Kodaikanal Trip!!!

Recently, I visited this place called Kodaikanal with friends. It is always fun to travel…and traveling with friends doubles it. I am very lucky to have a friend list that also has interest to travel and feel adventure.

It was a journey of 8 friends (neha, nishi, ruchika, rohit, rahul, abhishek, santosh and me..)

Kodaikanal has a name Prince of Hills and its nature reflects the same…trust me!!!

We stayed there for 3 days and 2 nights… and overall we had a very pleasant and beautiful trip. It was one of the memorable trips I have ever had. The ethereal beauty of the place provides such a serene environment that one just feels to return to this place once more.

So I felt that I should share some of my experience with you all to make your trip a pleasant one.

The trip was planned. All friends decided to take a nice break from the hectic office life and visit this place.

DAY1 – September 25th, 2009

The 1st day, we arrived at Kodaikanal in the morning and adjusted ourselves into a beautiful cottage called Lilly’s Valley.

We left the cottage in afternoon and went to one Punjabi Joint to have lunch…and then suddenly it started raining. We all enjoyed this afternoon with the drops of water.

After lunch, we went to Coaker’s Walk. If you are interested in morning walk, you should definitely visit this place. It is a wonderful place. A Telescope house is there at Coaker’s walk and some of the best views can be seen from here.

After this wonderful experience, we went to the Kodai Pine Forest. After spending some time there we went to the Pillar Rock. The Pillar rocks are three granite boulders which are seen standing vertically shoulder to shoulder. The view of valley was awesome.

There is a market near this place…from there we had chilli pakoras and tea and did some shopping.

We left the place and went to the most adventurous place called Gunaah Caves. This place was quite dangerous as around 13 people had lost there lives in the caverns and the body of only one of them was recovered. This was the shooting point for many movies including Gunaah. We had a wonderful time trekking to the top.

From there few of us went for horse riding…the horse attendant was running along with us…we really had a very good time there.

                                  

                                  

After the experience of horse riding we returned to the cottage (Lilly’s Valley). It was very cold at that night. We went for dinner and then shopping for delicious home made chocolate after which we returned to the cottage and fell asleep.

DAY2 – September 26th, 2009

It was time to say bye to Lilly’s Valley. It was really a very good time over there. When we reached this cottage, we simply fell in love with the place as it was a cluster of cottages located away from the town, yet near enough to walk to the town. People were good at service.

                                     

                                     

 From this cottage we went to other cottage…

After having breakfast, we decided to go to Berijam Lake.

You need official permission to enter the forest area, which your local travel agent should be able to arrange for you easily if you tell him before 2 PM the day before.

There is a small roadside attachment on the way called the Berijam Lake View further up where you can stop and take a look at the lake from the above mountains.

The lake is a source of pure natural mountain water.

The road is narrow and tough mountain terrain within a dense forest area, but the view is worth it.

Wear good shoes in this trip. It’s very wet around kodai and these are slippery mountain trails.


(It started raining in between… that was an awesome experience.)

After experiencing the trekking there, we went for lunch and then we rented a cycle for each of us.

                                     

Everyone had a lot of fun cycling around the lake. We took two rounds and none of us was feeling tired. It was so much fun cycling after a long time.

After this we returned to the cottage, had pizza and then we spent some time with other sharing our experience, played some games…dance…bonfire…antakshari…damshraj etc etc.. and then we went and fell asleep.

                                        

DAY3 – September 27th, 2009


After an early breakfast the next morning, it was time to say tata to this place...

We went to Kodai Lake, this is an artificial lake that takes the shape of a star. The lake is quite big and there is a boat club which offers pedaling and rowing boats with different seating capacities. You can hire boats on hourly basis. It was a real fun. We enjoyed it to the fullest.

After this amazing experience of boating we did some shopping and had lunch in Sripriya hotel. The lunch was good.


And the visit to the kodai lake was the perfect end to a wonderful time we had in Kodai.

From there we all returned to Bangalore on September 28th, 2009.