ABOUT

The Silent Valley National Park with an area of 237. 52 sq km is located in the Northeastern corner of Palakkad district. ). It is located in the Nilgiri Hills, within the Palakkad District of Kerala, South India. This region was explored in 1847 by the botanist Robert Wight,[1] This park is one of the last undisturbed tracts of South Western Ghats mountain rain forests and tropical moist evergreen forest in India. The core of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve is the Silent Valley National Park. Despite its name, the Silent Valley is a rich storehouse of biodiversity. It is a true Garden of Eden for students of life sciences, professional scientists and field biologists. The visitors' centre for the park is at Sairandhri. The Silent Valley region is locally known as "Sairandhrivanam", which in Malayalam means Sairandhri's Forest. Sairandhri is Draupadi, the wife of the Pandavas in the epic Mahabharatha, who disguised herself as Sairandhri, the maid of a queen named Sudeshna, while her family was in exile. More than 1000 species of flowering plants which include about 110 species of orchids, more than 34 species of mammals, about 200 species of butterflies, 400 species of moths, 128 species of beetles of which 10 are new to science, about 150 species of birds including almost all the 16 endemic birds of southern India.The River Kunthi descends from the Nilgiri hills, from an altitude of 2000 m above sea level, and traverses the entire length of the valley and rushes down to the plains through the deep gorge. The River Kunthi never turns brown and is always crystal clear.