Day 3 – Part 1:
I woke up early, (thanks to the church bells in Kodaikanal) decided on what clothes all the four of us need to wear and waited patiently for more than an hour, before waking up the sleepy trio, the boys.
After the kids were ready, they played in the open area outside our room, which was as slopy as a park slide. I warned them against going far away, since it was hilly and I was sure there were rattle snakes in the area. (The rattling sound I heard at regular intervals among mounds covered with grass might have been anything, but better safe than sorry) KBee found some tissues, made a paper ball with it. They rolled the paper ball downhill, taking turns and had fun. I spent the time recording their activities.
We had our breakfast at the hotel itself. I had bread and jam. Kids had dosa, because they are part of the Dosa Fan Club! Mr.Bee had milk bread with coffee. We got into our ‘car for the week’, ertigo and off we went in the cool breeze!
Our first stop was Fairy Waterfalls. It had a small flow of water, it being summer and all. We had to park the car somewhere nearby, go through a gate, (as if entering private property) to access the waterfalls. It was peaceful place, only two other people were admiring the nature and sadly we saw plastic bottles inside the lake too. Some idiots never learn!
Summer Special – itsy bitsy, Fairy Waterfalls!
See the pale rainbow at the bottom of the waterfalls? We were mesmerised looking at it. As we were enjoying the moment in nature, we heard a horse neighing violently. I don’t know about the kids, but that scared me. We found a white horse ahead and it was jumping up and down, neighing repeatedly. We returned to our car after taking selfies and KBee was surprised to see a white horse. He only saw dark horses in T.V, white horse was a novelty.
Later, we went to the Echo point. To reach the point, we have to go through an enclosed pathway, with 100 something stalls of chocolates, bags, soveneirs on either side of it . It’s like entering a tunnel of goodies! It was congested with human traffic and we walked at a medium pace, to let KBee catch up. Thanks to the heavy mist that day, we couldn’t see the valley properly. We spent hardly 10 minutes at the point and returned to our car. We also met a group of school going girls who had a boom box with them and they played some songs while dancing and shouting all the way to the echo point. At last, I could catch one song, “peelings” song from Pushpa2.
Our next stop was Pillar Rock Flower Garden. Here too, we waited a while for the mist to clear so that we could look at the beautiful Pillar Rocks. We had a brief glimpse of the magnificent Pillar Rocks, took a few selfies and exited.
Pillar Rocks are not visible in the background because of the heavy mist
We made a brief stop here for our snacks, which were salted raw mango, boiled kabuli chana chat, fruit salad and rose flavoured soda. (lemon soda was unavailable!) I also bought Kodai Apples for our snack, for later in the room.
At every viewpoint, we had parking issues, so our driver N would park it far ahead and we spent most of the day, walking. Even KBee tried his best.
We reached the highlight of the day, the Guna Caves or the Devil’s Kitchen. The caves got the alternate name because the Tamil movie Guna starring Kamal Hasan had been shot here. Even the Malayalam movie Manjummel Boys was shot here which is based on a true story. The Guna caves is blocked now, thanks to people getting lost inside them. As per records, 16 people have disappeared inside the caves, in different incidents.
Anyway, you can only imagine how it felt looking at the nature, where the tree roots look magnificent than the tree itself! (I can write a whole post about this one location)
No pic can do justice to the beautiful Guna Caves – Courtesy: Google
GBee, wanted to climb to the top most point of the roots, which was more than 30m in heightfrom the pathway. There was also clay everywhere, so I warned him against it, but Mr.Bee didn’t like us stopping the kid. So both of them climbed towards the tree to the top, while KBee and I waited for them at the bottom. Interestingly, we had to run around the whole park thanks to the monkeys which kept coming to us, to sniff if we had any snacks with us. At one point, I threw a cookie away, to divert the d*** monkey. Later I also threw away a half eaten guava! (We thought we had fooled the monkeys, because we hid our snacks, but they still managed to find us, out of all the hundreds of tourists!)
Monkey menace!
Since it was a weekend, the people at each tourist spot were in hundreds! What did we do next…? Read the ‘part 2’ post, which will be up soon.
P.S:
1. During the peak season, we will have to register our car or cab or any vehicle beforehand. They allow only fixed number of vehicles.
2. By the time we reached Guna Caves it was hardly time for lunch, but the climate was very cold. We bought the kids cute ear muffs at the Pillar Rocks Flower Garden, to keep the cool air out of their ears. There are also many YouTube videos which show the Guna Caves and feel free to watch them.
3. When travelling, it is better to always keep snacks and fruits handy to avoid hunger pangs. That’s what we did. We had cookies and guava at Guna Caves. We would have prefered eating away from the keen eyes of the monkeys, but the driver N banned us from eating anything inside the car. He kept warning the kids to remove the shoes as soon as we entered the car. He had his reasons.
Till the next post, Cheerio!!
