Kodaikanal - The princess of hill stations

Kodaikanal - This word bring a cool and pleasant feeling in everyone's mind. We’ve decided to have few days of vacation in first week of Oct. With about 2 to 3 days available, we got into planning to make a trip to Kodaikanal Or Munnar. After animated discussion with family members, we finally decided in favour of Kodaikanal the "princess of hill station" in India.

How to get to Kodaikanal:

The next immediate thought was, how to get there and the accommodation. As we just had few days, we decided in favour of taking my car from Chennai to Kodai . I was sure the drive through the ghat road, would be a pleasant one as I can determine the speed of my car and stop anywhere as per my wish to enjoy the scenic views, further I wanted to drive in morning hours to enjoy the beauty of nature.

Accommodation:
This certainly requires planning accordingly to each one’s budget and need. To us, as we would be taking our car, we were looking for a cozy place little away from centre of town with good view of valley or the hills and need to be quite decent place to enjoy the stay. As a matter of fact, I would have spent about couple of days in planning, searching the web and reviewing the comments toward's identification of accommodation. If one is looking for a confirmed accommodation, all hotels or resorts require payment in advance, which is quite natural on part of owners of accommodation. We did not want to lock the accommodation without seeing the place and since we would be having a car, we thought we can roam in search of alternative location if one is full or if we don't like the accommodation. So, we narrowed down to a list of about 4 accommodation places based on internet search and reviews, our top in list was Carnival resort .

Reach Kodai :
First day we started from Chennai at around 11:30 AM and Madurai is about 440 KM, the road have been made as a 'express way' quite recently with toll collected every 50 to 60 KM. To a person who has passion to drive, I would say it one among the best highway road in South India, may be because it’s newly laid particularly from Villupuram to Madurai. We reached Madurai by 6:00 PM and rested at Madurai that night.


Next day morning, we left Madurai by 8.00 AM. Madurai to Kodaikanal was about 120 KM, with 50 KM stretch on the ghat road. We entered the ghat road around 9:30 AM, I would say it was a pleasant feeling to be in control of the wheels and drive up the hill. It was nature at its best, as weather was perfect for the drive with scenic view around you, one would feel the mesmerizing beauty of nature.

We reached Kodaikanal around 12.00 Noon, immediately called Carnival resort and got the direction to reach the place. I would say Carnival resort is about 1 to 2 KM from town centre. When we reached the place and we immediately liked it. The view from balcony was the best, it was as if you are in middle of woods, though it’s not far away from the town centre.

The CARNIVAL RESORT was quite new one and understood from reception that it was opened in Dec 2010, the place is very calm, neat and one side facing hill view with lush green canopy trees .We relished every moment of our stay there.

We visited many places which were quite popular, but we liked Bear Shola falls for its greenery, with no crowd around , we felt like being in middle of woods. Not sure as why this place is not promoted much towards tourism at Kodai, probably its might be due to narrow lane of about 500 metres where parking of vehicle could be difficult and one needs to walk or trek for another 500 metres to reach this place.

We stayed two night at Carnival resort and started our drive back on ghat road during the morning hours to relish the beauty of nature.

In all, I would say, it was a relaxing trip to Kodai and enjoyed nature beauty.