Every year as a family we have our yearly trip with cousins and this year we were eagerly waiting for the lockdown to get eased and things to get back to normal so that we could have our trip. We planned to go to Kodaikanal since we didn’t want to travel far and wanted to do something within the state. We planned as a group of 11 members and the doggy baby Meow for the trip.
We booked a tempo traveller since we wanted to travel together and not drive in different cars so that we can spend some quality time together. We also booked a homestay there. Most of the hill stations in South India offer lot of home stays with local food, would highly recommend those instead of Resorts or star hotels. I normally try to stay in such place where you can get to meet the local people and know about them. With both the travel and stay we had to make sure they accommodate Meow since not many of them allow pets. But both the cab and the stay, they were happy to have Meow with us all the time.
We planned for a 3 day visit starting Thursday night and then back to Chennai on Sunday night. Thursday night went in travel and it took us almost 10 hours with multiple breaks in between. We started around 11 pm and reached the home stay around 9 am. Friday half day was spent in relaxing (read sleeping) with the full night travel. We went out for Lunch and then planned to visit Kodai lake for boating and then cycling around the lake. Cycling around the lake is something which most people do when they visit Kodai. Most of the family opted to ride the tandem cycles which is the two seater ones. Main advantage of it is, even people who doesn’t know to ride a cycle (like me 😀 ) can sit at the back and enjoy. The highlight of the cycling is riding with Meow, the cycle shop guys immediately set up a baby seat for Meow and made sure she was comfortable to enjoy the cycle ride. Cycling around the entire lake is almost 4 -5 Kms, most of the family stopped half way and returned back. Me and husband didn’t realise this and were cycling the entire stretch with all our energy drained. Should really appreciate the husband for balancing Meow and me with one cycle 😛 The entire Kodai lake stopped to see Meow in the cycle and she became an instant star with fans wanting to take pic of a little doggy riding cycle 🙂
Next day, we planned to do most of the Kodai sightseeing like Pine forest, Dolphin nose, view points etc. We visited a small stream where you can actually go and enjoy in the stream. The water was extremely cold and even with that we stood there in the stream for sometime until we couldn’t take it longer. We shopped some local home made chocolates which is famous again in the hill stations. We wrapped up the day after this and reached the stay for dinner. Breakfast comes along with the stay and dinner can be requested and made on order. Both breakfast and dinner was extremely good which is made with local grown vegetables and the preparation was also good. They also set up camp fire for us both the nights we stayed and it was super fun to conduct games with the camp fire.
Sunday morning after breakfast we checked out, shopped some local fruits and vegetables on the way back. We also visited silver cascade falls when descending down the hills. We stopped for lunch at Dindigul and had some awesome biryani, which is famous there and reached Chennai by midnight.
Since we were a bigger group, the cost for the whole trip was lesser. It costed around 5k for each person inclusive of everything. If you choose to travel in train from Chennai, this would be even more cheaper but we avoided it mainly due to safety concerns. Do follow safety precaution all the time like wearing masks and sanitising hands regularly. We avoided sight seeing places which was crowded and make sure to maintain social distance.
Chennaivaasi 