Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary

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Probably the most famous ornithologist in India is Salim Ali, author of one of the field guides. The bird sanctuary named after him has its entrance by the little village of Thattekad, hence its alternative name of Thattekad Bird Sanctuary. I did look at going here when making my original Indian trip plans ages ago but it seemed a bit out of the way of everything else. However after it was mentioned to me a few days previously as being a place where Malabar grey hornbills are common, I had another look on the internet and asked about bus routes at the Munnar Information Centre, and found that it actually fits perfectly into a route between the Munnar area and my next destination of Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary (where black-footed grey langurs are found). And now having been there I can say it would have been a great shame to have missed it out, and I would encourage any wildlife-orientated person going to the Munnar area to make sure they get here if possible.

I'd found someone's birding blog saying Thattekad is about 25 minutes by tuktuk from the town of Kothamangalam, so that was where I was aiming for. But in the Munnar Information Centre I was told to catch the Adimali-bound bus to the village of Neriyamgalam instead and go by tuktuk from there because it was closer to the sanctuary. So I changed to that plan. But then when I was saying this to James and Viji at the homestay in Top Station they said the 10.15am bus which goes past their house is a direct bus to Kothamangalam, so I changed back to that one again. As it turned out this was a good (third) decision. The bus actually went through Neriyamgalam on the way, and I contemplated getting off there, but that would have been a mistake. It was about an hour further on to Kothamangalam, and from there Thattekad is only 12km away. Also Neriyamgalam is after Adimali, so catching that bus to get there wouldn't have worked anyway! (Although having just now looked on Google, there actually is a shorter road directly from Neriyamgalam to Thattekad, but it is the same distance (12km) as from Kothamangalam to Thattekad, so it doesn't really matter).

As far as I could tell there are only a couple of places to stay near the sanctuary, the primary one for birders being a homestay called Jungle Bird Homestay owned by one of the park guides, but that was far too expensive for me. I figured the best budgetty option would be to stay in Kothamangalam in a cheap hotel, and just go to Thattekad the next morning in a tuktuk. I'd have to be paying for the tuktuk there and back whether I stayed at Thattekad or not, so having a cheaper hotel in Kothamangalam made more sense to me.

I got into Kothamangalam at 2pm (so almost four hours, including a half-hour stop in Munnar), and quickly found the Janatha Tourist Home round the corner from the bus station. I also quickly found that nobody here seems to speak English. Normally this doesn't bother me, I manage to communicate with people just fine without a common language, but there's something about Indians who don't speak English which completely stumps me. I just have no idea what they are trying to make me understand, and vice versa. Even something as simple as a hotel room (i.e. one person, how much it costs, how many nights) becomes a nightmare to arrange. I had to round up a passing English-speaker (after about ten attempts!) to help me get this easy task sorted, and got a room for 500 rupees.

I wasn't sure what time the sanctuary opened, and I hadn't been anywhere with WIFI for the last week so I couldn't check online. At 6.30am the next morning I went over to the bus station to find a tuktuk. In a coffee house there I discovered that the guy behind the counter spoke really good English, and he said that the sanctuary opened at 9 or 10am which was incredibly late for birding (especially given that it is very hot here) but I had kind of expected that seeing as how everywhere in India seems to open late. I figured I would just go along anyway and look for birds outside until it opened, so I got a tuktuk out there for 240 rupees. When we arrived I discovered that it actually opens at 6.30am which frankly was a huge surprise, and I also discovered that it is on a direct bus route from Kothamangalam (the coffee guy had said that I'd need to take two buses because the sanctuary is on a different road to Thattekad village, which was incorrect, and so I'd taken the tuktuk in order to get there while it was still early). On the way back I caught the bus, which cost 11 rupees and took 30 minutes (versus the tuktuk's 240 rupees and 20 minutes).

The sanctuary is all dry forest surrounding several small lakes, with foot-trails running all over the place. Entry was 175 rupees plus 38 rupees for a camera. I had been under the impression that a guide was required, which would likely have restricted the visiting time to two or three hours, but in fact you are free to roam around alone for as long as you want. There are guides available but at 1000 rupees I decided not to use one. You would need a guide to find a Sri Lankan frogmouth roost, but as I'd already seen that species in Sri Lanka I didn't feel the need to pay to see them again when I could find all sorts of other birds by myself. There's also a little zoo of sorts there, which I think is for rescued or injured wildlife, but both times I was there I completely forgot about it so never went to see it.

I had thought I would come out to the sanctuary in the morning, spend just a couple of hours there (because I thought I'd need a guide), then go back to Kothamangalam, get my bags from the hotel, and catch a bus that same day towards Tholpetty. But the sanctuary was brimming over with birds, and it was so much better than I expected that I decided to extend my stay for another night and come back the next morning as well. On this first day I only stayed until midday because it was too hot by then, and I didn't have any food with me, not having anticipated being allowed to be in there for that long.

I guess my main reason for visiting here was to see Malabar grey hornbills, close relatives of the Sri Lankan grey hornbill. This proved to be easy - I saw one in a tree before even entering the sanctuary! They look very very similar to their Sri Lankan cousins, and act the same way. My progress into the sanctuary was slow, because there were so many birds in every direction. On my left there was a tree with dollarbirds, golden orioles and an ashy drongo; on my right there were grey junglefowl; ahead there were jungle babblers and a greater racquet-tailed drongo. That was pretty much how it went for the next two hours, birds everywhere. Two species of woodpeckers, three of drongos, three of orioles; Malabar and plum-headed parakeets; Indian pitta, orange-headed thrush, Malabar woodshrike, lesser hill mynah, white-cheeked barbet, Blyth's starling, fairy bluebird, golden-fronted leafbird.... it just went on and on. Most of the birds were species I had seen previously in the other parts of Kerala and in Sri Lanka, but four species were new for me so that's alright. I got only a very poor view of a half-hidden white-bellied treepie, endemic to the Western Ghats, and that sealed me on coming back the next morning to try and see it properly.

The bus back to Kothamangalam was a KSRTC bus (a government bus - Kerala State Road Transport Corporation) which means they give a printed ticket, enabling me to see that the point I got on was called "8th mile". And that meant that the next morning I could catch a bus out there without needing an English-speaking conductor, I could just show him the ticket from the previous day so he'd know where I was going. The first bus going to Thattekad from the Kothamangalam bus stand is at 6.15am, so I could get to the sanctuary not long after opening time and save on the tuktuk fare. In the event the conductor did speak English, so he understood quite well where I was going.

The afternoon before, when returning to my hotel room, I had passed a backpackerish-looking white man in the corridor and said hi, as one does. After passing I suddenly thought "I bet he was a birder" because there seemed no other reason a foreigner would be in Kothamangalam. The next morning he was on the bus to Thattekad. He was Australian and, like me, he had also needed to find an English speaker to help him with the guy at the hotel desk, he also did not fancy paying exhorbitant prices for the accommodation at the sanctuary, and he also didn't want to pay 1000 rupees for a guide if he could just wander where he wanted (and he'd also been under the impression a guide was a requirement at the sanctuary). Basically he was just like me except Australian, so only half as good - but still better than, say, English or American.

The bus today cost 12 rupees each way instead of 11, but entry to the sanctuary was 175 rupees instead of 213 (they left off the 38 rupee camera fee). The Australian guy hadn't seen a dollarbird yet, and just after entering I pointed one out in a dead tree which got him off to a good start. They are actually common here, but nobody needs to know that. The bird activity this morning was well down on yesterday, which was disappointing (I only saw about two-thirds of the species I saw the day before), but my main aim was to try and see a white-bellied treepie. Yesterday I saw half of one, and today I soon saw a whole one but still not with the greatest of views. A while later we found a pair of them in a bird-wave with hornbills, hill mynahs and orioles, and these ones I saw very well (although no photos of these or almost anything else could be obtained due to the abundance of foliage). Second-best bird of the morning was a blue-faced malkoha, which I had only seen once before at Wilpattu National Park in Sri Lanka.

I only stayed in the sanctuary for a few hours (about 6.45 to 10am) because I was intending to get back to Kottamangalam before noon and catch a bus to Mananthavady which is the town nearest to the Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary. This didn't happen though, firstly because it took me longer to get out of the Thattekad sanctuary than anticipated (birds kept showing up and stopping me), then I had a bit of a long wait for a bus, then once back in Kottamangalam it took ages to find an ATM which worked, and then for some reason I couldn't find anywhere to eat which was open. Basically once it got past noon it sort of got too late to go because I needed to go first to the nearby town of Perumbavoor which takes about forty minutes, and then from there to Mananthavady takes at least seven hours. So I just went back to the Janatha Tourist Home and paid for another night's stay.

The bus I had caught back to Kothamanagalam from the Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary was a Jesus bus. Kerala is a hard-core Christian state and I'd seen a few buses around with big stickers across the top of the windshield saying "Jesus". I thought this was just random, or because "Jesus!!" was the last thing you said as the bus came screaming round a blind corner and you got plastered over the grill, but it is actually the name of the bus company. The ticket print-out I got said "Jesus Bus" on it. Once I knew that it seemed quite obvious, it was just that "Jesus" or "St. Anthony" or "St. Thomas" had seemed like strange names for bus companies. Other buses have more standard names. The next day, though, I saw one which inexplicably had "Baby Goat" across the top.

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