Anjunad Valley Tour is a responsible tourism project in Kerala, India. It is aimed to benefit the unemployed youth of Anjunad Valley Villages. The tour covers a cluster of five villages in a mountain plateau and its adjourned hillocks.
Mountain Village Tour
Anjunad Valley Tour is the first mountain village responsible tourism project in Kerala. It is aimed to benefit the unemployed youth of Anjunad Valley Villages. Gramapriya is a voluntary society of unemployed youth and environmental protection groups. They are in association with our company. We are providing complete technical services and promotion support to this local venture. The profit from this project is shared by the members and benefits directly to a Negroid Tribal group of this village.
Anjunad (Five Town County) Valley Tour
Anjunad is a cluster of five villages in a mountain plateau and its adjourned hillocks. Anjunad means a cluster of five villages, as it is known from ancient times. A group of ancient dwellers divided themselves into five groups and settled in different hillocks and named it Anjunad. It comprises the Marayoor and Kanthallore revenue villages of Kerala State.
Geography
The geography of Anjunad is very interesting. In a span of 20 sqkms, the altitude varies from 500mts (Chinnar plateau) to 2100 mts. The undulated terrain with rocky hillocks is the feature of the plateau, whereas high peaks and grasslands are the features of the rest. It contains tropical dry forest to high altitude sholas. The temperature varies from 2 dc to 32 dc. This diverse nature of typography and climate causes a high level of biodiversity.
Land And People
Ancient mountain dwellers, the so-called tribal people belonging to 3 different ethnic groups, and migrants from Tamilnadu and Kerala constitute the demography of the area. The migration is believed to be started from 1000 BC onwards. The relics of an ancient civilization can be seen everywhere in this land. The majority of the people are farmers and laborers. The tribal living inside the forest is living on forest produce. The main cultivation is sugarcane. Lemon grass, rise, maze, and a number of tropical and temperate vegetables are also grown here. People are also engaged in collecting forest products like honey, gooseberry, etc. The majority of the people are Hindus in a broad meaning.
Wildlife Of Anjunad
Marayoor is the one and only natural sandalwood forest in Kerala. It is also bordered by Chinnar wildlife sanctuary and Anamudi Chola National Park which give good chances of wildlife sighting such as elephants, leopards, wild gaur, deer, giant squirrels etc.
Archaeology
Marayoor is known widely for megalithic burials and pre-historic cave printings. There are hundreds of burial monuments in the valley and the adjourned hills. The belt traces up to Palani Hills. The pre-historic rock shelter paintings are found in Marayoor and adjourned forests, supposed to be dated back to 9000 BC
The Village Tour
A minimum of 2 nights 3 days package is essential to enjoy the complete tour. But we can customize it from one day onwards. The tour is starting from Marayoor. We will arrange pick-up from any destinations in Kerala and Tamilnadu. You can report to our base station at Marayoor Tourist Home and select the desired duration. The Anjunad Valley tour consists of a visit to ethnic farms like sugar cane, contour farms, lemon grass farms, vegetables, and fruit farms, etc, a visit to tribal villages and spending an evening with them enjoying their folk dance, hiking through villages to experience mountain village life, visit to archeological sites like burial monuments, cave paintings, cave temple, etc, hike through sandalwood forest, visit to Chinnar wildlife sanctuary, visit to waterfalls, etc. You will be welcomed by the host from the village. The accommodation will be arranged as per the selected package. It can be a budget hotel, luxury hotel, homestay, or overnight camp in the forest. Your host will accompany you throughout the tour.
Trekking & Camping in Anjunad
Anjunad Valley is an ideal location for trekking and camping in Kerala. The leaning mountains of the Western Ghats to the Deccan plateau form many valleys, gorges, cliffs, and gaps in a limited radius.
It offers a wide range of trekking programs such as soft trek, medium trek, hard trek, and adventurous wildlife trekking. The duration of the trekking can be from day trek to 5 nights and 6 days long. Day Trek would be 3 hours to 8 hours time. It can be either a village trek/mountain trek or wildlife trek.
Medium Trek: This consists of two days of trekking and overnight camp.
Hard Trek: Consists of trekking through villages, mountains, wildlife zone, and overnight camps including tree houses.
Birding Tour
Anjunad Valley offers is home to more than 300 species of birds including 14 western ghats endemics. Since it is a transition zone the valley host rare species of birds like yellow-throated bulbul, Palani laughing thresh, Nilgiri blackbird, etc, and many winter visitors from the North. We will arrange guided birding tours.
Educational and Study Tour
We organize educational and special interest tours for schools, colleges, and faculties with special emphasis on the subjects selected. Anjunad is an ideal location for special interest educational tours for history and archaeology, ethnology and anthropology, botany, zoology, etc. We will assign specialized guides to explore respective fields and arrange budget accommodation, food, and transfers. We will also arrange a projection of awareness films in our camps.
