The story behind this ride started when we went to see the film ‘Rithu’ , I couldn’t just stand staring at the beautiful locations. Decided then and there itself that I ve to find out the place and should give a visit as soon as possible. Right from the time of reaching home, my friends and I were searching everywhere for the locations and was in vain. I didn’t expect it to be this difficult as it was even featured in a movie that received so much acclamation. Finally Ganesh found out the name of the place after a week, from an interview of the cast, when they spurt out the name of the place as “Chittar” and googling started from there on. Thanks to google maps, we found the place to be close to Trivandrum itself some 50 kms from the city .
It was a fine weekday morning, no college for whatsoever reason and nobody home. Called up a couple of friends and they were ready for this exploration. A last look at the gmap and writing down a couple of landmark points, we were all set. Started at 10:30 , reached neyyar dam in about half an hour as roads were pretty good, where we stopped for a photoshoot. Again, we were on saddle to our destination ,riding through the roads around the Neyyar reservoir , we reached a place called Kadayal which was first on the landmarks . The offroading started right after neyyar dam, roads were virtually non existent with some good patches here and there. The places looked like some tribal settlement areas, luckily some people were out on the roads but nobody seems to know the place called chittar , so we went ahead further. Suddenly came the tamil nadu border where the roads were just wide enough for a bus to pass which was entirely contradicting my vision that whenever I enter TN borders, the roads were so good. Finally after travelling some 40-45kms, we found a shop in a not so large human settlement area. We were tired after all these off-roading and stopped for some refreshments. On conversation with the guy at the shop, he told about the 2 dams at the nearby place called chittar and how a couple of guys died a few months back at the reservoir :). Also that Dam 2 is only some 5 kms from that place and dam 1 was some 15 kms from there. We decided to check out dam 2 for the time being and proceeded after thanking him. We reached a checkpost but there was absolutely no sign of human presence . So we kept our bikes there and started walking. It was silent, serene and calm with no interruption of mobile as there was no range. We saw a dam after a short while, but the walkway was going on unending, so were we, waking and taking pictures besides the dam and reservoir. Finally after walking for more than a km, it shone like nature’s beauty was unfolding in front of us. It was literally our world , with just 5 of us with water all around. Adding to that, it started showering and we ran to a shelter near that, which just looked like and was a haunted shed , which was even featured in a song in that movie .It was the writings in its wall which made it clear that we ended up at the right ‘Destination’. It was simply magical to look at the raining black sky showering its tears on us. Time just flew by before we realized , enjoying the solitude on this deserted place. Clicked lots of pics, ran around like crazy bunch of people , finally hunger gripped us hard and decided to go back sadly. Thinking of walking all the way back itself made us sick L. Back on the saddle, we stopped by the old man’s shop again to have some more lime juice, drank to eternity, and decided to skip lunch. Rode back swifter and reached home by dusk. The trip meter read 110 kms but the happiness and smile in the heart was even more than that.
