Tada Waterfalls – The best weekend destination for Chennai trekkers


Tada waterpool
One of the beautiful waterpools in Tada. The water puddles with pebbles is always a welcoming sight after walking around in scorching Sun.

Tada Waterfalls is located at around 95 kms from Chennai. The actual name of this waterfalls is “Ubbalamadugu Waterfalls”, a telugu name as the waterfalls is located in Andhra pradesh. The Eastern Ghats forest range is dry deciduous but if there is water source inside the forest, the place is usually cool. Tada waterfalls has flowing water at various heights but most of the people visit the base level where there is a beautiful waterpool. Even during dry season, this place has ample water to take bath. We have visited Tada waterfalls in different seasons, so we always had unique experiences in this forest.

Untravelled roads India
If there is no traffic on the road, this is how the path looks like. The wide variety of bushes attracts good number of birds and butterflies. In recent days with 100 days work scheme, all these plants are removed which is really affecting the diversity.

Weekend destination for nature lovers of Chennai

Few years back Tada waterfalls is not a safe place to visit, this is a place where drunkards enjoy the solitude. Recently, forest officials intervened and added some facilities like canteen, toilets etc. Now the place is safe to visit for families but the place is open only after 9.00 AM for public. For birders, that is a trouble as we start our birding by 6.00 AM. There are few rugged roads near the park and as they are at the forest edge usually bird activities are good. Our typical routine was to reach the place early when no humans were around and one time we spotted a beautiful White-eyed buzzard who was enjoying the beautiful morning like us.

Yellow Silk Cotton Tree
Any flower that attracts insects is wonderful to me, so this Yellow Silk Cotton Flower is really special! For the bees it should look like Happy Meals I believe.

One time when we visited the Tada waterfalls, the place was almost yellow in color with the blooms from Silk Cotton Tree. The bees were buzzing on all the flowers of Silk cotton tree and Drongos, Bee-eaters, Leaf-birds were using the opportunity effectively to fill their tummy. Cochlospermum religiosum can be seen only in dry deciduous forests and we have seen them in full bloom only in Tada waterfalls. Usually Bombax ceiba is the common Silk Cotton tree in forest areas , that tree also attracts huge number of insects and birds when in bloom.

Colorful insect
The intrinsic patterns and designs on the insects are always astonishing. The macro world is beyond our imagination.

Even when we visit Courtallam waterfalls we are not very eager to take bath in the falls but in Tada one of the key attractions for us is the waterpool. After 15-20 mins of trekking through rugged stones, there is a beautiful waterpool located amidst tall trees. Tada is usually hot even in rainy season, so after core birding we relax in the waterpool. There is a main waterpool where people starts occupying the keyspots and it soon gets crowded. There are few streams nearby which is equally good to take a dip.

Fish Spa
The free fish spa is one of the main reasons to visit these kind of streams. Sometimes there is a tingling feeling but it is always nice to get our foot cleaned by these stream dwellers.

Crystal Clear Waterpools of Tada

We are used to dirty, polluted water in India. So seeing a crystal clear water in wild is always a luxury. If the water is clean, then the place is usually good for fishes. We visited Tada waterfalls after buying underwater camera and we really enjoyed watching the fishes underwater. We didn’t know the names of the fishes initially, later we found the names for those cute fishes. While enjoying the water, we always had to keep an eye on our belongings as there are Bonnet Macaques. The Bonnet macaques get more confidence on seeing the tourist people who are careless most of the time. We had seen a monkey grabbing an entire 20 packets of Bourbon biscuits so easily and the little one climbed to the tree top in seconds. Till now, I don’t have a clue why that guy brought that much biscuits to a forest walk.

Carnivorous plant
Unlike the large carnivorous plants shown in movies that can swallow a human , this carnivorous Sundew plant is a small one. They trap very small insects.

As nature lovers we always scan our surroundings to spot anything interesting in wild. So when everyone loves to eat biriyani after a bath in the waterfalls, we usually jump around the rocks revitalized. Once when we were frolicking near the stream, Vinod spotted a Sundew plant. After careful closeup look on the plant, we confirmed that as Drosera burmannii. We spotted few more of this carnivoros plant in that single rock and we completely understood the ecological importance of this place only after that. One of the smallest and fastest trapping sundews was just around the corner but none ever notice these fragile ecosystems. We were careful to step on any stones after seeing those tiny beautiful plants.

Picnic spot Tamilnadu
This is the perfect picnic spot for me. These habitats are getting rarer in India, so this is more special to us.

Tada is the best location for butterfly lovers in Chennai. If you visit the place in June, July after good rains you can see butterflies everywhere. Vinod always runs behind butterflies even when he was swimming in the waterpool. We enjoyed watching the mudpuddling of many butterflies like Bluebottle, Grass Yellow and Emigrants near the streams. The Orange-tips fly around everywhere and Nawabs seemed to be omnipresent. Infact our interest with butterflies started off during one of our visits to these forests. Though not exactly in this section of Tada , we had a wonderful experience of seeing hundreds of beak butterflies together in one area. It was quite awesome.

Club beak butterflies mud puddling
The mudpuddling of this many Club beak butterflies is not a common sight. It was fascinating to see this unique looking butterflies gathered in good numbers in Tada

The diversity and numbers of butterflies in Tada pushed us into exploring more of these beauties.

The Eastern Ghats area is much unexplored even with all the raise in naturalists, bird and butterfly watchers in the past decade. So when Western Ghats is praised for all the biodiversity hotspots, the Eastern Ghats is not taken into account as pristine forest areas. We may not enjoy the harsh weather in Eastern Ghats mountain range, but we do enjoy the unique ecosystem of dry deciduous forests. In Tada waterfalls, we had reached the top of the waterfalls only once.

Eastern Bronzeback  - komberi mookan snake
For us Eastern Bronzeback (Dendrelaphis proarchos) is one of the good snake sightings because usually we don’t have much good luck in sighting snakes. Always we end up in seeing just the tail or poor dead ones.

All other times we visited the place, we didn’t have enough time to explore the base of the hills itself.

One time we saw Indian Chameleon very closely and when we were returning back from the waterpool , the Indian Chameleon turned to a meal for a Rat Snake. We always had good birding , butterflying and wildflowers experience in Tada forest range. This is a perfect weekend destination for nature lovers in Chennai.


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