Kolli Hills
This was as mentioned earlier planned well in advance weekend trip. Started on a Saturday morning at 5:30 from our house in Adyar. It took us till 8 AM to reach Dindivanam due to the heavy truck traffic on GST. Non avaiability of diesel in the bunks also added to a 45 minute delay. Reached The Highway Hotel at 8 and had a good breakfast. It was a decent place and the food was good too. After 45 minute started our non stop drive to Kolli hills. Since we were driving down we had a print of the route from Google maps and in spite of that kind of missed our way due to non availability of sign boards.
Though not much of a deviation, we went inside the city of Kallakurichi and had to touch the route from Chinna Salem. I should say I was amazed by the highways. The state highways have been so well maintained and the roads were just butter smooth. Very spacious 4 lane almost on all the state highways we touched.
The map that we printed did help us a lot and we were finally at the foot of kolli hills. The entire route was so amazing with paddy fields on either sides and it was all green throughout. May be because we just went at the start of the monsoon.
Finally we reached our destination “Nallathambi resort” by around 3 PM. It was a wonderful drive up hill with about 72 hair pin bends. The bends were pretty steep and it was a fun drive and a bit scary one too.
Though we had booked the accommodation well in advance we were made to wait as the rooms got filled by some college kids. We did pack some tamarind rice and took some chips along not knowing if we would get anything on the way. In fact that food helped us survive till 4:30 PM when we actually got the room. We freshened up before starting to explore the place. We visited a view point that was a KM away from the village named “Solakkadu”. Then we visited another place that was like a park, however there was nothing great. The view from every place on the hill was just breath taking. There are no words that can describe it. The un polluted air and the chilly breeze that hit the face is also something that cannot be described.
We reached our resort and ordered some dinner. Dinner was very homely and there weren’t too many varieties as they do not have any vegetable suppliers on the hill and they procure everything from the villages at the foot hills. Hence the choice was limited but very tasty as well.
That was day 1 at Kolli. The next day we started pretty early. Had steaming hot breakfast at the resort and started our way to the Akash Ganga waterfalls. The details of this waterfall can be seen on the following website:
I was very sceptical to walk down as it was a falls to which you need to walk down 1000 odd steps. Climbing down the stairs was also not so easy as after half a distance of going down I realised that my legs started trembling. Hence I had to give breaks to even climb down. Steps were steeper at few points and narrower as well. The view however was breathtaking on all sides. It was as if I was walking endlessly and could hear or see no falls anywhere. When I was really tired of climbing down, I could at a distance hear the roar of a waterfall and I got very excited to see how it would be and I forgot about my trembling legs and walked down very fast. At one point the stairs came to an end and I was so happy, but the next second I realised that there were some rocky terrain that I needed to cross to go to the waterfall. These were pretty sharp rocks and it was a bit scary to walk on them and I was walking with a constant fear that I would fall any moment.
The moment I crossed this terrain what I saw was an amazing sight and one would forget the number of steps climbed down. It was a fall from a height of about 300 meters and true to its name it looked as if it was falling from the sky. We were standing at a distance of about 300 meters and in spite of that the water was hitting on our face.
Spent some time enjoying this natural beauty and it was time for us to climb up and I was so scared at the thought of getting up those 1000 steps. It was pretty difficult, but somehow by taking breaks I managed to reach the top safely. From there we went back to our resort and it was time for us to pack and leave.
It was again a good drive down the hills though it felt as if we took more time coming down than the time we took to go uphill. Went straight to Namakkal temple and from there started our journey back to Chennai. We took a different route this time around and came via Thuraiyur, Perambalur and NH 45 from then on. Once again butter smooth highways.
Reached Chennai by 9 PM. Overall it was a very nice weekend and had good fun.
*Since am writing this blog almost after 2 months of my trip I haven’t provided the complete details of timings, highways etc*
