Thenmala Eco Tourism Leisure Zone -Sculpture Garden,Naturetrails

Sculpture park and leisure zone photos from  Thenmala eco tourism project, Kerala/ India. What you can expect here is sculptures blended into the green extravaganza of the tropical tropical dense forest, in this small valley village of western ghats. The leisure zone and sculpture garden is beside the Thenmala dam, the Irrigation-hydro electric dam of Kollam district / Kerala. The main attractions of the leisure zone and sculpture park are, as the names implies sculptures and interesting resting points inside the forest outskirts of Schenthurinny wildlife sanctuary beside the dam.

Nature trails, board walks, hanging bridge across the river stream that continues from the dam spillway etc are other attractions. The sculptures of animals, cosmic flying men, depiction of ideas and thoughts, mythical characters like Vikramaditya and vethala, lord shiva, parasurama the Hindu avatar of God etc are arranged in various points of this sculpture park. We have to walk through the eco nature trail to have a sight of these sculptures and in the middle there are nicely designed, stepped resting platforms inside forest. The resting points are vast enough for a group of 50 to 60 tourists to be seated together and can have some leisurely activities in between your tour trip.
Thenmala Leisure Zone
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The signboard of leisure zone, showing deterioration with that missing 'i' in tourism. We visited the adventure zone before being here by 5:30pm of the day. It will be better to visit the adventure zone before leisure zone in-case you are here after 4 pm as adventure zone will be closing by 5:30 pm whereas leisure zone by 6:30pm.

Leisure zone is much near to the tourist facilitation centre from where you have to get the entry tickets and directions to various spots of this Kerala's eco tourism project area.


Nature Trails @ Sculpture park, Thenmala
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This is the way you have to start your walk into the forest, don't be hesitated, various people and animals who can't move for their entire life waiting to see you there, if i missed the knack, was mentioning the sculptures. of sculpture garden. The bamboo like fencing of the pathway is made of concreate pillars. To blend in to the trees painted and shaped them to look alike bamboos. The walking path is designed like water ripples like concrete plastering for grip.

Various bamboo erected tourist information boards can also be seen around inside the forest. If you are a nature lover or nature tourist am sure you gonna read all those info boards. Interesting facts regarding our forests and birds are written in those boards for you. What happened with us was, we were in a hurry to finish our walk as it was already late and sunset is nearing. And before the park closes we had to walk and see the sculptures and other attractions, skipping all those nature info boards.

Cave Man sculpture @ leisure zone
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The cave man peeping his visitors from his rock cave, a sculpture seen in the leisure park while walking along the nature trails. Don't know why is he, the sculpture given color red. The cave obviously is built artificially with rocks and cement.


Sculptures of Conferencing Men
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Blue-men sculptures in a conference, lightened under a candle flame. Thoughts about the sculptures can be seen around in small metal planks. You can read them to know what the sculptor exactly meant with the castings after having your own thoughts about it.


Jungle elephants in forest pond
elephant sculptures form thenmala leisure zone,small elephant sculptures placed around forest pond in sculpture garden of thenmala kerala india,elephants and pond
Small elephant sculptures and a small pond built inside the forest of leisure zone in Thenmala. As it was getting late and we inside the forest trees its was getting darker around. Walking alone inside the sculpture park forests, won't be a good feeling unless you like loneliness, coz it can be so alone in there with much only trees and sculptures. Instead if you are a group of enthusiastic travelers or nature lovers you can get the most out of the place.

The photos inside forest came out a little dark and blurry, for ma cellphone's eyes are a little night blind. Low light shots often gives blurry snaps.


Meditating man in Forest
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A meditating man with butterflies on his body. The sculpture has distant similarity to Lord Buddha. If you are checking out yourself there you may not find the word meditating anywhere around the sculpture, but something else in the sculpture info board. Meditation is what i felt seeing the sculpture. Deep Meditation may have made him unaware of those butterflies sitting in his body.

This man among the sculptures is placed somewhere lonely along the forest trail and sometime you may see it only when you reach very closer, especially if sunset is nearing. What stands out in this sculpture is those butterfly paintings that seemed glowing in the darkness.

Man and Woman sculptures
man and woman sculpture inside forest of western ghat thenmala,leisure zone sculpture photos from thenmala ecotourism project

Sculpture of a woman and man seen inside the forest. They were appearing in green color, may be due to the moss gathered from heavy downpour these days in Kerala.

The sculpture of this man and woman is made in body size proportions of real humans. You can see sculptures of various sizes in this sculpture garden of this eco tour zone. From tree big sculptures to small dwarf ones in various shapes based on variety of ideas.


Vikramaditya and Vethala Big Sculpture
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This is one of those big sculptures seen in the park of Thenmala. Covered by the tree shade it was looking as a part of the nature around. From the stories we may have heard in our childhood the idea of this sculpture is taken,  the very characters of Vikramaditya and Vethala.

Other sculptures you may witness are Parashurama, lord Shiva, sculptures about nature, cosmic life and a series of  dancing woman sculptures depicting various mudras of Mohiniyattom- the famous art form of Kerala. Another one was a father and son sitting by the forest bench watching the nature. You can sit with them and take some interesting photos if willing.

Ticket Rates and Working Times of Thenmala Eco tourism Leisure Zone
  •  Entry fee for Adults is INR 30/- and Child INR 20. 
  • Working Time of Leisure Zone is from  11am to 6:30 pm, alike the Adventure zone its also expected to be working on all days.
 Thenmala Leisure Zone Location

The leisure zone with sculpture garden, board walk, swaybridge, nature pathways, resting points etc is just 450 metres away from the tourist facilitation centre, where you have to get the entry tickets.  Leisure zone is beside the Thenmala-Trivandrum route. 

Dont have any idea about the sculpture maker who worked on these park sculptures. Guessing to be some commercial sculpture makers in Kerala. The famous sculpture of Kerala Kanai Kunjiraman, has his sculpture works like Yakshy, Malsya kanyaka (mermaid) etc placed in most prominent tourism spots of kerala like the Malampuzha Dam and Shankumukham. Various growing sculpturs are in and around Kerala and their works are seen in many parks and importanat tour spots of Kerala. The Beach of Kollam has a small sculpture park in front with a huge mermaid sculpture and various other small sculptures. Will be giving you those photos soon as possible.

Many hotels and tour operators of Kerala and of-course in Kollam district have this eco-tourism spot included in their tour packages. When we visited Varkala beaches all the beach hotels and resorts were having Thenmala listed along with the backwaters of Kollam in their tour package info.With another post will be winding up Thenmala eco tourism series by providing you, the eco tour project map. Hope to see you soon back here in this Kerala Tour photo blog, by pixelshots
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1 comments:

  1. Your passion for environment related is highly displayed in your blog. The pictures substantiate your interests. After reading your blog and with the glimpses any one would be tempted to visit this spot

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