Nov 24, 2008 04:38 PM
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This is to tell all you travel bugs about my recent trip to Yelagiri Hills !!! well if you can call them really hills as the altitude is just around that of Bangalore (sub 1000 Mtrs), But for the thick vegetation and unspoilt nature, I guess the place would have been no cooler than Bangalore.
To give a proper description, We started around 8 am from HSR Lay-Out, as we knew that 1st Nov was a Saturday and also holiday due to KANNADA RAJYOTSAVA and hence were confident of lean traffic on Hosur Road.
Reached Hosur by 9 am and made a Expensive decision about having breakfast at the New Renaissance Hotel, Hosur. Expensive because their Ala Carte breakfast was very expensive and the quantity so meager that I have to say that I ate the smallest Vada and Idly that I have ever paid for. Better option would have been Saravana Bhavan located near the first fly-over at Hosur or better A2B further 10 KMs down at BP fuel station.
After B/f continued onwards to Krishnagiri, paid the toll fee, and deviated to Chennai Highway just after the toll booth.Great Road from now on till Tirupattur Junction near Vaniyambadi thanks to the GQ. Forgot to tell you that we were in 2 cars 2 families consisting of a couple and 2 not so young children in each car, mine in my 6 month old VERNA and my best pal in his BMW- 3 series, both enjoy driving and tested our speed machines by pushing the speed limits to 160 KMPH at one stretch of GQ.
After doing about 150KMs, we took a left hand deviation at Tirupattur junction, and another hair pin bend takes us under the GQ Road towards Tirupattur, at 16 KMs, we found a board pointing towards Yelagiri, and took a smooth clean road to our uphill journey. It took about 20 mins to reach the peak and were welcomed by a slew of boards offering accommodation.
We had made prior booking with LeAuroville (earlier known as Rainbow resorts). followed the directions to the resort, after some confusion we reached the resort. Calling an erstwhile school as resort may be too far fetched and the class rooms converted to rooms with funny looking bathrooms were not to our preference as we wanted cozy rooms for our 1 night stay, but some how we decided to stay put there, may be we were in no mood to waste time in searching accommodation on such brief trip. We were all hungry and luckily I had called up Mike the proprietor of the resort during my journey and they had prepared lip smacking chicken dish and meals, there was an instant connection vide our stomach and that made us overlook some short comings of the resort and made our stay pleasant.
Took a short nap and by 4 pm we decided to explore the Hill station. Priority Number 1 - The lake, small clean and beautiful with pedal boat option, spent 2 hours there and next were off to Nature Park, where we were taken back to see the elegantly laid out gardens in front of us, the fountains were magnificent and were spewing water in full glory, The compact garden is well laid out with a artificial water fall to boot.
Then came another surprise, a musical fountain !!!!, pleasantly surprised we decided to wait till the scheduled start time of 7 pm. With dusk falling early due to winter, the show started on time with nearly 200 viewers, the crowd enjoyed seeing the water jets dance to popular tamil tunes. We got bored of seeing the same movements and after 20 mins into the 1 hour long show we decided to leave for the warmth of our hotel as the night was getting too cold.
By the time we returned to resort, they had set up bonfire and some short eats for us to munch while circling around the fire, The warmth upped our SPIRITS and we were soon out of our woolens and enjoying the music played on the sound system. Excellent and tasty Non-Veg dinner was served and we retired to bed around 12 midnight, as we had decided to take a morning trek in to the jungle next dawn break.
Our trek was delayed and started only by 8 am as a neigbourhood septuagenarian GUIDE arrived late and after coffee we commence our trek with our entire family, we were a bit worried during the first leg where we had to kind of stoop while negotiating the creepers and could not see much ahead, gradualy the track opened up and we were walking up the hill with minimum effort and all the while enjoying fresh air and were so charged up we reached the peak and jumped on to a mighty rock to have a view of the valley below us and we could see Vaniambadi town at a distance. We returned on a different path and after nearly 2 hrs of trekking we were all very happy to see our resort appearing out of nowhere as we took a sharp turn on the trail.
We thanked the guide and paid him Rs.150 as his fee and the old man was really happy for the deserved earning.
Each one of us relished hearty breakfast after a good workout and we all had more than our fill. Played some footie, cricket, volley ball and after 2 hrs decided to nap some more as we had nothing else to do.
Had sumptuos lunch and left the resort after thanking Mr.And Mrs. Mike for their gracious service, settled the bill which came upto Rs 1500 per person, and left yelagiri by 2 Pm, enjoyed a leisurely drive downhill, cut in the chennai-bangalore highway and with not much traffic being sunday, reached home by 7 pm.
My trip meter read 330M's and I felt that was the least we can ever travel for a short break. All in all a good and enjoyable trip, and would defenitely recommend Bangaloreans to give it a try. If you feel accomodation needs to be good, you can try Sterling resorts and a new resort on the bank of the lake called RYTHMS, we did notget to see either of them, but the first one is a reputed brand and the later one looked spanking new and hence guess would be better.
Do not go to Yelagiri with any great expectation, and I am sure you will return pleased and content.
