Road trip to Kodai – Part II

Sunday 07:00 AM

It’s a cold sunday morning and we are forced to order room service (Coffee and Tea) to warm ourselves. As expected, the quality is not too good and we decide that this will be the only time we will order ‘Royal’ room service. A few of the idlis packed from Trivandrum are still left and we polish them off for a quick breakfast.

Sunday 09:00 AM

We have one full day at Kodai and want to make the most of it. Our first stop is Bryant park and we park close to the lake. Most of the shops by the lake are closed at this time and there are hardly any vehicles around. Kodai it appears wakes up late.

We purchase entry tickets to the park and find that we have the huge park almost entirely to ourselves.

We enjoy the company of flowers, beautiful plants and trees for over an hour. Nandu has a gala time enjoying the open spaces she normally does not have access to.

We leave the park by around 11:00 AM and have hot masala tea and biscuits from a roadside vendor. Nandu and grandparents decide to take some rest and head off to the car. Wife and self decide to check out Coaker’s walk, the starting point of which is a stone’s throw away from the lake. Coaker’s walk is a well planned walkway extending for around a kilometer along the sides of a mountain. The view from the Coaker’s walk was very good. The only irritant was a loudspeaker playing tamil songs quite some distance away in the valley. After the brisk walk, we take a break with steaming hot coffee.

Sunday 12:00 PM

Back at the base (in the car safely parked near the lake), grandparents and Nandu are busy painting in a picture book. Since it was too early for lunch, wifey and I spend some time walking by the side of the lake. By this time, the activity around the stalls and the number of tourists had increased

All of us were tired and hungry after a great morning of sight seeing by foot and we were eagerly looking forward to lunch. We manage to locate ‘Tawa’ near Anna Salai – and find it to be a very small dhaba with just 4-5 tables. The food there was as good as the internet posting I read had promised. The fluffy phulkas were hot and the dishes had the authentic punjabi touch.

Sunday 02:00 PM

All good things must come to an end and so was the case with the beautiful weather. Just as we exited the dhabha, Kodai started getting enveloped in a blanket of fog. It only got worse as the afternoon progressed.

Our first stop post lunch was ‘Valley view point’ formerly known as and still popular as ‘Suicide point’.

The only things we saw at Suicide point were a lonely monkey and mist ‘decorated’ with some plastic waste in the foreground! The ladies though had a good time buying token gifts for friends/relatives from the many shops there.

Next we rushed to Pillar rocks. Neither could we see any pillars nor any rocks ! The mist got there before us.

We were in two minds as to whether to proceed to the next spot or to return before the fog fully took over. Having come so far, we decided to move on. Next stop was ‘Guna caves’ – the place where the movie Guna was shot. Who can forget the great performance by Kamal Hassan ?

There was no mist problem here and we got as close to the caves as possible. In the picture below you can faintly make out the outline of the caves.

During the walk back to the road, monkeys lined up on both sides of the path looking expectedly at the humans (for food)

We drive on and reach the pine forest. As far as the eye can see, there are hundreds of pine trees and not a single soul in sight! We spend 20-25 minutes here walking about (with Nandu it is more like running around) and soaking in the atmosphere of the place. In hindsight, I would say that this was the best spot we visited in Kodai. Really wish we got here earlier and could spend more time here.

It is getting colder and we decide to drive on, we soon reach a spot where we find a young boy on a scooter selling tea. Adjacent to the road is a memorial of some sort – can’t recollect now what for. We spend some time here.

By now the fog started returning and both grandparents and grand daughter were shivering in the cold.

We decide to head back to town and enroute we find Meenakshi Bhavan – the famous Madurai eatery !

Surprisingly even at 5 PM they are still serving only thali meals and we decide to go to Astoria for coffee. Visibility is getting worse now.

We quickly have coffee (Nandu has an early dinner) and return to the hotel.

All in all, an exhausting but a very satisfying day.

Monday morning we plan to check out of the hotel and drive back to Trivandrum. But the fog delays our morning start and by the time we start from Kodai it is well past noon. We are forced to change our plans and stop over night at Madurai. Thanks to this, we manage to make a visit to Meenakshi temple at Madurai (now that is another story). The return journey to Trivandrum is uneventful - though we did make a couple of stops to rest enroute. Reached home sweet home on Tuesday evening after a short but fulfilling Kodai trip.