Kodaikanal hill station

The journey to Kodaikanal was yet again easy-peasy, just a stroll to the nearby bus station and hopping on the next bus, which happened to be leaving about 30 minutes after we arrived, which gave us the perfect amount of time to grab a lovely curry breakfast in a restaurant across the road.

It's really weird the way you instantly, and automatically, adjust to having gorgeous vegetable curries for breakfast - never with rice, just with lovely fried pancake-like breads like poori, paratha or chappati.

The journey up to Kodaikanal went easily and the mountain views were great all along the way, although the misty atmospherics continued to obscure the farthest mountains. On arrival we got a great lunch in a very popular thali place. A thali is a meal with up to 10 different little dishes of various curries, a poppadum or two , maybe a chappati and a big pile of rice in the middle. As you eat, waiters are strolling about and will refill any of the dishes or your rice on request, so in effect it's an all-you-can-eat deal.

By and large the thali's we've had have been fantastic, and this one in particular really reminded me of probably one of the most spectacular meals I've ever had. It was many years ago, on my first big independent trip cycling around Europe with Tony Dempsey. We were strolling around Amsterdam and got a bit lost (which was kinda intentional) , and decided on a mere whim to pop into a nice looking Indonesian restaurant. Neither of us had ever tried Indonesian before, but the meal we had was absolutely spectacular, and both of us still refer it as our favorite meal ever. What blew me away then was that so many of the flavors were completely new to me and that I'd never tasted anything like them before, and although the flavors in the thali's here in India aren't quite as 'new' to me, the whole experience really reminds me of that early culinary journey of exploration and discovery (I also love the whole 'eating with your hands' thing, which I also adopted quickly and easily - it now feels a little strange to use a fork or spoon!).

So after lunch Sarah got us sorted in a lovely little cottage at Yagappa. We ending up staying 3 nights in total, as the hill station was a nice relief from the heat of the previous weeks, and our little cottage was nice and comfy. It actually got quite cold at night though, and I'd wear my fleece around during the day.

The town has a lovely fancy 5-star hotel (The Carlton), and it was nice and relaxing, although I didn't bother to stay and eat, or even buy a drink. For one thing it was very expensive, but of course that's not normally a consideration when it comes to fine food, but in this case the restaurant only served a buffet in the evenings. I hate buffets now, as I invariably end up eating far too much and just make myself feel really uncomfortable, so unfortunately we never ate there.

The main activity in Kodaikanal is trekking really, and we did the 14km hike to the Pillar Rocks one of the days. When we arrived the view was completely obscured by clouds, but we were in no hurry, and so just relaxed reading our books, and sure enough after an hour or so the clouds burnt off to reveal fabulous views of the countryside and the shear rock faces of the Pillars.

We also strolled around the local lake, which was nice in parts, but in general the whole time in Kodaikanal was affected by constant noise. Firstly there was the constant car horn beeping of course (both in the town itslef, and on our little hikes and walks (with the one exception of strolling out to Bear Shola Falls), but also there was a local Christian festival in a church near our hotel. They started blasting (and I mean really BLASTING!) out the music and preaching at 7am, and continued on-an-off until about 10pm - quite fustrating really.

So it was just a nice relaxing time (most of the time), and of course we continued to eat amazingly well. When it came time to leave we ate at the thali place again and then waited for the bus out of town. The bus arrived right on time but there was a bit of a mad scramble to get onboard, as it was already pretty full. We managed to squeeze on with our rucksacks, but had to stand. Sarah almost fainted early on, but once she sat on her rucksack she was fine (quite a few of the Indian ladies threw up out the windows of the bus!), and after and hour or so I had enough room to sit on my rucksack too. After another hour or so people started leaving the bus, and we both got seats for the rest of the 5-hour journey to Kumily, gateway to the Perivar National Park.