Visit to Athirapilly falls from Guruvayur

Athirapilly Falls, Kerala

After having the darshan of Lord Guruvayurappan, we headed towards our next destination, i.e Athirapilly falls. Athirapilly comes under Chalakudy Taluk. We boarded a bus to Thrissur from Guruvayur around 11 a.m., reached Thrissur around 12 p.m., then boarded a bus to Chalakudy.

Thrissur to Chalakudy is around 30kms which took approximately 40 minutes for us to reach Chalakudy from Thrissur, by then, the time was around 2.00 p.m. The Government bus stand looked a bit deserted.

Due to the increased frequency of private buses, we were suggested to go to the Private bus stand, which is at a stone throwaway distance from the government bus stand. Around 2.15 p.m., the bus arrived, looked like scores of people were already waiting for the bus and they swarmed in the very next moment the bus halted. We had to wade in through the crowd to get inside the bus. The bus was literally jam packed. Somehow, one good Samaritan vacated his seat for my wife.

En-route, we saw the debris of the properties that were ravaged during the Kerala Floods, where, one could easily fathom the extent of damage that were inflicted due to the floods.

The roads were a bit curvy, with the serpentine like Chalakudy river flowing on one side and dense forest on the another.

Around 3 p.m., we were near Athirapilly point. No sooner did we de-board the bus than it started raining. It was raining so heavily that we were caught off-guard. Fortunately, there were hawkers selling Umbrellas. Yeah! they made pretty quick bucks, within minutes, all the umbrellas got sold like Hot cakes.

We then proceed towards the falls. The Athirapilly falls has an entrance fee of Rs.15/- . Then, we were let inside in queue. A word of caution here, plastic bottles are not allowed inside. You will get water bottles inside at Rs.20/-, where, the amount of Rs.10/- will be refunded on returning the plastic bottles at the exit. After getting down through the sloppy & muddy path for some 100 metres or so, finally we reached the waterfalls.

The gush of water was so high that we could hear roaring sounds of the river water. Since it had already been raining for the past few days, the water level had swelled and the view of the falls was just ecstatic.

We spent an hour in Athirapilly and then returned to Thrissur around 7 p.m., to embark on to our next destination, Vadakkunathan Temple and Paramekkavu Bhagavathy temple.