A visit to the Princess of Hill stations

We planned our trip in October, with the Gandhi Jayanthi long weekend helping us in planning.

We took the night Tuticorin Express train to Kodai on 1st of October and reached there on 2nd October early morning.

Day 1

To reach the Kodai hill station, we would have to take either a taxi or go by the private buses that ply from kodai road to kodaikanal.

We were thinking as to what we have to do, by then we found another couple who were also ready with sharing the cab.

The taxi took us through the winding roads of palani hills while we exchanged our experiences of being married with quite an old couple :)

The couple got down at a point from where there picked up by a friend while we continued our journey into kodai to look for accommodation after having breakfast at the so called famous "woodland hotel". Although the accommodation was booked we thought of checking out various options that are closer to the town than far from it..

View from our hotel

Our hunt for a place to stay near Kodai Lake / town wasn’t very successful so we head towards our booked accommodation which is about 4kms from the town. To our dismay the place which was booked was not available as the cook was on leave!! So an alternate accommodation was provided. By this time I was tired and exhausted and so was Vivek. We looked at couple of rooms and finally settled on one that gave a good view...

After sufficient rest, we head towards the town by boarding a car passing by. Once in town we head towards Tava restaurant to have food. Having had only idli and dosa in the morning at Woodland restaurant, our stomachs were rumbling with hunger. But to aggravate this, the Tava restaurant was overflowing with people. We wait for our turn and once at the table we gobble up all the food until we are full and head to see the places of kodai.

 

Day 2

We woke up next morning and reach kodai town to go around tourist places in Kodai. We have breakfast at yet another restaurant near the lake and take a taxi to go around places. As per suggestions we leave out the regular places in Kodai, pack our lunch and head towards Mannavaram lake. 

Mannavaram Lake

  Mannavaram Lake is a beautiful lake far away from the noise of the town. It’s an ideal place for going on picnics... :)

Since our lunch was packed, we have it by the lake enjoying the serenity of the lake and vastness of the big mountains as a backdrop. As an indicator that all good things have to come to an end, the rain god showered his blessings on us indicating that this nice day has to end here and we wound up to head back towards Kodai.

On reaching kodai, we check out the hotel and move to another neat hotel close to the Lake. Evening is mostly dedicated to shopping and trying out hotels listed in the blogs.

Day3

This was our last day in Kodai and we wanted to make best use of it. So we wake up very early and grab our breakfast and head towards Kodai Lake to go cycling around it. The cycles are charged Rs10 per hour and cycling around the lake is the best thing to do in Kodai. It’s a very romantic experience. It was for me at least as V helped me with my starting trouble with cycles. Every time I would stop, I would need V's help in starting all over again :)

With cycling being done, there were some more places that we hadn’t covered. We started our walk to explore kodai and Coaker's walk was our first destination. It’s a long walk with good view of the Palani hills. Since we were a bit late in reaching there we had to face the heat and the crowd. After the coaker's walk we move towards a beautiful school on the Kodai main road. This place is where the Rockford movie was shot and then head towards Byrant Park. The park as such is nothing great but we spent some time in going around like newly-weds(Of course we were ;) ) clicked some pics for fun and this pic is one of my most favs :)

We head back towards hotel, pack our stuff and come back to Tava restaurant to have our lunch. Our next destination was boating in Kodai Lake. There are the peddle boats, row boats and shikaras as well, but we took up the row boating. I bet this was one of the best romantic lake rides I have had so far.

Just as we were looking around for boating we had noticed a place which had put up a list of activities like skating. It grabbed our attention immediately and we headed to the "fun" place. There wasn’t anything much as promised on the board but what was interesting was that we could skate on wooden floor with no audience or people to watch it :) By the time we both had enough of skating it was getting quite late and we were yet to walk the entire perimeter of the lake. So we start walking around the lake for the last time.

At the end of this lake perimeter walk we see a tandem cycle waiting for us. It would have been fun if we could have cycled in the tandem but then we were running really late so we end up leaving it there and running towards our hotel. We get into the bus back to Bangalore and Eureka Vivek realizes that he hasn’t tasted the pastry in one of the popular eateries!! So he leaves me in the bus without ticket and heads to the pastry joint!! The bus is supposed to leave around 6.30, the ticket collector is asking for him and ticket and there is no sign of him!! Finally at 6.25 he reaches the bus with the excitement of eating the pastry and getting some for me :) With smiles and pastry on our face we head back to Bangalore :)

 

Quick Facts

Reaching Kodai:

By Train: Tuticorin Express reaches Kodai road. No train to Kodaikanal.

By bus:  Number of buses ply to kodaikanal but it’s a long journey in the bus.

Places to stay:

High-end: Hotel Carlton

Mid-range: Hotel Villa retreat.

Small- There are many hotels around the lake which offer accommodation at a reasonable price.

Places to eat:

1) Hotel Tava: This was the best place to eat lunch/dinner or any meal of the day... awesome phulkas and north Indian stuff... I would say don’t miss it...

2)Bhajji and chai at small local places surrounding the lake

Places we visited:

1)Kodai Lake

2)Coaker’s walk

3)Mannavaran lake

4)Silver Cascade waterfalls

5)Byrant Park

6)A school on the main road.. where Rockford movie was shot

There are quite a few tourist places which can be covered by taking a day trip from tourist office.