Wayanad in a nutshell The Lonely Planet, rates Wayanad as "fantastically unspoilt and satisfyingly remote." Indeed, with a zillion things to do, places to explore and promises of unexpectedly thrilling wildlife encounters, Wayanad is one of India's finest adventure destinations. Well-connected through an intricate network of roadways the drive to Wayanad is fascinating in itself. Whether you are arriving from Kozhikode [Calicut] in Kerala or from Bangalore and Mysore in Karnataka or from Ooty in Tamil Nadu the route slices through dense forests with assured wildlife sightings along the way negotiating incredible hairpin-bends and stop-over viewpoints and stunning panoramas with the weather getting pleasurably cooler as you wind up the mountains. Stunningly green paddy fields hedged in by lush tropical rainforests, salubrious year-round climate, an undulating mountainous terrain with meandering well-maintained roads and most of all, a sense of quietude and impending adventure best sums up Wayanad. Straddling altitudes ranging from 700 to 2,100 meters in the Western Ghats and edging the southern tip of the Deccan Plateau, it is Kerala's 12th district and the only one that shares its borders with both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Plantations of rubber, cardamom, tea and coffee peppered with fields of ginger and impossibly gangly betel nut palms, Wayanad is renowned for its forest reserves inhabited even today by indigenous tribes and some of India's most exotic flora and fauna. Spread across 345 square kilometers, the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary is primarily divided into two parts with Muthanga in the east and Tholpetty in the north. Constituted in 1973, the sanctuary is an integral part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, bounded by Nagarhole and Bandipur in Karnataka to the northeast, and by Mudumalai in Tamil Nadu to the southeast. The region not only boasts the largest population of Asian elephants in the world, the only pine forests in Kerala at Chandanathode, but also the only Earth Dam in India, the Banasura Sagar