Skip to main content

Inchathotti Hanging Bridge

 I stopped counting the days when the lockdown entered the third month. I started counting the books I would love to read. I read them one by one. One book per week approximately. Books are good friends and entertainers: the best in that category perhaps. But I also love travelling to see places. When the lockdown that put an end to my travels completed eight months, an irresistible itch gripped me. When I suggested Inchathotti, a place 40 km from my home, Maggie didn't resist. She was aware of the restlessness that had gripped me for quite a while now. 

Inchathotti is just an ordinary village in Kerala on the shores of the mighty Periyar River. What attracts tourists there is only a suspension bridge, the longest of its kind in Kerala with a length of 181 metres. It was not built for tourists at all. When it was built nobody would have imagined that it would draw tourists one day. 

The Hanging Bridge (as it is known) was built for the people of Inchathotti village to cross the river. Schools, hospitals and other necessary services were not available this side of the river. Hence the bridge was a lifeline for the people who inhabited an area between the Periyar River and a reserved forest. 

Maggie and I drove through the forest in order to reach the bridge. That is the shortest route for us though that is not the official route to the place. There is a narrow road through the forest. 

Here are some pics from our travel. 

The Periyar: view from the bridge whose one cable is visible on left

A click from below the bridge

And one from above

Through the forest
In spite of the pandemic and its potential threat, there were many tourists at the spot. People are sick of staying home locked down. Boredom can and does kill a lot of people. Daring a pandemic is better than choosing death from boredom, I guess. 

Inchathotti is not recommended to tourists from far. There is nothing beyond this bridge to see unless you wish to see a sylvan village in Kerala. Kayaking has been stopped due to the pandemic. Even the boat rides in the Periyar are halted. 

Once we are back to normal and if you are interested in visiting this place, you can reach it easily by a hired vehicle from various cities/towns like Kochi, Munnar, Kothamangalam, Bhoothathankettu Dam, etc. 

Comments

  1. wingsNovember 22, 2020 at 6:09 PM

    Daring the pandemic and venturing out is fine as far as a visit to the less frequented places like Inchathotti village and its bridge. Such an enterprise is not possible in cities and crowded places only. Certainly you are safe here to enjoy with your family. Thanks for the information about the place and pictures. The sylvan surroundings do provide a great respite from the killing boredom that people have been experiencing during the pandemic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 22, 2020 at 8:00 PM

      One cannot and should not throw caution to winds. We took a route that has no traffic to a place that was expected to be desolate. The crowd there took us by surprise.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
16 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more