My Kodai Trip

In case you are planning to read the whole blog , Be warned it will take some time to finish.

I think this is my 4th trip to KodaiKanal. A nice little hill station near Madurai (TN). Shortly called as Kodai.

Its about 120 Km from Madurai.

Any typical sight seeing brochure will list more than 15 places to see in Kodai. But I would say there are about 10 places that are worth mentioning. I will come to it when I reach there.

As I said , this is my 4th trip to Kodai.

The first time I think I was too young to remember that many details. It was a trip with my parents and cousins and I didn't pay attention to too much of the details.

The second time was in my college , where we had gone on a college trip. That’s when I realized how nice it was. Especially a place called Coaker's Walk. Had some really great time cycling around the lake, roaming the parks and walking around a place called Coaker's walk. Its literally a walk around the mountain with a breathtaking view of the valley. That’s when I shared with a friend of mine that it would be lovely to come here after marriage :-).

And so it happened, that he remembered it very well and after about 4 years he and my other close friends gifted me an amazingly arranged honeymoon package to Kodai as my wedding gift. We had first class return train tickets from Chennai to Kodai Road (the nearest railway station about 80 Km from Kodai) and a Chauffeured Contessa to pick us up at the station and drive us up and a nice stay at Kodai Resort.

In all these 3 visits, I had not even bothered to do the slightest research for deciding on the place of stay.

So when I decided to go to Kodai 4 years after my marriage ( with my wife and 2 year old daughter ) , for the first time I had to decide on where to stay and how to get to Kodai. Being in Hyderabad, I did all the planning and research online.

Although it didn't turn out to be a very bad decision, It would have helped to have a few tweaks.

This is where I think my blog might be usefull to future travelers who are planning such a trip. (This is more to convince myself that my blog would be usefull :-) ).

I initially thought of staying at TTDC (Tamilnadu Tourism Development Corporation) Hotel whose website has nice details on the sort of rooms and tariff and you can do online booking.

Then someone told me its a bit away from the mainstream Kodaikanal and it wouldn't be that easier to go places from there.

Since there are no convenient private/public transportation like Auto's/Local Buses in Kodaikanal, I ruled it out. I was told there are private taxi's. But I didn't find them that easily there.

Then I decided that I need to stay as close to the 3 main spots I had planned to visit. (Coaker's Walk, Lake , Bryant Park ).

So I based my online research on the location for the accommodation.

I zeroed in on KodaiResorts or Villa Retreat. Kodai Resort had a tariff of 1.5K per day. Villa Retreat seemed like a nice option with around 850 Rs as the tariff for a deluxe double room. (All these are off-season rates. In the season they would be at least 25% higher).

But since I had delayed in taking the decision for the same, I did not get confirmed accommodation with them.

Then I used makemytrip.com and decided on a hotel called JC Residency. I made my decision based on the tag line "Located just a kilometer from the Kodai Lake" (a big mistake) on the hotel's website and the juicy tariff of 690 Rs per day :-).

I had contemplated on traveling by Bus initially. But lack of knowledge on the timings and the routes made us to take a Qualis for the journey from Madurai to Kodai. Its a distance of 120 Km from Madurai and there are several buses which ply from Madurai. (There are several major bus depots in Madurai. Periyar Bus Stand, Maattu Thavani Bus Stand (a seriously funny name. Translates to "Half Saree of a Cow" :-) ), Aarapalaiayam Bus stand. For going to Kodaikanal you need to get a bus from Aarapalaiyam. Apart from the Government buses, you get comfortable private buses also. But it needs a bit of research for which I really did not have enough time in Madurai. Also some of the buses go till halfway mark and then u need to take another bus. If you are traveling alone then its actually not that difficult. But we had already been exhausted by 4 days of travel from Hyderabad to Chennai to madurai and inside madurai. And that day morning we had gone to a place called Azhagar Koil (which warrants a separate blog of its own). We had taken a Qualis to go to Azhagar Koil in the morning for which he charged 500 Rs to and from a place called Vilangudi in Madurai which is actually on the outskirts of Madurai near a water theme park called Athisayam (Oh if you happen to visit Madurai , do visit this place without fail). When we asked him to drop us in Kodai, he charged 2K totally. So I would say roughly a Qualis would cost about 1.5 K to go from Madurai to Kodai. (Drop Only).

It took 2 and a half hours to reach Kodaikanal. We started at 4:00 and reached around 6:30. I had my second thoughts on the hotel when I saw the distance from the Lake to the Hotel. 1 Km on a normal terrain and 1 Km on a hill station is so vastly different. I realized quickly with our 2 year old daughter it would Not at all be ideal to walk a distance of 1Km uphill.

So I started feeling bad that probably we have made a wrong decision. But it was soon made up as the hotel was really neat.

The first thing we noticed was that it had a tiny but nice Children's play area. We thought of going for a small stroll after settling down. But since we had been roaming around in hot and humid conditions for a while, the sudden chillness in the air was very discouraging and so we decided to just make it a very short lived stroll and came back to the hotel. Had dinner in the hotel.

They have a nice restaurant which is not that bad. But their Chicken 65 was probably the worst attempt at Chicken 65 I have ever eaten. It was also probably the worst chicken dish I have ever eaten. (And that coming from a guy who has tried chinese,vietnamese,taiwanse,korean,malaysian,chettinad,punjabi,kerala etc etc etc in 7 countries). ( I was so irked by that dish, that after coming back from Kodai and before leaving for Hyderabad the only afternoon that I spent in Chennai, I made it a point to go to the restaurant from my childhood memories and eat a proper chicken 65 :-) ).

Their morning breakfast dishes were much better. We had Dosa's and Vada.

The hotel had 2 packages for sightseeing with their vehicle. Like I said, they exaggerate the places to see and call it 17 places. And they charge 750 for a whole day sight seeing. I was on a 2 day tour. So I decided to split it into 2 places. For which they gave me an option to take half day trips on 2 days for the same cost. So I took it.

The reason why I call it exaggeration is because of this. This is the list of the places

1. Coaker's Walk
2. St.Marry Church
3. Pambar Falls (Liril)
4. Green Valley View
5. Golf Course
6. Pillar Rocks
7. Guna Caves
8. Pine Tree Forest
9. Shanthi Valley View
10. Suicide Point
11. Vaigai Dam View
12. Upper Lake View
13. 500 Years Old Tree
14. Kurinji Aandavar Temple
15. Chettiar Park
16. Bryant Park
17. Kodai Lake

Of the 17 places they list down... Lake and Bryant Park entrance are practically the same spot. And Coaker's Walk is 10 minutes walk from Bryant Park.

Kurinji Aandavar Temple and Chettiar park are also a few hundred meters apart.

The Views (Green Valley View,Shanthi Valley View,Vaigai Dam View,Upper Lake View) are basically mountain views which are just designated as specific view points. You can hardly spend more than a couple of minutes here.

But don't get me wrong that I am trying to say Kodai is not a nice place. You can just sit in the Bryant Park or Chettiyar park or near the lake and keep enjoying the serene scenery because of one amazing reason, the climate. Its an extremely pleasant climate between march to august. Just taking a stroll around the lake makes you so peaceful.

You can rent a bicycle near the lake and take a ride around the lake if you want. Then there is horse riding around the lake too. And you have boating in the lake. Feb-March is a perfect off-season here for people who want a not so crowded vacation.

Coming back to the hotel, my daughter had a nice time at the Children's area as for the first time she found slides and swings totally for her unlike the parks in Hyderabad where there is always a crowd :-) .

What would have been nice was if the hotel was a bit more nearer to the lake or the coaker's walk or to the shopping areas.

The Villa Retreat and Kodai Resort were both dead close to the Coaker's Walk. There was a hotel called Golden Parks Inn which was right next to the Bus stand and would have ideal for vegetarians as it was right on top of the vegetarian hotel Kovai Annapurna. (This is also available on makemytrip.com . The average room rent per day is around 1.2K ).

The few hundred rupees which these hotels might charge extra would be justified because of the distance that you need to cover if you are staying in a hotel like JC Residency.

Also the room we stayed in, had a great little added attraction. Guess the switch. To switch on the geyser or TV or a light you need to play around with almost all the switches to find out which is the switch. And you should never bother calling maintenance for getting something to work. Because it will start working on its own before the maintenance arrives. :-) . Seriously something must be done about the electrical wiring in this place.

The hotel also gave me another option. They will drop you at a point and pick you at a specific location after a while/when you call for 100 Rs. So you can use this option like a Call Taxi.

Anyways, for returning back to Madurai station we decided to take a vehicle from the hotel itself. They charged 1.4K for this. We had a train at 8:45 pm from Madurai. We started by around 4. The moment we touched down from the hill, the skies literally opened up and we were lashed by heavy winds and rain. Thankfully we did not face such ferocity of the weather in Kodaikanal or on our way down the hill , it would have been very difficult. Finally we reached madurai at 7:30. Took us one hour more on our return journey because of the rain). By now the rains had stopped but had left Madurai floating.

The traffic was in utter chaos. After trying different route's our driver used all his experience and knowledge of Madurai to go through lanes and by lanes of madurai (believe me if somebody had told me that an auto can go through those lanes when it was not even raining, I wouldn't have believed them, but our Bolero did) to get us closer to the station. We were about 500 meters away from the station , when I realized the water levels were so high that ambassador cars were literally floating.
Water started seeping into the Mahendra Bolero that we were in. We were having a mini anti climatic twist to an otherwise peaceful trip. Somehow he managed to get us through all of that water into the station. Left me wondering It was just an hour's rain which has caused so much Chaos. If a city like Madurai faces rains like Bombay/Chennai I wonder what would happen.

Some tidbits

1) Kurinji Flower which blossoms once in every 12 years decided to show up this year for us. :-) . We saw it in a couple of places here and there. By august I think it will be in full bloom. The last time it came was 1994. The next time it will happen would be 2018. Something I didn't realize is that the plant would die after blossoming and new seed will come out of the flowers and a new plant will start growing from it.

2) There is only one proper ATM in Kodaikanal. That is of State Bank Of India. I withdrew 5k from that ATM and to my horror I found most of the notes were in pretty bad shape. And one of the 500 rupee notes was actually a 350 Rs note. It had 30 % missing from the note. I was shocked to see such careless attitude of the SBI. Went to the Bank to get it converted and the attitude was really atrocious. If you are relying on ur card heavily, then be very careful here. The phone lines going off the hook can make your card just another piece of plastic and you will be asked for paper in place of ur plastic. So better keep some hard cash handy and avoid going to SBI at any cost.

3) Plums, Baby carrots are some delicacies here in Kodai. Don't forget to enjoy them.

Why and How?

For a long time I have been contemplating whether or not I should write a blog. I really couldn't find a useful (read as interesting ) topic to write one.

The blog that finally inspired me to start one was that of my ex-colleague and friend.

I think I have a nice topic to start my blog with. I am planning to write about my experiences on a trip to a hill station in Tamilnadu called Kodaikanal.