The rainforest fragments around Valparai town hold lion-tailed macaques, an endemic Western Ghats primate with a silver mane and black coat, listed as endangered and found nowhere outside these hills. Troops are habituated enough to be watched at close range in the canopy above the road.

The estate roads at dawn and dusk are where elephants are encountered, moving between forest patches. There is a local early-warning system for exactly this reason — treat every corner as if a herd might be behind it, and never get between animals and cover.

The forest patches and their fruiting trees hold great hornbill and Malabar grey hornbill, Nilgiri langur, and a superb endemic bird list — Malabar trogon, grey-headed bulbul and Nilgiri flycatcher among them.

The Topslip and Parambikulam side of the reserve, lower down, offers more conventional safari drives with gaur, sambar, dhole and the reserve's tigers — present, protected, and rarely seen.

The Anamalai high ranges hold Nilgiri tahr on the crags, a mountain ungulate restricted to these hills.

September to March is the practical window, avoiding the heaviest monsoon; the plateau is cool and wet by Indian lowland standards year-round.

Practicalities

Valparai is reached by a famously steep road with forty hairpin bends from Pollachi, itself a couple of hours from Coimbatore airport. Accommodation ranges from estate bungalows to simple guesthouses.

The conservation research based here on human-elephant coexistence is among the most respected in India, and guides connected to it are far better than generic operators at explaining what you are looking at.