Backwater boating in Pichavaram

Asia » India » Tamil Nadu » Chidambaram
January 11th 2014

Published: January 11th 2014

Preparation for the tour

Actually I never had known about Pichavaram till a couple of weeks before I visited the place. I had only known that there are many places for backwater boating in Kerala. But while preparing for my Chidambaram visit I read about Pichavaram backwater boating in some blogs. I saw some pictures of the place. It looked quite interesting to me and I decided to go there.

However I had some fears too. First fear was the obvious risks involved in boating and particularly in forest-like environments. Pichavaram is the second largest mangrove forest in India and spreads over several kilometers. It is quite natural to encounter snakes and other dangerous creatures in such places. Besides I read in many blogs that the boatmen were asking extra money (300/- to 500/-) apart from the regular boating charges (150/- per hour) which you pay in the TTDC counter. I was scared of such huge tips as I was making a low budget trip.

Usually I do a lot of preparation before I visit any place. Before going Chidambaram and Pichavaram I referred to tourist guides and read personal experiences of people from their blogs. As I had visited Childambaram earlier I had nothing much to prepare about that. But I collected every piece of information about Pichabaram before making my trip. All those were useful not only to take better decisions but also to save me from problems and embarrassments.

Reaching there

We stayed in a hotel in Chidambaram. The first day we spent in visiting the famous Natraj temple and the next day morning started for Pichavaram. From hotel we took a walk to the Chidambaram bus stand (half km from hotel) and asked there about Pichavaram bus. Although I don’t understand Tamil, I have learnt an universal language. That is like “pichavaram… bus... where... time?” and accompanied with appropriate gestures. People of any language do recognize these words.

We came to know that the Pichavaram bus goes every hour and the bus named “Om Shakti” will go to Pichavaram. We had to wait for about 40 minutes for Pichavaram bus. The bus came at 8.30 AM. We got into the bus. The ticket was only Rs 9/- per head. It was probably the cheapest transport from only location to another I ever had. The bus halted at different places for taking and dropping passengers but finally after one hour took us straight into the TTDC (Tamilnadu Tourism Development Corporation) boating center of Pichavaram. No extra walking required to reach the place.

The boating complex

When we got down from the bus the first thing that caught our attraction is a statue of a two headed human (God?) sitting on a horse (picture below). This statue is there in the TTDC campus.

Then we saw the telescope tower. It was a tall tower with spiral steps. We went inside paying a small entry fee (Rs 5/- for 10 minutes) and climbed up the tower. The place was really fantastic to watch the beautiful sceneries around. We took some pictures of the place from that height.

There was a telescope in the telescope tower. They allowed us to see through the telescope. But it was quite poor and I could not really see anything through it. The 60x optical zoom in my video camera was much more powerful than that.

The boating counter

As I mentioned the whole boating complex is run by TTDC. There is a proper counter for booking the boats. There are two types of boats. Power boat is Rs 1000/- for 40 minutes (capacity-10 people) and rowing boat is Rs 150/- for one hour. You may book rowing boat for 2 or 3 hours depending upon your choice. There is no pedal boats or self-driven boats. I heard motorboats couldn't get into thin lanes, as they would go at high speed. We preferred booking a rowing boat.

When we stepped into the boat another person came and asked us for camera tickets (still camera Rs 25/-, video camera Rs 150/-). We paid for the camera and went into the boat. The boat was small to accommodate about 5 people (you can guess from the picture below).

Boating in the mangrove forest

The boat journey first starts from a larger water surface like a lake and then goes into the narrow lanes inside the mangrove forest. The green forest around us was beautiful. Boating as such was not so special as we had done two boating sessions (Paradise beach and Ousteri lake) during previous two days. But the mangrove views were interesting.

Soon after the boat started the boatman asked for a big tip to take us to special locations. As I had read about the experience of other people I just took it coolly and agreed for a smaller amount. However, he was a nice person and I saw no threat from him whether regarding money or in any other aspect. He was rather explaining us about the specialty of the forest and the animals typically found in the forest. He also took our pictures. He was good in taking pictures.

The boatman said the mangrove forest spreads on 3500 hectares of land (Wikipedia says 1100 hectares). There are as many as 20 different species of mangroves in the forest. The color of the leaves were dark green and the roots were dark brown. The color of the water was deep green and blackish. The sceneries were differently beautiful. The place can be scary to some people depending on mental condition. I remembered the Hollywood thriller “Black water” which was shot in a similar watery environment (However unlike "black water" there is no crocodile in Pichavaram)..

Some people have mentioned about sea birds in Pichavaram. But we did not see any of them. Probably that period (December) was not the season for them to come. I was afraid of encountering some deadly snakes or dragons. But nothing of such kind happened.

Bobby’s hat fell down in water

As we went into the narrow lanes of water, the leaves and roots were touching our heads. In many places we had to save our heads by bowing down. Some of the roots were very strong like solid woods. If you were unmindful the roots might hit your eyes or make you imbalance to fall into the water.

Bobby was lost in taking photographs. She was wearing my Vietnami hat. I told her to be careful about the roots and save the hat from falling. Few minutes later I heard her screaming “my topi… my topi…”. I saw the hat floating on water. Luckily it did not dip. We could go back to get the hat from water. The boatman said many people loose their camera, goggles, mobile phone etc. in the water. It is extremely difficult to recover such things from inside such stained water.

All is well that ends well

What we saw within a couple of hours was enough for us. If we had booked for 3-4 hours probably we could have seen some more interesting spots. But by and large we got the hang of the place. We saw some crabs and similar water creatures. The boatman said that there were foxes and seals too. I did not have much interest in searching foxes in the watery forest.

I had an interest in rowing and requested the boatman to give me the rows. I tried rowing the boat for some time. As the water was still I could easily got control over the boat to change directions. We had a full enjoyment of the place.

By and large I may suggest others the following:

- There is no problem in going from Chidambaram to Pichavaram. Just go to the Chidambaram bus stand and go by bus. The bus will drop you straight inside the TTDC boating center in Pichavaram.

- Some bloggers have mentioned that there is no food in Pichavaram. They are right. If you are looking for any solid food (like rice etc.) then there is no restaurant. But you can get there biscuits, chips, water bottles etc.

- If you plan spending very long time in boating you may carry some food and water with you. If you just plan for a couple of hours then there is probably no such need.

- While boating inside narrow lanes, be careful about the roots as otherwise you may loose your caps, goggles, camera, mobile phone etc. very easily.

- Be prepared to pay some extra money to the boatman and don't get embarrassed or angry when he asks for that. He is your only friend inside the water.

Watch my video on Pichavaram boating

15th June 2014

samrat
non-member comment

is aug 1week good time to visit tamilnadu
hi sir.. great blog .. i need som info.. aug 1week good time to visit tamilnadu..

13th August 2014

umakantm
Umakant Mishra

backwater boating
Dear Samrat, thanks for your complements. Aug is rainy season. But I don't see any difficulties, because even in winter it rains there. There are only two seasons in Tamilnadu, sun and rain. Summer is even worse than rain.