Waking up at 3am and sneaking downstairs only to discover that the neighbours are still awake and dancing to house tunes is a great thing on some days. Days on which you have to idle your noisy moped to pre-heat for a ride. This way, no worries about waking anyone. Yercaud is a hill station situated about 240kms from Bangalore. But this was not going to happen. Fervent calls to my fellow travellers to depart were butchered by excuses like ‘Nail cutter nahi mil raha yaar, kal chalenge’ (I can’t find my nail cutter, lets go tomorrow). Anyways, we left Bangalore by 430am and took the Hosur–Krishnagiri route to Salem. Road conditions near Krishnagiri are not good owing to frequent detours due to the 6-laning that is underway.
A road going through Salem City leads up to Yercaud which sits 1515m above msl. The road up has 20 well spaced hairpins and some great twisties. There was a forest fire raging at that time so i stopped at very few places to get pictures on the way up. This fire became quite large and spread up the hill and was still burning strong when i was on my way back inspite of a lot of forest guards and firetrucks running around. Breathe noxious fumes-check.
Breakfast is good at TTDC’s Tamil Nadu hotel or can be had at carts with secular artwork for less. Pedal boats in the lake are neat but you are given 4 seater boats with only two pedals. #FML.
There is a deer park nearby with a lot of quite healthy and well-kept animals including fat pidgeons. The Kiliyur waterfalls are nearby but after descending 200 or more large stone steps we found that the water had all dried up. A lot of cursing and stair climbing later we headed for Pagoda Point (misspelled as Pakoda (HAHAHA) Point in many places), a high view point which provided respite from the sun and cool wind.
Other viewpoints include Ladies Seat, Gents Seat and Childrens Seat which can be avoided altogether really. The Rose Garden was scorched and dead. We then went to what seemed to be the best boarding school in the universe complete with a swimming pool, two full size soccer fields, handball basketball tennis courts, and an Eiffel tower next to a dinosaur statue(wtf). With old architecture. Also mad tuition fees. Also 2 emus and 3 turkeys and 2 ducks and a dove. With this we decided to head back and did so through the easy left handers which were now murderous right handers with FIRE on one side and FALLING TO BOTTOMLESS DEATH on one side. More noxious fumes and onto the highway where we met hot billowing crosswinds. Made it back to Bangalore(Electronic City) at 7pm.
