On the Saturday morning, hotel provided complimentary breakfast. Buffet comprising of bread, butter, jam, toast, juice, idly, dosa, pongal, puri-masal, sambar and chutneys was pretty sumptuous. We left from the breakfast hall to the parking lot and drove straight to Pichavaram.
We reached Pichavaram boating areas by around 10, which was the correct time in a way. As the sun was yet to become warmer and visitors were coming soon after. The boat ride costs Rs. 200. This is for a rowing boat and each boat accommodates 6 person. The boat man rows you around for 1 hour at this price. There is a steam boat which accommodates more person and goes far away beyond the forest area. The forest area is restricted and hence the boats can go up to the beginning of the Mangrove forest only. This is the place where the boat man, the shooting for Thuparivalan and Dasavatharam had taken place.
Inside the forest it is fully covered by 20 plus varieties of trees and each of them have medicinal value too for which research are being conducted. The roots of the mangrove trees go deep down the water and catch the soil. These mangrove trees blocks the tsunami from hits the land. Now the forest department is into growing these trees further more as a cover from tsunami The water we rowed in was not at all deep. Still we are given life jackets. We have to pay for taking the camera in the boat. The Tamilnadu tourism department collects the boat ride expense while the forest department taking care of the mangrove forest collects the fee for camera. After the ride of one hour the boat man brings us back to the shore.
After we come back we took Rs.2 ticket each to go up the tower to get the view of the area. We expected a telescope but non was available, one should user there own eyes and have a look at the forest. This was a good view and worth climbing all the way up. As soon as we went down, there was a refreshment shop were we got tea for Rs.20. With that we are done with Pichavaram. Some 10 years ago before the forest department took over the boatmen used to take visitors all the way from here to the mouth of the ocean and ride would be for some 3 to 4 hours it seems. Good old times.
From here we reached back to the hotel. Then decided to walk to the restaurant at east car street for lunch. At Krishna vilas we had meals and vegetable rice. The rice and sides were yummy, much better then yesterday's lunch. Post lunch we could not walk back in the scorching heat so we took a auto rickshaw for Rs.50. The auto driver Manikandan became our acquaintance and agreed to take us around the different temple in Chidambaram in the evening. With that planned out we went back to the room for a seista.
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