Scenes from SH25, Tamil Nadu

If you need to drive from Bangalore to Trichy or Tanjore, you can take NH7 all the way down to Namakkal. From there you have two choices. You can either take SH25, down to Thottiyam, Musiri, and on to Trichy. You drive parallel to the Cauvery river, north of the river, and then cross over to enter Trichy. The second option is to continue to drive down to Karur, and then take NH67, that runs south of the Cauvery river. This highway is being four-laned, and once complete, will be a joy to drive on. The four-laning has been completed on the stretch between Trichy and Tanjore, but the process is not yet complete from Trichy to Karur.



So how is the state highway SH25? It is a mixed bag to be sure. From Namakkal to Thottiyam the road is good, with a few bad patches in-between. There is not much traffic, and you can do good time. From Thottiyam onwards the road starts to deteriorate, and near Musiri it is actually quite bad. There are no deep potholes as such, and this is a good thing, but the road has cracks all over. This is the result of the hundreds of trucks that ply on this road. All of them seem to be ferrying earth mined from the Cauvery river. As you drive on this stretch you come across tens of trucks lined behind each other, on both sides of the road. This makes overtaking pretty much impossible, and since this is a two-laned road, any vehicle parked along the side of the road can cause traffic to slow down to a crawl.

Since the highway runs parallel to the Cauvery river, you can see vast stretches of farmland with sugarcane and paddy plantations. The river bed evidently makes for supremely fertile soil, and during the monsoon months you can see a lot of activity in the fields.

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© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Kodaikanal

When in Kodaikanal (see my earlier post, On the road to Kodaikanal) be sure to take some warm clothing. The first is that it is a hill station, at a height of 7,200 feet. Which means that evenings are almost always guaranteed to be pleasant, if not outright chilly. Winters are colder to be sure. If it rains, and there are lots of that around, it is going to get cold. So there - carry warm clothing. Layers of clothing is the way to go; that way you can remove one layer without freezing your bones.

Among the different places to stay in Kodaikanal, the most well-known choice is The Carlton. We however stayed at The Fern Creek, a new addition to Kodaikanal. It is a small, boutique place, with seven swiss tents equipped with all the luxuries you would want in a swiss tent, including a faux-fireplace heater, Tata Sky digital cable, a bathroom that's better than what you find at many 5-star hotels, and so on. The property is not that big, spread over 1.5 acres, but with lots of greenery.

Shot in the evening, this is one of my favorite shots from Kodaikanal. The shoots from the branches make it look like a perfectly haunted tree, right out of a b-grade horror flick. It is also a setting in which the imagination finds a most fertile setting for its ruminations. It is no surprise that authors like Ruskin Bond have chosen to live all their lives in a hill-station, where the grass is green and the scenery pretty (to paraphrase a well-known song...).

This is a shot of a Kodai road as seen from inside the window of a car. It was drizzling outside, the windshield had raindrops streaking across the glass, and the wiper was not very effective, which is why the photo has this weird Photoshopped look about it. I chose this photo because I don't have another photo of these roads that looks as green and picturesque. The small cottage just off the road lends a nice touch to the picture.

Pine Forest view. Where countless Tamil, south Indian, and Hindi movies have been shot. Of stars running around these trees singing songs. Or forlorn heroines clutching trees and lamenting the loss of their loved one. Of lust-crazed baddies chasing rain-soaked-sari-clad heroines or starlets running for dear life and liberty and more. Or... you get the picture. The place looks a lot different with a busload or two of tourists attempting the same, well... almost the same.

Every time I see misty mountains, I take my camera and try and capture the multi-layered look, silhouetted look, like in the photos below. Lots and lots of mountains all over, behind each other, in the foreground, in the background, near and far - you do need an overcast day to get the best effect, though I did get a similar effect in the middle of the day, in the Zion National Park (Utah).

What works for mountains can also work for trees, high up in the mountains, on a misty, foggy, cloudy day.

What is a visit to a hill-station without sampling the local, supposedly organic honey.

When you are as high as in Kodaikanal (you can be high even on the plains, but that's not the high that I am talking about here), the clouds quite often are at the same level as you are. So for once you can claim to be walking with your head in the clouds and be speaking in a very literal sense.

This is a shot that could look even better with an ultra-wide angle lens. And yes, with lots of Photoshop tweaks. I did neither. The Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens that I have does not go beyond 29 or 30mm. This vista would really open up with a wider lens, like the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras (on a full-frame sensor mind you), or better still, the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM SLR Lens for EOS Digital SLRs will do just fine even when mounted on a dSLR with an APS-C sensors.

I shot this and the next few photos from Coaker's Walk (see how this path looked like in 1900). Coaker's Walk is a kilometer pedestrian walk that runs "along the edge of steep slopes on the southern side of Kodai". While the views on a clear sunny day are supposed to be stunning, the vista even on a cloudy, misty, drizzly day is no less spectacular.

One advantage of going in the winter months, or in the months after the monsoon, is that you have several small streams that form and result in several small waterfalls forming - you don't get to see these in the summer months.

And this is a most magical scene. I could not believe it when I first saw it - clouds moving over the horizon, climbing over these peaks, and then flowing downwards, as if weighed down by the water they were carrying, and after having made it beyond the peak, they lost strength and sank under their own weight.

Once upon a time, the tagline, "Your Only Resort In Kodaikanal", may have been true, but not any more I think.

In a place with such incredible beauty, it is jarring to the senses to come across a building as indescribably ugly as this one. The building is ugly. A huge block of concrete planted amidst this picturesque place. The paint color is uglier. And to top it all, look at the white appendage to the right of the building. All this seems to be the result of a careful exercise intended to remove all traces of beauty and aesthetics from the structure. That they were successful is painfully evident to the eye.

A milestone. Did I mention I photograph these?

Pillar Rocks
Among the must-visit sights in Kodaikanal. It is "8 kilometres (5.0 mi) from the bus-stand, is a set of three giant rock pillars which stand 122 metres (400 ft) high.^[40] Managed by the Tamil Nadu Forest Department, The viewpoint can be crowded but is not commercialized. There is an excellent public garden adjacent to the viewpoint." [from Kodaikanal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
Now, I must add the following: "can be crowded" is a very subjective statement. The fact is that while there is a reasonably large parking lot outside the viewpoint, it can get crowded pretty quickly. Some of the locals were mentioning that peak tourist season, which is pretty much all the summer months, can result in tourist buses and vehicles having to park half a kilometer away from the viewpoint. The viewpoint itself is not very large, and even a dozen people can result in an almost claustrophobic feeling. Each tourist bus can disgorge 50 people, or more. So what do you do? Either go during an off-peak season, like November, or go early in the day, before 9AM. Either way, try and be at this beautiful spot before the throngs of tourists trek their way to this viewpoint.

Raindrops keep falling on my windshield. And what good are raindrops on your windshield if you don't capture them for posterity.

© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

On the road to Kodaikanal

The road to Kodaikanal, from Bangalore, is via National Highway 7 (NH7) for most of the way. You can breakup the drive into these pieces, sort of.

• The first is getting out of Bangalore. If you take an early start, you will beat all the morning hour rush of people heading into Bangalore and towards Electronic City. Best to do that, lest you end up spending the good part of an hour in and out of traffic jams. Since you have to be on NH7, a good starting point from where to measure distance and time is from the Central Silk Board junction. From that point, you have to go straight down the road. You can get on to the elevated expressway (Google Maps link, official web site) (Hosur Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), which saves you time but costs some Rs 40 for a one-way trip on the 10km expressway. If you run into traffic, this is probably a good option, since you will cover the 10kms in less than 15 minutes, versus the half an hour or more that you could end up driving on the same stretch of road.
• The second part is where you get out of Hosur. Bangalore may end a few kilometers from Electronic City, but Hosur is also pretty busy. Slow going there also. The road is not in very good condition, primarily because of heavy vehicular traffic that frequents this stretch. You will also come across several trucks lined up at the side of the highway. All this means that navigating this stretch is slow going.
• The third stretch is to Krishnagiri. The highway can be a bit congested because this is also the highway that people take when traveling to and from Chennai. It is only at Krishnagiri that the road to Chennai branches off as NH46. Traffic thins out after this on the highway. Some 15 kms before Krishnagiri, at Shoolagiri, you have an Adyar Anand Bhavan restaurant, and 5 kms before that a Cafe Coffee Day and a couple of restaurants.
• The fourth stretch is from Krishnagiri to Salem. Traffic is much less here, the road is excellent, and you can do good speed here. What is good speed? Well, weather and traffic conditions permitting, 100kmph is very doable. Some even speed at 120kmph+, but that is not recommended. It's way too fast for you to have time to respond to a sudden eventuality, like a goat deciding to cross the road at the last moment, or a bicyclist deciding to run the gauntlet to the other side of the highway despite the frantic protestations of your honking.
• The last stretch on this highway is from Salem to Dindigul. While there is a bypass to skirt you around Salem, you still end up entering the town, and may get caught up in the traffic here. After Salem, the highway is much, much less busy, and you can do very good speed here. If the weather is good, you can do 100 kmph for extended periods of time. There is nothing here by way of a Cafe Coffee Day or a nice restaurant. There may be something inside the towns you pass along the way, like Namakkal or Karur, but that would mean getting off the highway, and this adds to your travel time.
• You have to get off the highway just before Dindigul and take old NH45 and then the Kodai Ghat Road. From Dindigul to Kodaikanal is approximately 90 kms, and expect to take 2-3 hours to cover this stretch.

If you get an early start, you can get to Dindigul in 5 hours. That is 360 kms. So, doing an average of 70 kmph over five continuous hours is very good. As good as it can get on most highways in India. The last 90 odd kms however, from Dindigul to Kodaikanal, would take at most 3 hours. So, if you take a break or two to fuel up and to eat, add another hour, and you can be in Kodaikanal in 9 hours. Start at 6AM and you will be there by 3PM.

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This stretch below is after you have crossed the town of Salem, but have not quite left the hills of Yercaud completely behind. It was an overcast day, with the threat of rain on the horizon, and the clouds low enough to cover the top of the hills. The mountains in the background, and a beautifully asphalted stretch of the national highway, gentling curving its way around the mountains. I just had to stop and shoot this vista.

The Kodai Hills can be seen in the background here as you drive towards Kodaikanal, on the Kodai Ghat Road.

You know how some signals convey a ton of information? This is one such signal. The hoarding that advertises the weary and hungry traveler to the presence of a hotel not too far away - a trifling 30kms away. Let us look at the words that signal to us. First, the words "high class". Now this is almost certainly a guarantee that the hotel is likely to be infested with flies flying over food. Yes, please try for yourself, and the correlation would be hard to miss. Second, the presence of a "secured car park". Hundreds of kilometers away from a large city like Bangalore or Chennai, parking is not likely to be a problem, for the most part. If this restaurant needs to advertise that it provides secure parking tells a lot. Not all of it may turn out to be true, but nonetheless. The bottom line - if you can, avoid such restaurants. You could do a lot better by stopping a roadside dhaba and grabbing a vada pav, or plain plate of idli, or even some fruits.

I don't know which waterfall this is, but the vista was absolutely breathtaking. Partially hidden behind the mist, where you cannot make out the outlines of the mountains from which the waterfall makes it appearance, it seems to fall from the middle of the skies. Because of the continuing rains, the

As you near Kodaikanal, once you are in the Kodai hills, the road snakes left and then right and then left again. It climbs a lot, goes down a bit, and then climbs again. There are culverts at almost every turn to allow water a passage downhill.

The road is not in great shape, but it is not bad either.

The rains and the height make for lush surroundings. The green is very, very green. A very vibrant shade of green. The foliage is thick.

This is a milepost you will see if you approach Kodai from Madurai. Actually, the other way round.

This milepost below is on the way to Kodai, as you are southbound on the highway.

If it rains, it pours. If it is the mountainsides you are talking about, then it pours earth. As landslides. Incessant rains over the past several days had all been absorbed by the earth. Some of it flowed away, but there a substantial amount of water lay trapped in the soil. The soil kept on getting heavier with all this water, and as some breaking point is reached where the soil can no longer keep itself together under the weight of the heavy earth, a mudslide happens. And not in one or two places. The mudslides appear in dozens of places. That blocks the narrow mountain path leading up to the hill station of Kodaikanal. When we reached this spot below, the earth mover had already been there for some time, and the support staff had been doing a commendable job of clearing the debris away. We had to wait some 20 minutes before the road was cleared enough for the vehicles to start moving again. But the people the day before had not been so lucky. Many were stuck on the road for over 5 hours before they could proceed on with their journeys. For the month of November, such rains are fairly uncommon.

© 2010, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.