YERCAUD TRIP

All you need after a stressful week at office is some place where you can go and have some peace. A place where you  can just relax and forget your cubical where you sit for hours and hours staring at the god damn monitor. Yercaud is one such perfect destination.

Yercaud is Small Hill station in Tamil Nadu situated around 1500 meters above sea level  on the eastern ghats. We started from Chennai around 10:30 Pm and reached Salem, the nearest town to yercaud, at morning 5 .   It takes almost 1 hour 30 minutes and around 20 hairpin bends to reach Yercaud which is around 30  kms from salem.

Picture taken from bus on the way to yercaud

You know, when u go on a tour or to a small trip you need to plan it properly and my friends who claimed to have planned everything before starting from Chennai did not even bother book a hotel room to stay, not to mention they din’t even book a train ticket for me. :x:  Luckily we met an Auto driver who said he has contacts with Hotels where rooms are booked in his names so that he could bring the “well planned” tourists like us 😛 . The hotel looked good from outside but when i got in, it appeared something similar to the rooms they show in the B-grade movies 🙂 . We had no option so we took it and agreed to pay 1000 rupees which included an extra bed’s cost because we were 5 in total. We knew it was expensive and he was charging way above the normal rate but thats ok considering the fact that only other option left to us was to sleep at a bus stand or a railway station . Wait a minute , At Yerkaud even that’s not possible 😛 .

Yercaud is a place where still lot of importance is given to the nature. The place is not much commercialized like Ooty or Kodaikanal so its less crowded  There isn’t a good mode of transportation within the hill station . So if you plan to visit it’s better that you take your own vehicle . We , however , approached the same Auto driver who said he could show us all the places for about 900 Bucks .5 people in a single auto  was going to be really difficult. But again, we had no other  option.One of my friends sat in front along with the auto driver and remaining four of us squeezed ourselves into the back .

Yercaud hills taken near Killiyur falls

Our First Spot was Kiliyur falls . The best part  is that there is no proper road to the falls . After a particular point you need to trek down to some distance.  It takes around 20 minutes in a ruthless route of thorny bushes and steep terrain to reach the place. Excitement grew just  bigger and bigger as we were getting faint sound of water Gushing through some big Source, we knew we were near and a great sense of hope and relief engulfed us 🙂 . Am i getting too melodramatic ??:P Ignore karo yaar You had to look at all our faces when we reached that place 🙂   Everyone looked so fresh and excited just by seeing the  water rushing down the huge rocks.  You forget all the pain and you just wanna take a plunge into  natural wonder .

Killiyur Falls

Because the place is not easily accessible there is less crowd , infact when we reached , there were just a couple of people 🙂 .  The Water was too cold so we all hesitated at first but couldn’t  stay back long .I gave my Digi cam to the autodriver and ran into the water straight away.

Unlike other waterfalls, this one had had steps that could be climbed so soon we started climbing although we knew that  one wrong step could just get our head smashed 🙂 . I started and my friends followed soon, except one who thought Posing for the cameraman was less risky 😛 .

We Climbed right up there 🙂

We were there for around two hours and then our guide- Cum- Autodriver cum -cameraman signaled that it was getting late and dark as well. The Dark clouds were looming a big danger for us as we had to get back up to the place where our Mercedes Auto was parked. And like we expected it started drizzling and suddenly in a span of  5 minutes  everything around changed .It was getting little foggy, Everything suddenly appeared much more green 🙂 .  Clouds suddenly were so near to us . It was an amazing sight .  Everything , i mean everything was perfect.  Had there been a Beautiful Girl along with me instead of my Friends :x: it could have been a perfect place for a Romantic Song :P.

Yercaud hills While returning from Kiliyur falls

I think this post is getting a little longer than what i expected so i would stop here and would continue my trip details in next post 😛 .

Ranganathan Street – Mambalam !!!

Mambalam is probably one of the most prominent areas in chennai .I would say any tourist who has missed  this place,  has missed the real chennai. Textiles,jewellery,electronics,footware  ..u name the shit and it is available .Clearly a shoppers paradise. Perhaps the only place where u can do exaustive shopping .. Crowd is a synonymous word for the place .The fact that its very close to Railway station and Bus stand makes it all easier for people to come along with the family  from any place.

But when it comes to festive season ,especially diwali , shopping can  really  be an ardous job.You will have to think twice before deciding to enter Ranganathan street . All you need to do is get out of the train . You need not even walk, the crowd will take u to the end of street but yeah it will take nearly an hour to cover the street that is hardly 100 meters long . Roads which practically can never be neat are full of  pot holes  and when it rains the place becomes really messy  . Come in shorts if you don’t want to spoil ur pants 😛 . When u are out of the street u are relieved like u have just won a war .But thats not true ,shopping takes a lot more . All that glitters is not gold !! who cares !!!. When You  enter the tallest and the best looking building around , you will find that almost half of the crowd from ranghanathan street too marches towards it.The best option to reach the top floors of a multistory building like this one are lifts but not here , they will either be not working or so overloaded that u  would hardly be able to get in .SO climb up  ,atleast u will  lose some calories  .It would be wise Carry oxygen cylinders  to avoid suffocation   while you are inside the building . You wont find a single place where u can stand peacefully .Billing section queue will be as long as the queue outside a stadium with India-pak match and dont even think about going to  the  stinky  trial rooms 😛 you will have to wait till evening for that  . All these things are common for almost all the major shops located there .

Going back home safe is no kids job too . ALL the buses and trains will be over crowded . consider it ur lucky day if u get a space to stand on ur two legs . ( And if u are among those few souls planning to come on their own vehicles find a solution beforehand for parking problem 😛 )

And when u reach home  u cant help but feeling proud of making it through all the obstacles successfully . U pat ur own back and say What a DAY ??  I have made it

Anyways  the post was about picture of the day i guess .. 😛 .So here u go …

what a crowd !?!?!