With this trip I have completed all the four hill stations of TN (after Ooty, Kodai, Yelagiri).
Day 1(1st April, 2006): We get up at 4:15AM, take a nice bath and pack the necessary stuffs and start at 5:15AM.The road was empty and within no time the car was zooming at 100kmph. This is the first time that my car is running in this beautiful stretch and we were enjoying the drive. Also the beautiful Kishore numbers adding more aura. We reached Hosur in no time and once past the Ashok Leyland plant, the speedo started to increase. Hosur – Krishnagiri stretch is a beauty as always and also there was almost no traffic in the morning. The speedometer already touched 120kmph. A blast to 130kmph and left the pedal, maintained 100 – 120 kmph thereafter.
By 7:15AM, we took our first break at Hotel Uthaiyah about 10km before Krishnagiri toll gate, the same place where we always take our first break. Had 2 rounds of hot tea and the always-amazing masala dosas. I have a special liking of food of Tamil Nadu specially dosas. It has a special taste and I make sure I don’t miss the masala dosas in Tamil Nadu.
We started our journey after breakfast at around 8AM, reached the toll gate in 10 min. This time I had to pay the toll-fee and proceeded towards Dharmapuri. I knew from my previous experiences that the road from Krishnagiri to Dharmapuri had lot of sudden potholes and I was very careful this time and never increased the speed past 50-60kmph even though the road appeared smooth fearing a sudden graveyard. But this time the road has improved a lot compared to my last visit although there were some potholes. Work on the North-South corridor has started on this stretch.
We reached Dharmapuri at around 9AM. Roads improved after that. The 4 laning work is in progress in the stretch from Dharmapuri – Salem. Also the existing 2 lane roads are also good. We were held up for 15min due to a jam on the rail-gate. After that the traffic slowly eased out and we entered the ghat section. Here the 4 laning has been done and the drive was an absolute beauty.
We reached Salem at 10:30AM and took a small break under a tree just before starting the hill climb. Thanks to boudi, we relished some home made dal-puri and paneer-sabji alongwith lots of water, as Salem was really hot that time.
We started the hill climb around 11AM. The roads were decent and the stretch was about 30km with lots of hairpin bends. It is bit on the narrow side too. It took us about 45min to climb. The weather was improving with altitude and surroundings picturesque. There were lots of monkeys on the road too.
In the evening went to visit the Lady’s seat about 3 km from hotel to see the sunset. It was great place where we can see the entire Salem town. You can also see the roads winding up to Yercaud from Salem. One strange thing that I noticed from that viewpoint is that once it gets dark, and Salem town illuminates, if you carefully watch the boundary it resembles like an India-map. I tried to confirm the same with the bhajji wala there and he too told the same thing.
Spent a nice 3 hours there, enjoying the valley and eating hot mirchi-bhajis and chips. There was a nice breeze blowing across. We drove back to the hotel at 7:30PM.
At 8PM, we went walking past the lakeside to Hotel Shevaroys for dinner. Before entering the restaurant we checked into the super-market of the shevaroy group and did some shopping. We had a decent dinner with malabar fish curry, rice, basket of rotis etc. and strolled back to hotel by 11PM.
Day 2(2nd April, 2006): We got up at 6AM and decided to do some trekking. We decided to trek up towards hotel grand palace at the topmost point of Yercaud. This is the only hotel on this hill totally owned by grand palace. It was a great atmosphere, nice breeze, and little misty environment. We went into the hotel checked the tariff and visited the other side of the hill which opens up on the valley. Next time I will surely try this hotel, little expensive but nice place to experience valley on all sides.
We return to hotel at 8AM did some photography and time for breakfast. We all were very hungry after the trek. We had delicious masala dosas and idlis alongwith tea for breakfast in the cottage’s restaurant.
Then we started towards lady seat to visit the Rose garden and Carmel Ashram. On the way visited the beautiful nursery near the lake. Both the ladies bought some plants from there. I really liked the nursery and the kind of drip technique they use to water the plants.
Checked into carmel ashram first, saw the church and met with one sister who took us to a room where they sell some stuffs like candles, kali-mirch, tej-patta at throw away prices. We bought some stuffs and did some photo shoot in the kali-mirch-cum-coffee jungle inside ashram campus.
We moved to rose garden just opposite to the ashram and spent some time there. It is a huge garden. It was already past 11 when we decided to move back so that we don’t get late returning to Bangalore before night. On our return to the hotel we checked into Bhavani Singh’s perfume factory where hari singh, his son explained all the funda of various lotions and oils and their remedies. We did buy a couple of stuffs for my dad.
We reached back to hotel by 12:45PM. Packed our stuffs, had a nice bath and an even nice and hot lunch from the hotel’s restaurant. It was a delicious south Indian thali. We checked out hotel at 1:30PM and went into the lake for some photography and started our return journey at 2:30PM.
We had a brief 20min break after Dharmapuri for soft drinks and biscuits. I thought of taking a break at Uthaiyah but the empty roads on golden quadrilateral was so tempting that I just couldn’t slow down and zoomed past. Reached silk board by 7PM and reached home after dropping Sukanta by 7:45PM.
Some pics:
Nice weekend journey from Bangalore. It was a nice place to just do nothing and simply enjoy the atmosphere.
Tripmeter reading 503kms
Signing off
Vijay
