Most of our weekend trips are instantly planned depending on the week ahead, kid's homework schedule and of course the travel budget. One such Friday evening, when we suddenly decided lets do a drive , as always options were aplenty. When we decided we will do just one day with no overnight stay, the obvious choice was Pichavaram. Fortunately my whole family loves nature, beach, water and it is so easy to agree on a location, the only flip side to it is the fight for the camera, though we take two every time when we travel.
Unlike earlier where my hubby insists that we go minus the food preps and eat locally, the kids now prefer otherwise - they love the typical picnic style. And it is such fun to stop on the highway side, eat, jump, click with curious on-goers' looking at our madness at display. And the drive on NH45 itself is something to enjoy,...
Factoring the time that will take to reach our destination, we decided we will visit Chidambaram temple first before it closes and then head to the mangroves. Unfortunatley, the time that we visited, renovation was happening, and since it was almost close to noon, we did not spend much time there.
A few minutes at the temple, it was already scorching hot as we headed to the second largest mangrove. Since it was early April and the schools were just closing for vacations, there was not much crowd except for people from the nearby Neyveli township. We decided to first take the tour of the backwaters. It was to escape from the heat as well. This is certainly not the first time that we have visited this place, but every time it mesmerizes us, the chirping of the birds, the fight as to who first spotted one. The ride also becomes all the more interesting when you have a good boatman ; for the fee that you pay at the counter there is a standard route that the boat takes, but invariably the first thing the boatman asks you is do you want to explore more, we then negotiate (we paid 500 extra) to take us far and through different route. It is worth, given the experience and also the boatman never forgets to stop by the places where some film had been shot - from the mgr movie (forgot the name) to the Kamal starred Dasavatharam.
The second largest mangrove jungle is spread over 1000 hectares, and there are over 1000s of routes to wade through this. Our boatman says not many would be accessible, and there are only around a few hundreds routes that can be taken, and he has kind of explored almost all of them.
All good things doesnt last long, one hour just flew and with memories of the ride, we headed to the park near the entrance to have our lunch, the picnic style. The park was maintained well with not much littering around, and there were men at work to dispose off the plastics and left overs.
If you had not still visited this, you should have it on your "must visit" list when you are in Chennai or live here.
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