A trip to yercaud

Recently, i had been to yercaud, an hill station about 230+ km's from Chennai.

Wow, what a place. I especially liked the silver oak trees standing tall all along the roads and also the friendly monkeys - minding their own business unlike the street dogs that most of us are facing problems with at most of the places in India. (Animal lovers, please don't get offended, I too like dogs and cats but am a bit scared at the crazy street dogs on the road which love to bark and bite anyone, anytime!)

My friend had given me a list of places to see at that place before hand and so my trip was more or less pre planned. As soon as i reached salem (abt 30 kms from yercaud and closest railway station), i was spellbound. It was around 4.30 in the evening but looked like 6 or 7 pm because of the dark clouds and setting sun. The scenery along the ghat road, up the way, was simply mind blowing.

We reached our destination - the sterling resorts by 5.30 pm and wow...is that called heaven???? I was shown the path to our room about 104 steps down from the car park area and the lobby outside my room overlooked a valley below the hill, housing about 74+ tiny villages. By night, i was wondering, if i should look up at the stars or the twinkling lights below in the valley which resembled the milky way in our Galaxy.

That's all, that is the end of my enjoyment. Next day morning, when i was to go to the restaurant for my breakfast, i realised, climbing the steps was not so easy for a lazy, unfit, car hopping lady like me. I had this steps in mind scaring me always when ever i had to go for a trekking, sight seeing, activity centre, massage centre or the restaurant. I had no other option and got used to going up and down the steps.

We went to the highest point saravanan hill where we could see the lord sarvanan in a cave which is 1000+ years old. Then we had seen some lovely lakes and parks and a meditating shiva statue and a botanical garden. We had also been to pagoda point where the rocks took the shape of a pagoda.

The next day was a trip to One of the famous sight-seeing attractions in Tamil Nadu, Hogenakkal Waterfalls which is located in Dharmapuri District and 130 km south-west of Bangalore. The Cauvery River gets forked at Hogenakkal, forming an island and then it plunges into a deep chasm. A riverside spa, the main attraction is boating using the circular basket boats.

A lil history class for you readers: In Kannada, the word Hogenakal means 'smoking rock.' Since the waters of Cauvery passes through forests with herbs on their journey to Hogenakkal, bathing in these falls is considered to be good for health. Hogenakkal is one of the cold healing waters in India. But wait, read on our experiences in the "healthy??" water.

The journey was about 4 hrs from yercaud and all along the way I had to listen to the sarcasm from my husband and father for venturing out on such a long drive in car with an infant at hand. I was only praying god that the sight should be breathtaking.

All along the way, we could see huge boards set up to avoid plastic in the area and also to keep the area clean. While, the Language was a main problem, because almost no one understood Hindi or English, though we could manage a few tamil+telugu words here and there. We got really irked by the boatman on one hand, who was following us constantly, pressurising us from the car drop point demanding us huge amounts for the boat ride and on the other a masseur who wants to offer an ayurvedic/oil massage for the gents. Finally we settled at Rs 500/- with the boatman and boarded the round boat called thappa in our language.

The boat is called coracle in English ('Parisal' in local language). It is circular in shape, and is made of bamboo sticks. The base is made up of cloth or could be animal hide too, sealed with burnt liquid charcoal. On one side was the gushing, roaring waterfalls, and on the other side, there was relatively calm water flow. As we were moving down the river, the view was getting more and more spectacular. We were all in this small boat with The granite rocks on both sides raising to about 15-20 meters high, and with the depth of water going as deep as 70 feet for about 3 hours. My husband told me there is a similar place somewhere in madhyapradesh with marble on either side and that location was pictured in the film asoka starring Sha rukh khan and kareena.

But one thing that was noticeably worse was the dirty surrounding. In spite of repeated hoarding to keep the place clean, we could see hundreds of plastic bottles, snack covers, used underwear's, beer bottles, nappy pads, sanitary pads and what not lying all along the banks and in between the rocks. The sight was disgusting. The boat man, took us in the water for some time and surprisingly towed the boat underneath the gushing waterfalls, there by drenching us completely in water. Our boat was also half full with water. My son was enjoying splashing that dirty water all over us while we were all worried about the probable contaminated diseases we could get from that water.

Finally seeing our plight of discomfort, our boat man took us to a running water stearm and we all had a bath there still unsatisfied with the condition of water.

Cursing the people who dirtied the place, we moved on, back to our sterling resort.

The next day, i went for another round of the same local places again to give my husband company who joined us one day later. In the evening, we all went for a walk down the lake and played in the anna park and walked back to nearby hotel for dinner. We were caught under a sudden rain which lasted for nearly 2 hours and it was very late in night ...8.30 pm (yes, for all those metro city occupants, 8.30 pm is considered too late at yercaud. all places close by 5.30 pm) We could not get a taxi back to sterling resort. With the help of a local hotel guard, we boarded a taxi and the driver Mahesh (he told us his name so many times that i got it by heart) was completely drunk. He was merrily chatting away all the while while giving us creeps in our back bone driving rashly on the deserted ghat roads back to our resort.

We managed to reach back safely and by early morning 7 am the next day, we took our backward journey to mumbai.

click here for photos: http://www.photoshow.com/watch/Im3Ry6TI

One request, to all readers, please please, pledge yourself, where ever you are, you will always keep your surrounding clean and help in preserving such beautiful nature kissed places.