Kodaikanal - Natural Beauty

Kodaikanal is lush, cool and green, thanks to its high elevation (around 7000 feet above sea level) and abundant rain and mists. The air is fresh and clean. On the morning of September 6, we enjoyed a short walk along a scenic lookout in the town. Heavy mists prevented us from enjoying panoramic vistas, but helped create a kind of dreamy landscape.



The town is built around Kodaikanal lake.



Hotels, shops and private homes surround the lake. Tourists can rent paddle boats or row boats to enjoy the view.



We stopped at a variety of places for short hikes, including a pine woodlot, a scenic lookout and a place known as Pillar Rocks.







The following day was clear and sunny. We went for a long hike through an area with spectacular views of the landscape.

In these pictures, you will notice that all of us are wearing Nokia t-shirts. We are neither employees nor clients of Nokia - we just found a bunch of their t-shirts on sale and decided it would be fun to wear them as a team uniform.











This is my colleague Raj. He's sitting on an outcrop that was featured in a popular Tamil movie. There's a scene with the hero meditating on the rock, and the camera circling around him, taking in a magnificent 360 degree view of the land. I couldn't work up the nerve to venture out onto the rock, let alone recreate the shot from the movie.



Although I look like I am perched high up in the shot below, there is a lot of solid ground underneath me. Camera angles - just gotta love 'em!



If you enlarge the photo below, you can see a small village on the right hand side, atop the crest. It is quite isolated, and still does not have electricity.



We didn't venture as far as that village, but we did see a few homes in the area where we hiked. Sometimes a small horse is the best way to transport goods to the more isolated houses.



Some of the people who live in the area set up food stalls to serve the tourists. We stopped at this one, and had fresh squeezed lemonade, bread omelet (an omelet fried around a slice of white bread) and chili peppers dipped in batter and deep fried. We were a large group of 16, and our cook (left) was doubtful she could feed us everything we wanted all at once, until Naveen (centre) stepped in and offered to cook the chili peppers! I didn't try the peppers, but the guys ate up every one of them that he cooked.



Later that afternoon on our drive out of Kodaikanal we stopped by one of the region's many waterfalls.