It was a beautiful Bangalore Saturday morning, one of my friend Samy had come to attend a conference in Mysore, this is when our Trip crazy minds made this bizarre idea of a weekend Trip. One of my friends is from Tenkasi, the idea was to visit his home and also places around.
It all started on this Saturday (22nd Dec 2013), they came over to my home at 7am in the morning. After heavy breakfast of pongal, masala vada, uddina vada, chutney and payasam, we were trip ready. We started off from my home at 8:58am. I had made my car trip ready pervious weekend, servicing, wheel balancing, air check etc.
From my home, we started towards chandapura, from Hosur till Krishnagiri, lot of construction work is in progress, there was huge traffic jams, after nudging through the weekend traffic, going around through lot of irritating diversions, finally got on to the usual feel good speeding on NH7, on NH7 till Madurai I was speeding at an average of 90kms, at some point we touched the maximum of 130kmph. To reach Tenkasi we had to leave the super NH7 and enter kollam-Thirumangalam highway. It was 4:30pm, by the time I touched this highway, darkness was setting in fast. As it got darker, we had to patiently speed down, kollam-Thirumangalam is 2 a two-way highway. The glaring lights from vehicles from the opposite direction made driving all the more difficult. I averaged around 40-50kmph. Also there was lot of traffic, because of sabarimala season. We reached Tenkasi around 7:30pm.
From there we decided to go to sengottai just for the world famous parata, curry and kadai chicken at border kadey. This parata place is on the border of kerala, hence the name. Surprisingly the shop was bustling with crowd and mostly family crowd. We stuffed ourselves, this is the first time I was eating Kadai. After our dinner, we went to courtallam, booked a room to stay overnight. It was 10:00pm by now, we decided to drive to Five falls, did our usual photo-shoots, spent some time in the water.
Reached back to our room by 11:15pm. Got up at 5:00am, we walked to courtallam temple and the falls.
This being sabrimala season, there were people taking bath, chanting prayers, I was taken aback at the amount of people, decided not take bath under that falls, rather it was not possible. On the way to temple, there is a galli, which was like banana chips assembly line. There was piles and piles of raw bananas and one guy stuffing raw bananas into a slicing machine, the slices where falling into big frying pan. Chips were being made fresh and heaps of them everywhere. Every shop was making banana chips and selling Tirunelveli halwas.
Around 7am vacated our rooms and went towards pappanasam, it was another 40kms drive into the mountains. While driving I found my steering wheel was not stable, was feeling something wrong, that is when one person walking on the road noticed that one of the front tyres was gone flat. We immediately parked the car to the roadside, got our tools out and stepney tire stepped in to rescue us in continuing our journey.
This being sabrimala season, there were people taking bath, chanting prayers, I was taken aback at the amount of people, decided not take bath under that falls, rather it was not possible. On the way to temple, there is a galli, which was like banana chips assembly line. There was piles and piles of raw bananas and one guy stuffing raw bananas into a slicing machine, the slices where falling into big frying pan. Chips were being made fresh and heaps of them everywhere. Every shop was making banana chips and selling Tirunelveli halwas.
Around 7am vacated our rooms and went towards pappanasam, it was another 40kms drive into the mountains. While driving I found my steering wheel was not stable, was feeling something wrong, that is when one person walking on the road noticed that one of the front tyres was gone flat. We immediately parked the car to the roadside, got our tools out and stepney tire stepped in to rescue us in continuing our journey.
As we continued our journey, on either sides of the village roads, there were paddy/maize fields, the greenery was awesome…I could see the green flowing fields stretching till the base of the western ghat mountains on the farthest side. There was morning fog, mist hanging around on the mountains, it was breath taking scene, the air was so pure of oxygen, we felt like we should pack this air and take home.
On the way to hills we stopped for the breakfast, we stuffed ourselves with Idli/Porry/Vadas/Sambar and bill came to only 56rs/- for 2 people, can you imagine that, anywhere in Bangalore it would have easily cost us minimum 300/- bucks. We reached the entrance of Tiger reserve forest area. To our disappointment Tiger census was in progress and place had been closed. Just when we thought we have to return back, we were called back and informed that census got completed just today and that they received orders to let people. Man that was relief. As we drove further up into the hills, the fields gave way to beautiful tree covered valleys. We could view into the valley and there was river flowing by. We drove through the winding roads, at one point, the view opened up into a big valley and we could see the papanasam Hydroelectric power stations with the huge pipes running down from other side of the mountains.
We reached to the top till the point where the roads where motor able, after that we had to walk for about half a kilometer to get the first view of the Kaarayaar Dam. The view was most beautiful ever, surrounded by green topped mountains all around and the mighty dam being only the manmade structure looked very small and not so mighty after all holding the water back.
As we go up the western Ghats, at every nook and corner there is some or other falls, I found it really beautiful place. Mountains, stretches of glistening water tucked between mountains, the mist hanging, and this concrete structure was a delightful scene.
On the way to hills we stopped for the breakfast, we stuffed ourselves with Idli/Porry/Vadas/Sambar and bill came to only 56rs/- for 2 people, can you imagine that, anywhere in Bangalore it would have easily cost us minimum 300/- bucks. We reached the entrance of Tiger reserve forest area. To our disappointment Tiger census was in progress and place had been closed. Just when we thought we have to return back, we were called back and informed that census got completed just today and that they received orders to let people. Man that was relief. As we drove further up into the hills, the fields gave way to beautiful tree covered valleys. We could view into the valley and there was river flowing by. We drove through the winding roads, at one point, the view opened up into a big valley and we could see the papanasam Hydroelectric power stations with the huge pipes running down from other side of the mountains.
We reached to the top till the point where the roads where motor able, after that we had to walk for about half a kilometer to get the first view of the Kaarayaar Dam. The view was most beautiful ever, surrounded by green topped mountains all around and the mighty dam being only the manmade structure looked very small and not so mighty after all holding the water back.
As we go up the western Ghats, at every nook and corner there is some or other falls, I found it really beautiful place. Mountains, stretches of glistening water tucked between mountains, the mist hanging, and this concrete structure was a delightful scene.
On the way back down from the dam, we wandered into a not so explored path, it was feeling like we were driving into deep jungles with big dense trees and folks of peacocks here and there. We hoped for a tiger to show up on the path, but no such good thing happened. We reached a river crossing, the view from the river bank was beautiful, upstream river I could see a small bridge and another dam further up the river. It was perfect spot for photos.
We then went to Agasthiar falls, took a bath under the falls, visited the Agasthiar muni temple. We also saw a herd of black faced monkey wandering around. As we drove down, we visited the pappanasam area, sprinkled the holy water on our heads and pray the mighty god to cleanse all our pappas (sins). Unfortunately temple was closed and would open only after 4pm.
This was kind of end of the places in our list to visit. We then drove to my friends home, on way went to the Tenkasi temple. It had one of tallest gopurams.
After having lunch at Samy’s home, we started our journey back. Since my friend had a flight back home today, we had to return on Sunday itself. Left Tenkasi at around 5:30pm, stopped for couple of T breaks and at Dindigul for DMB, finally we reached Bangalore around 3:00am. My friend took the flight and reached Delhi. After nearly 1400kms of driving, nearly 900kms during night, overall I felt it to be very enriching trip. I am still feeling fresh and trip ready again J Though I have tried to re account my experiences of the trip…the actually feeling of driving, soft nature fresh air brushing while the sceneries rushing on either sides, the curiosity of seeing different places, different food gave us the desired rejuvenation.
After having lunch at Samy’s home, we started our journey back. Since my friend had a flight back home today, we had to return on Sunday itself. Left Tenkasi at around 5:30pm, stopped for couple of T breaks and at Dindigul for DMB, finally we reached Bangalore around 3:00am. My friend took the flight and reached Delhi. After nearly 1400kms of driving, nearly 900kms during night, overall I felt it to be very enriching trip. I am still feeling fresh and trip ready again J Though I have tried to re account my experiences of the trip…the actually feeling of driving, soft nature fresh air brushing while the sceneries rushing on either sides, the curiosity of seeing different places, different food gave us the desired rejuvenation.
The only thing I did not like is about, is our own people, the moment they notice a drop of water trickling down, they make beeline to make it into a holy bathing spot and construct a temple near to the falls. Then they make it so, making it so unholy. They don’t maintain proper the temple premised neatly, In the process they make it so dirty, it losses it holiness, this is only thing I felt very bad about it.
That’s it folks, hope you are able to visualize at least 10% J then I would consider myself success with this blog.
