Hello world!

I love travelling and I have been traveling  for quite some years now. So far my travels are limited to India for two reasons, 1. Budget  2. To cover entire India before exploring the rest of the world. Most of my travels are exciting and I have always wanted to pen them. Two reasons held me so far 1. Laziness 2. Losing out on time/enthu once I’m back on regular work

After so many years on this auspicious full moon day (Feb 10) I’m making my first attempt to blog my recently concluded kodaikanal trip.

The Trip

Feb 8 year on year gives way for my Marriage anniversary :) and this time I wanted to spend the day in a calm and relaxed surrounding. I was contemplating on three places. 1. Tirupathi 2. Some resort in ECR 3. Goa.

‌Tirupathi was ruled out (sorry Venky) as it would be just a one day trip from my place and Mrs. didn't want to make it that hectic. Goa too was ruled out as we were there on our very first anniversary and so it was decided to go to some good beach side resort in ECR.

For reasons beyond my reasoning, most of the good resorts in ECR I was looking at were booked for the date (Feb 7 n 9) and the available ones were way too costly (close to 7k for a day).  As I was getting little irritated on what to do as it was already Feb 5, an email from Stayzilla (www.stayzilla.com ) made my day / trip. In Oct 2016, StayZilla had some contest in Twitter for their free home stay and I faintly remember having booked a free home stay  for my wedding anniversary (on Feb 8) since it happened some two months back and I was not too keen on Kodaikanal at that point of time, I totally forgot it .

As I said Feb 5 I got an (sms & email) from StayZilla that my home stay is ready and the host looks forward to serve me. Amidst the place fiasco this email came as a boon and I started planning for Kodaikanal.

I booked my sleeper bus through red bus (www.redbus.in ) with Thirumal Alagu Travels (www.tattravels.net ) which runs directly from Chennai to Kodai.

Feb 5 and 6 I had surprise visitors and a surprise event which might take another blog.  So till 4pm on Feb 6 I was not ready and by 7pm we had started for Kodai. The bus was on time and the sleeper berths were fantastic, so when we opened our eyes on Feb 7 morning we were already in Kodaikanal and my host Mr.Vinod Iyer (https://www.stayzilla.com/stays/double-bedded-room-in-kodaikanal-119273 ) has already messaged me that he is waiting at the bus drop point in his car to pick us. So at 7 am we were in Kodaikanal and the weather was 10° c. Mr Iyer is a ex navy man and gave us a good history of himself and Kodai. His wife is a wonderful cook and I bet one can stay in their place just for their food and coffee.

After keeping our luggage and getting refreshed (after a good sleep again in the cozy morning as the purpose of the trip was relaxing) close to 1 pm, hiring Mr. Iyer’s TVS Jupiter motorcycle, we started our Kodai exploration. The first stop was hotel Astoria (http://www.astoriaveg.com) after having a cursory pic at Upper lake view. For INR 115 the unlimited south Indian meal they offered is wholesome and their service is excellent.  Their repeated serving of kuttu, poriyal & appalam upmteen number of times, made me feel ashamed thinking about our own saravana bhavan. With belly growing by 3-4 inches & cozy weather, would have preffered a nice nap over tour, my mind went ahead and we saw a property of my friend at Vilpatti road. Oh yeah, for a moment, a cop stopped us, thanks to my impeccable tamil I came out with ease. The property I saw was adjacent to sterling kodai resort (http://www.sterlingholidays.com/sterling-destination-network/hill-station/kodaikanal/by-the-lake/)

To while away the afternoon time, we checked in at Sterling Kodai, property. God had some other plans and the marketing head started discussing about their membership plan and the whole discussion (after their campus / property tour) took close to 2 hours. To say the least their property is fantastic and they have a whole lot of outdoor & indoor activities. On the way back we had darshan of the  Jain Temple located at Chettiar Park Road and Kurunchi Andavar Temple. Chettiar park gets closes by  5 pm, so we  reserved it for some other day. We did little bit of shopping at shops located near by Kurunchi Andavar Temple.

Quickly we did a circle around Kodai lake and went back home to have an excellent dinner of chappathis & bhaji made from Mr and Mrs iyers homegrown farm fresh veggies. The food tasted heavenly and we called it a day.

Day 2

After a good night’s sleep, I woke up at 5.30, thanks to my phone buzzing enough with anniversary wishes J After having breakfast at the homestay we started for poomparai and manavanoor. The route was explained by the host the previous night and it was a fabulous drive. I guess even at 11 am the temperature was round 15 C only. On the way we were lucky to spot a bison. The view of palani hills, irula houses were breath taking. Enroute we stopped at Mahalaxmi temple, Sai baba temple and a telescopic view point to view waterfalls and few other stuff. Most of the falls were dry owing to poor monsoon for the last two years. Hoping and praying this year the monsoon blesses us with lot of water for the water to fall through the falls J in full stream. The Kuzhandivel Murugar Temple at Poomparai Village is a detour of close to 3 km and the temple is well maintained. History tells that the chariot of this temple is biggest among all hill temples and even these days, on occasions the chariot is pulled only by humans numbering close to 6k, 3k in the front & 3k at the rear. One more interesting fact is one can visit this temple only as per the lords wish. Story is, there are many who come till the village and yet get distracted some way or the other and thus not making it to the temple if the god doesn’t call them. The deity Bala Murugar grants the devotees wishes and the only wish I had this time has to wait at least 9 months to check if it’s true or not. My hunch says it’s true.

Next stop was the rabbit & sheep research centre which is close to manavanoor lake, its not a great place and very well could have been skipped. After a poor experience here, I was not having tall hopes of the lake but to my pleasant surprise, the lake, the path to it and the parisal boating were awesome. Mrs enjoyed a lot and I could see lot of foreigners coming very well prepared with frisbee, foot ball, music instruments and stuff to spend a good time. Many scenes of the movie ‘I’ was shot here. Food is a problem for vegetarians here, so after a good time started back for Kodai. The next stop was at Moir point and view of the hills from this spot was fabulous. Entry to Berjiam lake was closed by the forest officials as Elephants have started moving on this road. From there we proceeded to Guna caves, skipping pine trees cine shooting spot as we started getting hungry since it was 4 pm by then. Guna caves too was good and the view from the watch tower  was mind blowing

PS: The monkeys here are notorious and snatch any food items we take. So its better to avoid such items from its sight, I lost a bunch of carrots J

We skipped suicide point and went straight to papa john’s to have pizza. The food was great but I found it a bit expensive. I was told Tava Restaurant is great, so I thought of continuing my food there too. After making 3 rounds to locate it, we found the board saying its closed on Wednesday. So we headed to Hotel Astoria to complete our dinner.

Trying to locate bear shola falls we wasted closed to 15 minutes and it was dark already. So we called it a day and headed back to our homestay. My Iyer was courteous enough to extend our stay by one more day free of cost J

Day 3

After having wonderful poori, kazhangu for breakfast we covered suicide point (green valley view point), rock pillar & pine trees cine spot. From there we proceeded to the observatory at Indian Institute of Astro Physics (https://www.iiap.res.in/centers/kodai) and saw the museum on solar system. Next destination was bear shola falls and as the guard said it too had dried up, we didn’t walk the 5 minutes trek needed to reach the falls. Next stop was coaker’s walk. It was close to 11 am and was not a great time to walk. The view was great and we tried the local fruit varieties. Next we went to Byrant Park which is just opposite to coaker’s walk and it is huge. We went again to the Jain Temple and a quick visit to Kurunchi Andavar Temple as it was ThaiPoosam. Next we went to Chettiar Park, it is a private park and well maintained. Families can spend quality time here as there are few rides / swings for children. We had our lunch at Tava Restaurant. The food was good (they serve jain food too but we didn’t try) the rates were a bit on the costlier side.

After the hefty meal we proceeded for our afternoon siesta at our homestay. After waking up got refreshed to start the return journey L. Dinner was excellent with hot appam and coffee by Mrs Iyer. Mr Iyer dropped us at TAT office for our return bus,as we had close to 30 minutes so we roamed around the shops, enquired kodai club, had paan, bought snacks for the journey and boarded the bus by 7 pm. The bus was better occupied than my onward journey.

Though after taking breaks at Oothu village (for vegetable loading) Battalagundu (for dinner) and at Dindugul bypass (for passengers) the bus dropped us at koyambedu at 5:30 am and I was home by 7 am.

The trip was awesome in more than one way. Just I and wife in the entire 3 1/2 days, budget friendly (just 7k) Thanks to StayZilla for the free homestay and iyer’s food which was tasty, healthy and pocket friendly (INR 500 only for 2 dinner, 2 breakfast and n coffees). The major expenditure of this trip was the 2 wheeler (TVS Jupiter) which we hired, which accounted for close to 2.7k for the three days. Not sure of any other economical alternative at Kodai as 2 wheeler rental is not common / cheap as in Goa. If you have any info in this front pls do share.
This is my first blogging experience. Hope you  enjoyed reading it. Comments are welcome.

PS: I’m thanking God to have cancelled by ECR resort plan (hearing many mla’s are locked up there J)