town. All those materials like brick,cement were all carried to that village by the villagers themselves without asking for wage. When we reached that tribal settlement, we found a very pathetic situation of rural education in tamilnadu. We came to know that teachers reach that school only once or twice in a month. That school building is totally used as a guest house for some police or forest officers reaching that vilage officially.People there are not even aware of wat is happening around. They are totally disconnected from the rest of the world as they don have power. Please take a look at the spelling of ERODE DISTRICT painted in school building. It is misspelled as ERODE MAVATTAM instead of ERODE MAAVATTAM.

EDUCATING TRIBAL CHILDREN

We are planning to provide education for the tribal childrens who are from kadambur's interior tribal settlements. They have lots of talents hidden inside them but they are in a very bad situation to bring them out and excell themselves in this society. We were able to find many guys who are able toget more than 450/500 in 10th board examinations,but because of their poverty,lack of awareness and ignorance, they are not able to even join 11th. We have carefully analysed those guys and have identified some children who are really in need of help to bring their potential out to this society,else their life will be dark even with so many talents with them.So we r collecting fund for the studies of those guys which can really launch their life to greater heights. Please do give your valuable suggetions and contribute and help them for their future.....