The Hogenakkal - Yercaud Trip

Its been quite some time since we had been for a trip. The last one was to Ooty, a few months ago, which kind of did not quite end well because my wife and kid fell sick on the way, and we had to cut short the trip. My wife was a bit scared since then for any multi-day trips. We had to get over this, and so decided will try such a trip once again. Lot of trips came to our mind, and one place I was sure we would enjoy was Hogenakkal. Searching for other places brought in Bheemeshwari and Mekkadattu also into my mind. A few friends of mine suggested us to go to Yercaud instead of Bheemeshwari. I talked to a family friend of mine, Anoop Mullappally who readily agreed to join me where ever we planned to go. I talked to yet another great personality, Mr Manu Mohandas Mekkad, my first cousin sister's husband. He also was thrilled by the weekend trip plans. My wife's first cousin, Mr Kiran Killimangalam, who was staying with for a couple of weeks also agreed to come along. Thus we were 7, and we planned to drive down to the destinations. I was trying to make online bookings for a few rooms at Yercaud as we were travelling as families, but a few of them were quoting exorbitant rates and few others confirmed room availability, but did not have a means to accept online payment. Also the reviews of the hotel rooms were mixed. So we decided to reach Yercaud by evening, and then book rooms after seeing them. Friday evening, I met another wonderful personality who was working for IBM, and was working from the same campus as mine, Mr Anu Karuthedam. He didn't have to think twice before he agreed to join. The plan was to start from my residence at 6 AM.

I had a short nap of 5 hours. Got up at about 5:30 AM. Everyone reached my home by 6:30 AM. We started by 7 AM, and headed straight towards Hogenakkal. On our way, we stopped at Kamath for food for our stomach, and my beloved car at the Reliance petrol pump. I had good experience with the petrol from this pump, and so thought of taking advantage again, even though the petrol is a bit costly at 68.95/litre. We had an ok-ok kind of breakfast from Kamath. The food had too much of oil, and the monotonous sambar taste was not liked by many. Soon we crossed Krishnagiri and reached Dharmapuri. We made enough enquiries with the localites and got to the State Highway to Hogenakkal. The deviation to the state highway is towards your right about 7 kms before Dharmapuri. Enough boards are also there to direct you to the road. The first couple of kilometers were bad with road work. But after that, the roads were excellent. The nature was so cool, and refreshing all the way.

There are lots of monkeys on the way, and they tend to cross the roads as pathetic as ..ahheem.. let me not say that. We reached Hogenakkal by 10:30. There are a couple of entry fee we had to pay before we reached Hogenakkal. There is a paid parking area where we parked our cars. By the time we came out of the parking lot, a few "blue uniform" guys came to us and asked whether we would like to go for a ride in the "vatta thoni" (a round boat whose structure is made of cane, and made water resistant by plastic sacks and is tarred). The rates were a bit high at 160/- head. We were confident that we could bargain on this and get a good deal, but the unity among the guys was so much that how ever we tried no one was ready to bring the price down. Not wanting to waste the time, we agreed. We were taken to yet another place from which the vatta thonis started their journey. When the waters are high, this is the place from where they start the ride, else (Dec, Jan) it is from the car parking area itself. We had opted to have 4 people in each of the vatta thonis we took. Since the thonis had a max capacity of 6, and since we did not want other people to travel with us and thus possibly loot our enjoyment, we paid them 12 people's charges.

There are mainly 4 things to enjoy in Hoenakkal. Waterfalls, one on the Karnataka side and the other on the Tamilnadu side; The ride in the vatta thoni, oil massage which is really refreshing and fish which is prepared on the banks. The falls are a part of the Cauvery river for which these two states fight against each other. Another great thing about Hogenakkal is that, this is the place where the infamous elephant hunter, Veerappan was born. I had taken this body massage nearly five years ago when I visited this place with my fried, Dilip Muthukurussi, and that was very refreshing. I would suggest taking the massage if possible. The falls on the Karnataka side seemed to be scary and thus better. You tend to have a feeling to jump into the water if you look into it for some time. After spending half an hour near the falls, we were taken to the Tamilnadu falls which is about half a kilometer away. The river started to become faster as we reached, and the rower whirled the boat for a couple of minutes. That was a nice experience. One of the main attractions of the Tamilnadu part of the falls is a platform on which you can climb to to have a good view of the falls. During summer when the water recedes, there is an option of having a ride along this part of the river also. I guess this is the part where parts of famous films like Roja, Ravan etc were shot. One comment I heard from one of our guys is that you dont have to search for a scenary to take a photo. Any where you point and click will result in marvelous sceneries. It was almost 13:30 by the time we reached back. We were exhausted. Manu was already in water enjoying a nice bath. We also jumped into the water and had a very refreshing bath. We even got our kids to bath with us, and this is one thing the kids still remember and cherish. It was about 14:30 when we reached back to the parking lot. We started off towards Yercaud. There was a difference of opinion on which route to take, but we decided to take the state highway, as it seemed to be greener, and new for all of us. It was green with tamarind trees on both the sides. We had taken a loaf of bread and jam with us. We were so hungry that, mid way we stopped and had it. It was so tasty. We were heading to Mechery which is about 50 km from Hogenakkal. We crossed Mechery and joined the National Highway in another 25 kms from Mecheri. We reached Salem by 17:00. We were all tired and hungry. We had Iddly, Oothappam and Dosa from Saravana Bhavan at Salem. The food was awesome. By 18:00 we started our 29 km journey towards Yercaud. The road to Yercaud was very good. By the time we started going over the hair pin curves, it was dark. It started drizzling also. The fog was so much that we could hardly see anything - dangerous, but very exciting (I guess these two always come in pairs.). We really enjoyed the drive. There are 20 hairpin curves to Yercaud, and we reached Yercaud by 8 PM. 3 families, 2 kids, 8 PM (I mean, the time), heavy fog, slight drizzle and no rooms booked - a wonderful situation to be in. We saw a few boards that gave directions to some resorts. We headed that way, the resort was nowhere to be seen even after a 2 km drive. So we turned back and reached back the lake side. We saw a Sree Saravana Bhavan (again!!) and decided to ask the manager there whether we can get some rooms there. They did not have a room available, but guided us to a resort nearby. We went there. But only one room was available there. He enquired the availability of rooms with a few of his friends who had resorts running nearby. Mr Moorthy, who was running a resort "Thilakam Nest" replied positive for the enquiry. Mr Moorthi gave me directions to reach his resort. Before we left to "Thilakam Nest" we had to spend some time for some community service there. 2 beautiful ladies who had taken rooms in that resort came to the reception asking for extra blankets. They did not know Tamil, and the person running the resort could not speak good English. The resort guy asked me to be the translator and asked me to tell them that he did not have any more extra blankets. Alas, we were all with families. Else we could have helped them... somehow. We reached "Thilakam Nest". The rooms were excellent and the rates were also quite reasonable. He was charging 800/- for a double room. We took the rooms. The climate was very good with a temperature of about 16 degrees, and thick fog surrounding all of us. We ordered dinner from the same resort. Mr Moorthi was very helpful and arranged for extra blankets and beds. The dinner was also very tasty. We were all tired, but the climate held us back from sleeping. We had great discussions on various topics and it was nearly 2:30 when we all dozed off.

We got up by 8 AM the next day. We ordered bed coffee which was not that good. We had a bath and got ready to explore Yercaud by 10:30. We went to Sharavana Bhavan to have breakfast. The hotel was very clean, and the food very tasty. We then went to Pagoda Point which is about 4 kms from the main town. This place has a fantastic view. We spent time taking a lot of photographs. You get mouth watering sweet corn there. The corn is so sweet that even after such a heavy breakfast, we all had them. You get spiced sliced mangoes and fruit bowls also.

By 11:30 we reached the famous Montfort school. My father had plans of putting me in this school while I was young. Somehow my grandparents were strictly against me staying in a hostel, for which I thank them. The school campus was huge with all the facilities you could imagine... cricket, tennis grounds, swimming pools, horse riding, mini-zoo and so on. By 12 we were back at the lake, and we hired 2 boats. Due to lack of sleep I was a bit tired, and wanted to sleep for some time. Still I opted to join my wife and kid, and Anoop Mullappalli and family in the rowing boat. The others took a self pedalling boat. The climate was still cool, and the boating also nice even though it was noon.

By 13:00 we finished the boating. We had a few rounds of games (archery, rifle ones etc) and my wife bought a few plants from a nearby nursery. It was time for lunch, and we reached our favorite Saravana Bhavan for lunch. Unfortunately they did not have meals. Instead, we took curd rice, fried rice and sambar rice combinations. We had not seen the Botanical Garden there, but thought of skipping that as it might get very late by the time we reached Bangalore. We went back to the Thilakam Nest and checked out. They said it would take half an hour for the whole process. Lack of sleep for the last couple of days made me really tired, and I badly wanted a sleep. I dozed off for half an hour, and by that time Anoop had made all the settlements. By 16:30, we packed our items quickly and started our return journey. I had a bad headache, but the thought of driving down the hairpin curves made me forget all such ailments. We stopped by at Adayar Ananda Bhavan after Thoppur and had a snack. The place is crowded, food is good, but is really very costly!!! We reached Bangalore by 21:00.

The trip was a very badly planned one, we had very low expectations, and so was enjoyed well by all of us.