Wayanad

Wayanad is a plateau district in Kerala's northeast, at 700 to 2,100 metres in the Western Ghats, where tea and coffee and cardamom grow in a landscape of forest and mist that is more biologically diverse per square kilometre than almost anywhere in India.

The Wayanad Plateau is part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve — one of the world's biodiversity hotspots — and its forests contain populations of wild elephant, gaur, leopard, sloth bear, and the occasional tiger in a density that makes wildlife sightings from the roads a regular occurrence rather than a planned expedition.

The Edakkal Caves, nine kilometres from Sulthan Bathery, contain Stone Age pictographs — images of humans, animals, and symbols carved between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago — that make them the most significant prehistoric site in Kerala. The same forests that sheltered these Stone Age communities have been doing so, in various forms, ever since: a continuity of habitation in the same landscape that is very rare anywhere on earth.

Places to Visit in Wayanad

• Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary
• Edakkal Caves
• Chembra Peak
• Banasura Sagar Dam

Things to Do in Wayanad

• Spice plantation tours
• Wildlife safari
• Trekking to Chembra Peak