Visiting National Fossil Wood Park in Tiruvakkarai

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January 11th 2014

Published: January 11th 2014

Planning to Visit Tiruvakkarai

I saw in PTTDC (Pondichery Tourism and Transport Development Corporation) leaflet that they were conducting a tour package to some places like Villianur, Tiruvakkarai Fossil park, Ousteri lake etc. The tour was called "Pasumai Puduvai" or eco-friendly tour. Before going Pondicherry I thought to get the benefit of that tour package and visit all those places.
When I reached Pondichery I went to PTTDC office in beach road and inquired about that "Pasumai Puduvai" tour package. But I learnt that they were not conducting that tour any more. They were not even conducting the popular Auroville, Botanical garden, Chunambar tour package because of lack of tourists. (Later when I found several hundred people in Auroville and Chunnambar I had an unanswered question in my mind why PTTDC is not getting tourists to fill a 14 seated mini-bus!!).

Driving to Tiruvakkarai in a scooter

When I was disappointed by PTTDC initially I lost hope of visiting those places. Tiruvakkarai is a distant place about 35+ kms from Pondicherry. I was in a budget tour and hence no huge money to pay for taxi. Only possibility was to drive a scooter (scooters/ bikes are available on hire in Pondichery). But I did not have a detail road map. While leaving bangalore I had taken detail google maps of Aurovil, Repo beach, Serenity beach, Ariyakuppam, Arikamedu etc. for easy locating the places. But I did not have the route maps to distant places like Ousteri lake, Tiruvakkarai etc. When I asked some people I came to knw that Ousteri lake and Tiruvakkarai were on the same route. That encouraged me to take a scooter drive and cover both the places. We had to ask several people on the way. The difficulty was to catch the right highway at the Pondichery border. The other difficulty was my Tamil illiteracy. But people were extremely helpful and explaining the route to their best ability. One gentleman even guided us in his motorcycle and showed us the exact road going to Tiruvakkarai. The road was ok for sometime but the last 6 kms was very poor road. Somehow we missed the sign board to "Fossil Wood Park" and went further into Tiruvakkarai village. We found a beautiful temple there in the village and then turned back again to the fossil park.

The National Fossil Wood Park

The Fossil Wood park was 1.6 kms zig zag village road from Tiruvakkarai village. But it was once single road and easy to find. Finally we reached the much awaited Fossil wood park in Tiruvakkarai.

We were the only visitors to the place during that time. There was no proper reception counter etc. (may be because of lack of tourists). One caretaker asked me to enter my details in the log book. The first attraction was a set of fossils in the front area. Some of the fossils had some details mentioned on small sign boards. The picture below shows the frontal area after the entrance which was very attractive.

More details about Fossil Wood Park

I read some literatures there about the fossil wood park and learnt about the importance of fossils and the place as follows. Fossilised tree trunks occur in the sandstone mounds about a km east of Tiruvalkkarai village, Vanur Taluk, Villupuram district, Tamilnadu. Geologists call this mio-pliocene sedimentary rock as "Cuddalore Sandstone Formation". About 20 million years ago these tree trunks have been brought from forests by rivers and deposited in the water bodies along with sediments. On burial due to petrification processes the organic matter was replaced by silica, retaining the original structures, such as, annular rings and tree trunk nodes. Absence of roots, barks and branches indicate that these tree trunks were transported to the present location and were possilized. More than 200 fossilized tree trunks are reported over an area of about 247 acres. Some are more than 30 m in length and 1.5m in diameter. European naturalist M. Sonnertet in 1781 first documented the existence of fossilized wood from here. These fossil trees belong to both gymnosperms and angiosperms. It is likely that modern plant families like guttiferae, leguminosae and euphorbiaceae might have also florished here. Some of the trunks resemble the modern Tamarindus species. Fossilized trees are very rare and occurs only in some parts of the world. Silently these fossil woods tell us the earth's history. By protecting them we are saving the pages of earth's history. Geological survey of India, the custodian of National Geological Monuments, is protecting these rate occurrences of Fossil Wood since 1957.

Exploring more and more Fossils inside

There was a narrow path going inside the forest like area. We went inside and found more and more fossils. However, I could not differentiate the technical features of one fossil from another. To me they were all looking similar, although different in shape and size.

The 300 years old big Banyan Tree

The other important attraction in that place was the 300 years old big banyan tree. The tree was really big with hundreds of roots and trunks (I am poor in botanical terms). That was one single tree which was spreading on a large area of land. It was really worth seeing.

I had seen the "big banyan tree" near Bangalore which is 500 years old and bigger than this banyan tree. But even then this tree had its own charm as you can see in the picture.

The small temple inside the Fossil Park

Behind the big banyan tree there was a small temple. I guess it was the god of the forest (not sure though). The place was peaceful. We sat there for a while and finished our tour of the fossil park.

Some final words

I had seen fossils earlier in other places. There is also a big fossil in Lalbagh (Bangalore) which looks like a tree trunk. But I had never seen so many fossils at one single place anywhere. The Geological survey of India has rightly declared the place as "National Fossil Wood Park". I had to drive 2+2 hours to discover that place. But I was not unhappy in the end. The place was worth visiting and my effort was useful. It may be worth mentioning that there is no entry tickets or camera tickets there. Entry and photography are free.

Watch my video on National Fossil Park