Friday, June 4, 2010

Yelagiri Trip - Part I

The talk of a trip had been going on for quite some time now. With parents, sister, friends, colleagues… They all mostly vanished after the planning stage. After Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner and Jodhpur, Darjeeling, Sikkim and Nepal, I now got a chance to take a weekend off in Yelagiri.


About approximately 350 km away from Chennai, Yelagiri is supposedly a hill station. I had expected something like Ooty, cool and commercial, but it wasn’t. It was as hot as 9 am or 4 pm in Chennai, not as sweaty and irritating though. There was a cool breeze all through the day, compensating for the hot sun.

The trip as it is wasn’t exactly a ‘planned’ one. It was more like a last minute idea. Wednesday morning, we discussed about how nice a trip would be, Wednesday evening, we browsed and thought of Yelagiri, Thursday morning we booked the tics in tatkal to Jolarpet (Thanks to pathetic speed of irctc at 8 am, managed to get only waiting list tics), Thursday evening called some resorts and ended up getting one- Auro Ville with two single rooms available and booked it, Friday morning booked the return tics to from Jolarpet to Chennai again in tatkal, Friday evening left office at 9.30 pm, went home and slept off, got up at 4 am on Saturday, got dropped off in central station by dad at 5.15 am.

The unconfirmed onward tics were the least of our problems. The seats actually got confirmed, and we all, Me, She, Her and Her-Bf successfully boarded the train at 6 am. Our main impending problem was the fact that Her father did not know about Her-Bf coming along with us. She had told him that the fourth person was a girl named ‘Divya’, whose seat was in some other coach. So Her inquisitive father came and sat with us until the train started, and enquired about the ‘fourth girl’ and about her seat and where she was n all. Little experience that I had in lying, my BP was rising with every question of his. After a point, I just got up and went outside in the pretext of getting water, and returned only as the train started moving!

Phew!

Her-Bf came and sat with us only after the train left the station and the coast was clear. We got introduced, had our breakfasts (She thought she could survive on biscuits) talked about everything from religious beliefs, purity of Ganges (much to the irritation of the old mama n mami sitting with us in the same bay) to office politics and movies & series. We then played rummy and ace, and finally reached Jolarpet about an hour late.

As we had missed the bus that was supposedly at 9.45 am, we took a share auto for 300 bucks and climbed the mountain at the speed of ooty toy train. On the up side, we got to take a lot of snaps on the way.


We finally reached the resort, got freshened up, had lunch, made friends of Nala (the dog), and fixed up a guide for trekking.
 

We started at about 4.30 pm from the resort and went into jungles in the mountains. IT WAS AWESOME! Initially, we were all so highly enthused and the slopes were quite easy to walk on. We went on taking loads of snaps and enjoying every small thing like the touch-me-not (or so we think) leaves, and watching huge termite hills and everything.

  

Our guide was equally enthused about climbing the mountain with three girls (and a guy :P), and taught us to suck nectar out of small flowers, to walk on wood splinters on the ground without falling on them and getting killed, showed us the holes that bears had dug to eat the roots, dead scorpions, how soft the nest of birds felt and how a forest looks after a wild fire.
  
 
 
 
 

We were amazed by them all!! The path was so difficult to cross, with the thorny twigs scratching our faces and our skins, getting caught in our hair and our clothes. The mountain became increasingly steep and rocky and thorny and slippery and hence, more and more interesting to walk.

           
      
      
We passed all our obstacles and finally reached the mountain top, and sat there, panting like Nala. We had forgotten to take a bottle of water. If only we too had a bucket of water to plunge into!

      

We took some rest up there, talked about the jungle life and wild fires and emergencies and bears and snakes for a while and finally as it was getting dark and cloudy, decided to climb down. We took a long shot of the projecting rock on the right opposite mountain peak, and started off.


     

Our return journey and the next day events in Yelagiri Part II

15 comments:

  1. @ preeti: thanks :)

    @ harini: ob machan!!! :D

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  2. Wow.Super trip that was, huh? And some real nice pics. That scorpion one freaked me out! :D

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  3. yercaud is a much better bet than yelagiri
    though its as hot by the day, the nights would make it more worthwhile

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  4. @ scorpia: lol.. so much for the name 'scorpia'.. thought you would want to put it as ur profile pic! :P

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  5. @ whom-so-ever-it-may-concern: yeah.. but yercaud needs much more planning naa? is it as close to chennai as yelagiri is?

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  6. Hi AV

    Really enjoyed reading your blog. Thanks for sharing your experience and pictures. The stunning Yelagiri is undoubtedly a paradise in itself.

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  7. Your blog on Yelagiri is very informative. I would like to add that,Yelagiri is a hill station in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. As mentioned, there are many places to visit in Yelagiri,surrounded by orchards, rose-gardens, and green valleys.The Yelagiri hill station is not as developed as other hill stations in Tamil Nadu yet is one of the famous places for trekkers in India.

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  8. Thank you for another great article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such a perfect way of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I am on the look for such information.

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    ReplyDelete