Wildlife · Long read · 12 min read

Padayappa: The King of Munnar

Long curved tusks, a limp in one hind leg and a weakness for fruit stalls: the life and legend of the wild tusker who walks Munnar's roads as if he owns them.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

Every hill town has its celebrities. Munnar's most famous resident does not live in a bungalow or run a tea estate. He weighs several tonnes, carries a pair of long, curving tusks and walks with a slight limp. Tea pluckers know his habits, shopkeepers know his favourite fruit, and drivers on the Marayoor road slow down when they hear he is about. His name is Padayappa, and to many people in the high ranges he is simply the King of Munnar.

▶ Video: Padayappa, the King of Munnar

Munnar's famous wild tusker, known for his long curved tusks. More in our video gallery

A name from the movies

Padayappa is named after the hero of the 1999 Tamil blockbuster Padayappa, starring Rajinikanth. Munnar sits on the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border, many of its estate families speak Tamil, and Rajinikanth films are loved on both sides of the hills. Local people gave the name to the big tusker with the confident walk, and it stuck so firmly that even the Forest Department now uses it. A forest official once explained that locals give the area's handsome tuskers the names of Rajinikanth films. Another Munnar tusker is called Kabali, after a later Rajinikanth film.

The name fits. Like the film's hero, Padayappa goes where he pleases and expects the road to clear for him.

The sack of carrots

Padayappa first made news in 2015, in a story Munnar still loves to tell. A woman selling vegetables at Rajamala, the gateway to Eravikulam National Park, saw the tusker approaching and hid her sack of carrots by the riverside. Padayappa found it anyway. He pulled out the bags, ate the carrots, and went back into the forest without harming her. The story set the pattern for his reputation for years: a big, bold elephant with a sweet tooth, but no interest in hurting people.

The fruit-stall years

Munnar's roadsides are lined with stalls selling fruit and vegetables to tourists, and Padayappa learned that a wooden stall full of bananas, pineapples and carrots is far easier to raid than a forest. His visits became a regular part of town life.

• Apr 2020During the COVID-19 lockdown, with roads empty of people and traffic, Padayappa was filmed walking calmly through the deserted streets of Munnar town at night. Residents joked that he was patrolling the lockdown.
• Aug 2020He raided the fruit shop of K. Palraja near Grahamsland Estate, about 3.5 km from Munnar town. Palraja rebuilt the shop, and Padayappa came back twice within two weeks.
• Feb 2021On a single night, 11 February, he ate fruit worth an estimated ₹25,000 from Palraja's stall. The next night Palraja came face to face with him in his autorickshaw. The elephant did not attack.
• Apr 2022He raided a fruit and vegetable shop on GH Road for the sixth time, eating produce worth about ₹40,000 and damaging the shop.
• 5 Apr 2022He stepped in front of a KSRTC bus heading into Munnar near the DySP office and damaged its windscreen. The passengers were unhurt.
• Nov 2022A ration shop in Munnar was wrecked, one of several raids on the same shop in three months. Forest officials began studying why he had become bolder.

Lockdown changed things. With fewer people, vehicles and noise on the forest edges in 2020 and 2021, elephants grew used to coming closer to town. Once Padayappa had learned where food was easy to find, he kept coming back.

Musth: the dangerous season

Like all adult bulls, Padayappa goes through musth for a period each year. Testosterone levels rise sharply, a dark fluid runs from glands on the temples, and the elephant becomes restless, irritable and unpredictable. A bull that is tolerant of people for most of the year can be dangerous in musth. Most of Padayappa's run-ins with vehicles have happened during these seasons.

• Jan 2023While he was in musth, a contractor tried to drive him off a road near a tea estate by revving his vehicle and blaring the horn. The video spread on social media and the Forest Department filed a non-bailable case under the Wildlife (Protection) Act. Days later Padayappa damaged vehicles and trampled crops in the hills.
• Mar 2023On the Marayoor–Munnar road near Nemakkadu estate, he approached a Palani–Thiruvananthapuram KSRTC bus and broke a window and side mirror.
• May 2023On the Mattupetty road he pulled sacks of tea dust out of a parked lorry.
• Jun 2023Near Echo Point he blocked the Munnar–Mattupetty road for a long time and damaged three roadside shops while crowds gathered to film him.
• Mar 2025Over two nights in the Lakkadu estate area near Devikulam he damaged shops, a factory outlet and two houses. In one, belonging to a roadside vendor, he ate pineapples bought for sale at the viewpoint, then damaged five more stalls before labourers drove him off with noise.
• Jan 2026Officials announced that he had entered musth. A 12-member Rapid Response Team, including a veterinary doctor and a deputy ranger, tracked him around the clock in two shifts after a vehicle was damaged near the Goodarvila estate.
• Feb 2026On the Munnar–Marayoor road at night he smashed the window of a tourist bus and the windscreen of an SUV. The occupants escaped unhurt.

One report put the toll from a single earlier musth season at more than twenty damaged vehicles. Almost every incident involved property, not people.

The waste plant at Kallar

The saddest chapter in Padayappa's story is about rubbish. Munnar's food and vegetable waste is collected at a plant at Kallar, near Nallathanni, to be turned into manure. For years Padayappa has visited it to feed on the waste, and in 2024 he was filmed eating plastic bags along with vegetable scraps. Wildlife activists warned that plastic could seriously harm his health.

A High Court-appointed expert panel looking at the Munnar elephants recommended in 2024 that they should not be captured. Instead they should be kept under constant watch, the area should be kept free of garbage, and a solar fence should be built around the Kallar waste centre. Even so, in April 2026 Padayappa broke through a newly installed electric fence at the plant and fed on unsorted waste, plastic included. The lesson is plain: as long as there is easy food at the edge of town, he will find a way to it.

Gentle giant or problem elephant?

Padayappa divides opinion. To many residents and tourists he is a beloved icon, the elephant everyone hopes to glimpse on the drive to Marayoor. In 2024 a group of activists asked the Chief Wildlife Warden to give him special care and food. The Munnar range officer replied that the department would not feed him, because a wild elephant must keep its natural feeding habits.

To shopkeepers who have rebuilt their stalls again and again, and drivers who have lost windscreens, he is a costly and frightening neighbour. After damage during his musth seasons, some residents have demanded that he be moved out of Munnar, as the tusker Arikomban was moved from Chinnakanal in 2023.

The difference between the two is important. Other tuskers in the region have been blamed for human deaths. The reports we found describe Padayappa raiding food and damaging shops and vehicles, but they record no attacks on people: a 2024 report noted that although he is often seen near homes, and sometimes provoked, he has not attacked anyone. That record is why experts have so far argued for managing the conditions that draw him to town rather than removing him.

Why does Padayappa come to town?

• Easy food. Fruit stalls, ration shops and waste dumps offer far more calories than the forest, for far less effort.
• Habituation. Years of living near people, and the quiet of the lockdown, have made him comfortable on roads and in estates.
• A broken landscape. Munnar's forests are cut by roads, tea estates and settlements, so elephants moving between patches of forest have to pass through human areas.
• Age and injury. An older bull with a limp may find it easier to feed close to roads than to travel long distances through steep forest.
• People. Crowds that gather for photographs, vehicles that crowd him and people who provoke him all add stress, especially in musth.

If you meet Padayappa

On our own safaris, drivers know Padayappa's haunts and his moods. If he is on the road, we wait at a safe distance, switch off the engine when it is sensible, and let him decide when the road is open again. Seeing him that way, calm and unhurried in his own landscape, is one of the great privileges of the Munnar hills.

He was here before the tourists, before the traffic and before the fruit stalls. In Munnar, the road still belongs to the King.

Note on sources: there is no official biography of Padayappa. This account is assembled from dated news reports between 2015 and 2026. Some figures, such as his age and the number of vehicles damaged, are estimates quoted in those reports.