KODAIKANAL VISIT - Braving the rain

KODAIKANAL VISIT - Braving the rain

Rain is always nice.  A long drive through some hilly terrain covered with thick vegetation and you are singing to the top of your lungs all the wrong lyrics of the song “Yeh Wadiyan Yeh Fizayein bula rahi hain”  is even more nicer. But just imagine you are winding up steep grades to a place known for its chilly temperatures and suddenly the rain started pouring down heavily and you could not find a tree or a shade to hide under… I know you gonna carry on, hoping that it will soon stop simply because we are in the habit of becoming more optimistic when caught between the devil and the deep blue sea,  under normal circumstances. 

 Yesterday, my young friend Varun Choudhary and I decided to take a road trip to Kodaikanal on a motorcycle. Idea being so spontaneous, we did not have the time to prepare much for the journey. So this is how that interesting story went. …

Dawn hadn’t yet broken but we were already on the road. The spectacular view of  River Vaigai once again flowing at full force was indeed a wonderful way to start our journey. What else could we wish for…But, as the saying goes, unfortunately our journey was little more dramatic than we would have liked.

We left Vaigai after taking some wonderful pictures and started moving towards ‘Paravai’. There we stopped briefly at a small petrol pump to refuel our motorcycle. After an hour of driving through the breathtakingly scenic Dindigul national highway that traverse through some of the most attractive stretches of Western Ghats, we reached ‘Nilakottai’.

The weather was perfect and pleasant.

A few more kilometers towards Vattalakund, we watched in dismay as large black clouds started building up at a distance along Western Ghats. We thought it would be fine but that was just a warning as it started drizzling by the time we reached Vattalagund. We had our breakfast at Meenakshi Bhawan and waited for the rain to stop. Once we found the tiny droplets are just not heavy enough to block our way, we got back on the road again for the next leg of our journey. But we were wrong. As we continued in the direction of the clouds, suddenly it started pouring down heavily. That forced us to stop our journey and hole up in a small abandoned shop somewhere near ‘ Ganguwarpatti’. After almost fifteen minutes spent there, it finally got to the point where it looked a wee bit secure to venture out again. Few minutes later, we found the rain was getting stronger and stronger and by the time we reached that huge board showing “ Kodaikanal Wildlife Sanctuary Welcomes You”, we were hit by a massive deluge of rain  attacking us unrelenting from all directions. With heavy rain drops hitting my helmet, it became extremely difficult to see what it’s really coming out there from the front.  It was all fogged up from inside thereby hindering the view almost completely. Steep tarmac was slippery at many places. Negotiating those hairpin bends with my visor holding thousands of tiny droplets and each one acting as a concave lens was indeed tricky. Now things had become downright dangerous. I was in fact shivering. I just kept on trying to relax my hands as it was getting difficult to control the bike. There was another impending danger of falling trees too.

By the time we reached “Thalaiyar” falls, the first pit stop which is about 13 kilometers away from Kodaikanal, we made that much difficult decision to abandon the journey. After a couple of cups of hot tea from a small shop nearby, we got back on the road for the start of a long return back home . Another three hours rain drive and we reached Madurai.

Sometimes we have to face the forces of nature and the oddities of the weather. But this was by far the longest “rain drive” that I’ve ever experienced in my life. Certainly an incredible experience though, perhaps  the one that I would like to repeat again……Thank you  my dear friend Varun for everything that you did to navigate me along this journey…..

This is drafted in a hurry…….Please excuse typos/ grammos errors……………

Latest news in today’s newspapers……..” Vehicular traffic was disrupted on several roads, including the busy Batlagundu-Kodaikanal Road on Sunday after several trees fell due to a landslide.”