A Kick of Kodai - Days I & II
When you have a looong weekend coming up, and your work-life is getting stressier, what better way to cool yourself than to visit the coolest hill-station around, that too with the coolest set of friends! In the midst of all the holiday-mood, our trip had come to the brink of cancellation, owing to non-availability of accomodation & transport. But thanks to the valiant efforts of the organizers, something came up. So off we went, to Kodaikanal, 17 of us (2 last-minute barge-ins included!), in a Sumo(9) & a Qualis (8) - a Trip never to forget.
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Fri
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21:30- We left our campus, jubilant as always!
(never mind the fact that our 2 drivers were bozos at highway-driving).
En-route, those in the Qualis (which is where I was sitting), it was mostly bakar-time and map-viewing-time (mine was the only map we had). The only stop was at a petrol bunk, where my friends in the Sumo came out with the obscene rendering of a song, I've ever heard.
23:15- Come Krishnagiri, TN, we are still looking for the State-Road-Tax office. Guess what?! We missed it 60 km behind, near Hosur!!
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Sat
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00:30- We've backtracked to the God-Damn tax office (you can imagine what the mood was like, esp against the bozos)! The Qualis got all-clear with its tax payment in minutes. But the Sumo has a case of missing-original-docs!
03:30- Can you imagine a Qualis filled with 15 bags, a sleeping driver, and 17 students in the boot, with nothing to do, but wait for the Sumo to return from Bangalore?? Neither can I!!
05:00- The Sumo returns, except that its a different one now, with a different (relatively slower-driving) bozo! The commosion was not so much about what had caused the delay, as about whether to continue with this expedition! In the end, the organizers prevailed sensibly, by saying that this was a much-needed break, and that we must continue with our travel. What have we lost; maybe one day less of sight-seeing, thats all.
Remember: "Happiness lies along the road, not at the end of the journey"
09:30- Sweltering Salem arrives, as do our pangs of exhaustion & hunger, thanks to a sleepless night on the roads. We feast on a 3-course South-Indian breakfast (dosas, idlis, puris), alongwith beverages & tit-bits that could not be kept count of. And hit the road again.
15:00- Dindigul had been crossed, next stop was Kodai. Excuse me, weren't we supposed to be going to a hill station? But there have been no hills in sight for the past 2 hours! And as for the temperatures, believe me, you don't want me talking here about how we cooled off (without water)! A coconut-water stall turned out to be our savior, from dehydration & fatigue.
16:30- Hills ahoy! We've almost reached the
top, but the temperature change is not as dramatic as expected. There were plans of getting into a waterfall, which was supposed to lie on the way. But one look at it (the water), and we realised it wasn't even worth touching! Next task - "Ctrl+F: Hotel Palace" (we'd booked 5 rooms). Its at the lowest point of the city, so almost everything else is uphill. (It was also the pettiest hotel I'd ever been to... but hey, this is peak-season, and a booking made from Blore by some local rookie).
18:00- Bathed and freshened, we set out for a light stroll towards the marketplace. Oh, I forgot Pet-Pooja first!! Our breakfast & lun-tea (lunch+tea, considering the passage of the day) were almost the same. I chose to fast though (partaking fluids only), in anticipation of a hearty dinner (and also a slimmer waistline!).
19:00- Water, they say is the ultimate assuage.
When you see not just water, but a lake (the famous Kodai-Lake, with a perimeter of 5.5 kms, supposedly), you can't be stopped from fraking out, irrespective of the day's happenings! Thus, began a marathon cycling mela, which lasted 2 hours almost!
Single-cycles, double-cycles; all were taken. Tricycles were left out deliberately, as the agenda was to learn to balance life as it comes! (sorry for the philosophy)
21:00- Dinner was beckoning. Six of us are non-vegetarians, and we were interested in satisfying only our palate. The veggies went on a hunting spree all by themselves, and the 6 of us came to this decent-looking Kuvai restaurant. It was the best meal I had during the whole trip. One strange phenomenon: the # of items available from the menu-card drops at a regular rate every passing minute, as all eateries close by 10PM (can you believe that, in a tourist spot like this?). Nevertheless, we loved every chicken dish we managed to lay our hands on.
22:30- Back to Hotel Palace, joined later by the veggies (they'd had a nice meal too, although they found the place a lil' later than us). The plan was to retire early, to start sight-seeing in
earnest the following day. But when you are in a group as large and as boisterous as ours, energy seems to diffuse, as well as multiply. So by the time the jokes, pranks & sleeping-arrangements were done with, it was well past midnight.
The hotel management turned out to be worse than the hotel, what with slapping charges on every extra bedding & tea cups. We relented, but not without expressing our dissent. All said and done, this trip was not at a point where we could look for & get better places. So we had to yield to their demands, but refused to pay till check-out.
The night was definitely cool, but I made myself smug in the snug, with a nice little rug! My next moment of consciousness was only when I awoke next morning. (slept like a log, huh? I, for one, slept like the dead!)
To be continued... (days 3, 4)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fri
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21:30- We left our campus, jubilant as always!
(never mind the fact that our 2 drivers were bozos at highway-driving).
En-route, those in the Qualis (which is where I was sitting), it was mostly bakar-time and map-viewing-time (mine was the only map we had). The only stop was at a petrol bunk, where my friends in the Sumo came out with the obscene rendering of a song, I've ever heard.
23:15- Come Krishnagiri, TN, we are still looking for the State-Road-Tax office. Guess what?! We missed it 60 km behind, near Hosur!!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sat
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
00:30- We've backtracked to the God-Damn tax office (you can imagine what the mood was like, esp against the bozos)! The Qualis got all-clear with its tax payment in minutes. But the Sumo has a case of missing-original-docs!
03:30- Can you imagine a Qualis filled with 15 bags, a sleeping driver, and 17 students in the boot, with nothing to do, but wait for the Sumo to return from Bangalore?? Neither can I!!
05:00- The Sumo returns, except that its a different one now, with a different (relatively slower-driving) bozo! The commosion was not so much about what had caused the delay, as about whether to continue with this expedition! In the end, the organizers prevailed sensibly, by saying that this was a much-needed break, and that we must continue with our travel. What have we lost; maybe one day less of sight-seeing, thats all.
Remember: "Happiness lies along the road, not at the end of the journey"
09:30- Sweltering Salem arrives, as do our pangs of exhaustion & hunger, thanks to a sleepless night on the roads. We feast on a 3-course South-Indian breakfast (dosas, idlis, puris), alongwith beverages & tit-bits that could not be kept count of. And hit the road again.
15:00- Dindigul had been crossed, next stop was Kodai. Excuse me, weren't we supposed to be going to a hill station? But there have been no hills in sight for the past 2 hours! And as for the temperatures, believe me, you don't want me talking here about how we cooled off (without water)! A coconut-water stall turned out to be our savior, from dehydration & fatigue.
16:30- Hills ahoy! We've almost reached the
top, but the temperature change is not as dramatic as expected. There were plans of getting into a waterfall, which was supposed to lie on the way. But one look at it (the water), and we realised it wasn't even worth touching! Next task - "Ctrl+F: Hotel Palace" (we'd booked 5 rooms). Its at the lowest point of the city, so almost everything else is uphill. (It was also the pettiest hotel I'd ever been to... but hey, this is peak-season, and a booking made from Blore by some local rookie).18:00- Bathed and freshened, we set out for a light stroll towards the marketplace. Oh, I forgot Pet-Pooja first!! Our breakfast & lun-tea (lunch+tea, considering the passage of the day) were almost the same. I chose to fast though (partaking fluids only), in anticipation of a hearty dinner (and also a slimmer waistline!).
19:00- Water, they say is the ultimate assuage.When you see not just water, but a lake (the famous Kodai-Lake, with a perimeter of 5.5 kms, supposedly), you can't be stopped from fraking out, irrespective of the day's happenings! Thus, began a marathon cycling mela, which lasted 2 hours almost!
Single-cycles, double-cycles; all were taken. Tricycles were left out deliberately, as the agenda was to learn to balance life as it comes! (sorry for the philosophy)
21:00- Dinner was beckoning. Six of us are non-vegetarians, and we were interested in satisfying only our palate. The veggies went on a hunting spree all by themselves, and the 6 of us came to this decent-looking Kuvai restaurant. It was the best meal I had during the whole trip. One strange phenomenon: the # of items available from the menu-card drops at a regular rate every passing minute, as all eateries close by 10PM (can you believe that, in a tourist spot like this?). Nevertheless, we loved every chicken dish we managed to lay our hands on.
22:30- Back to Hotel Palace, joined later by the veggies (they'd had a nice meal too, although they found the place a lil' later than us). The plan was to retire early, to start sight-seeing in
earnest the following day. But when you are in a group as large and as boisterous as ours, energy seems to diffuse, as well as multiply. So by the time the jokes, pranks & sleeping-arrangements were done with, it was well past midnight.The hotel management turned out to be worse than the hotel, what with slapping charges on every extra bedding & tea cups. We relented, but not without expressing our dissent. All said and done, this trip was not at a point where we could look for & get better places. So we had to yield to their demands, but refused to pay till check-out.
The night was definitely cool, but I made myself smug in the snug, with a nice little rug! My next moment of consciousness was only when I awoke next morning. (slept like a log, huh? I, for one, slept like the dead!)
To be continued... (days 3, 4)
posted by Vivek Kant Indrayan at 11:11 am
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