PARAPPALARU DAM & TALAKKUTHU FALLS (DINDIGUL - TAMIL NADU)

 THE BEST-KEPT-SECRET OF DINDIGUL TAMILNADU

A friend was continuously telling me about this waterfall, rather a road-less-traveled, secret waterfalls, located near his friend’s place. Finally, one fine day, things fell in place and all three of us were available on the same day to venture to this new place, which turns out to be one of the top places to visit near Madurai and Palani. 2 bikes and 3 of us, our first destination was Parappalaru Dam.

PARAPPALARU DAM

We headed towards Palani and after Vedasandhur & Oddanchatram, 14 hairpin bends led us to the hill top where a gate with a board said we were 3 km from Parappalaru Dam. Through that gate we finally reached the Parappalaru Dam. This is fairly a well-known place locally, one of the picnic places near Madurai and Palani. The area was vast – 266 x 83 x 123 ft in dimension!!! This river, Parappalaru, is essentially a tributary of Cauvery. Cauvery comes here via Aravakkurichi and becomes Parappalaru here. The place had a small government guest house, about which I have no much idea.

The water was pristine. With the constant fall of the water in different pressure, unique interesting formations & shapes have been formed on the rocks here!!! The view was great. More beautiful than the view was the flora here - the various flowering trees here were fabulous. As usual my animal luck was present here too. A doggy got really very friendly with us, to that extent that it became sad when it realized we had to leave!!!

Now, have a look at this pic. Ghostly??? Paranormal??? Psychic??? Yeah! Well, No!!! What happened was I put my camera in the panorama mode. In the first shot, I took the scene and in the 2nd i.e., follow up shot, my friend got into the scene and this is what my camera did!!!!!

VIRUPATCHI VILLAGE

After spending some time there, we embarked on our journey to the main location - searching for the secret waterfalls of Dindigul district! Downhill from Parappalaru Dam and we rode further towards Palani. A small lane exactly the 2nd one after Oddanchatram jn. towards Palani on NH83, to the left. A muddy path easy to miss, with a small tea kiosk at the corner. We got into the lane and went on enquiring about the waterfalls. We were directed to go as the road took us, and we crossed a small stream (which we later found is actually a section of the Aiyaru river that comes from the secret waterfalls). It had a few interesting, broken sculptures of Gods & Goddesses. (Its a normal practice that broken sculptures are not kept in worship in temples, but are respectfully discarded by either burying in the soil or throwing into waterbodies like ponds, rivers or seas!)

We met this old man on the way who wanted a lift and we readily gave. It’s a specialty of people belonging to villages – they are so caring and loving. He said time and again to be very careful and return by sunset mentioning that a few causalities that had already happened in this falls!!!