Pichavaram Mangrove Forest, Chidambaram ,Tamil Nadu

June 08, 2017

Pichavaram Mangrove Forest, Chidambaram ,Tamil Nadu

Trip to Pichavaram Mangrove Forest from

Tiruchirappalli,Tamil Nadu

Pichavaram Mangrove Forest is the second largest Mangrove forest in the world.

The forest is located in Pichavaram a village of Chidambaram town in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu. It is the 2nd largest mangrove forest in the world after Sunderban Mangrove forest in West Bengal.

Tailed like Mangrove branch and bushes

The journey of the trip started from our college campus in morning itself.We were almost twenty people so we took a private mini bus.Trichy is well connected to the place by road. But buses are more frequent from Thanjavur than Trichy bus stand. If you are starting from NIT trichy Campus then it's better to get the bus from Thuvakudi bus stop to Thanjavur. From Thanjavur, buses would take around 2 to 2.5 hours to Chidambaram town.Pichavaram is around 15 km from the city.Public transport is not mostly available direct to boating house but buses are running to local village areas of Pichavaram.

one of the narrow ways of the core of Pichavaram Mangrove forest

Check the video here: Core of Pichavaram Mangrove forest

Traveling for an hour from Thanjavur town a famous Kumbakonam town comes on the way. Kumbakonam is a temple town in Thanjavur district with number of Hindu temples dedicated to Lord Vishnu and Shiva located over the city.Since we are out for only one day trip so we continued our journey.But we visited a very famous temple in Chidambaram town called as Thillai Natarjar temple in the evening while returning.

One of the four entrances of Thillai Natarjar temple Chidambaram town

After driving around of 4 hours from trichy we finally reached Chidambaram town from where the forest is almost forty-five minutes after crossing one village. The place is famous with the name ''Boating house Pichavaram'' which can be seen in Google map easily with exact location and you can use your GPS to reach to the location.

on the way to pichavaram

The boating location has only one restaurant with some seafood items other than that there no place around to take lunch or refreshment near the village.It is better to carry your own foodstuffs along with you and plenty of water for drinking along the way of boating.

A view of the Pichavaram boating area

We started searching for the best tariff for our boating.There are a number of options available to get the boat with the affordable place even if you are in a group of two also.Check out the current tariff in below image.

Current tariff for boating in Pichavaram

Here comes the start of the journey to the second biggest Mangrove forests of the world, peeps on our boats and others boats were so excited for the boating adventure inside the forest. Another side of us someone is surprisingly went into frenzy after seeing on us.Our peeps could not wait to direct to her.Unfortunately, our boat was in different directions to her. The reason for her frenzied everyone would like to know but it can happen only when she sees this post.

The excited lady !

The time we started our boating was not pretty good because the sun was just above our head.

Who cares '' Just covered your head with your lifejacket and if someone has an umbrella take it out '' Aman says after annoyed with this sparkling sunshine.

But how could it happen remember we are the guys we had never cared about taking our own pencil to our examination hall, how could one talk about taking an Umbrella to this place ...LOL 😊😊... But our group had some people who have had it. Saluting those people from my heart ! One among them was Ajay 😉😉

An umbrella guy !

We started drifting toward the forest and came close to mangrove forest of narrow cave consisting of Mangrove branch and small bushes. Bushes are tailed like structure also remind me about the forest of Amazon which I used to see in Discovery show .
LOL 😆😆..Its not the Amazon forest and not the forest of Bear Grylls also.

Here the thrilling starts when we entered the core forest Mangrove.The level of water in the forest comes down when there is low tide so the boat will be not allowed to the beach area.The beach area this time will be deficient of water to row the boat to the beach.so we were also not allowed to go to the beach via forest.

core of Pichavaram mangrove forest

The water level all over the area is shallow only and it's muddy. So, don't think of even putting your legs into it.We started Drifting more to the core forest and it's totally silent and scary. The place is attracted by a number of migratory birds mainly water birds but we could not figured it because of the time of visit.The best time to get migratory birds there is between November to February some source says, though I am not sure about the bird's population.

Birds like Pond heron , pied Kingfisher, some Egrets I could able to observe here.The Kingfisher perching on the mangrove branch targeting and locking his target gave the best experience of bird watching ever for me.I would say the place is not excellent for bird watcher but experiencing nature in mangrove forest is perfect for the nature lover.

Things to Know:

Mangroves are the group of tree and shrubs that live in the coastal intertidal zone.
The total area of the mangroves in India is about 6,740 km sq. which make about 7% of the world mangroves.
The Great Sundarbans is the largest Mangroves region in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.