Kodaikanal - On the Road

I spent the Labour Day long weekend on a trip to Kodaikanal with the guys from the office. Kodaikanal is known as a hill station, or what Canadians might call a mountain resort town. We saw and did a lot, so I'll be making a few postings on different themes.

"On the Road" is the theme for this post, and includes photos, video and impressions of the trip to and from Kodaikanal. We rented a bus to take us there. Kodaikanal is over 500 kilometres from Chennai, and the drive can take around ten hours non-stop, but our trip took more like twelve to fourteen hours, with breaks for meals and gas.

Driving out of Chennai, I took a few photos of typical street scenes. Road side food stalls are quite popular. The cooking usually happens outdoors, like at this stall. There's also one near our office that we like to go to because the cooking is quite good.



You'll also see animals on certain roads in urban areas - mainly cattle, goats and feral dogs.



Modern office complexes are also springing up along major highways in and near the city.



Modes of transport vary. Pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, bullock carts, auto rickshaws cars, buses and trucks all compete for space on the busy roads.



As the job market here has improved over the past five years, more residents of Chennai are buying motorbikes as their primary means of transportation. Cars are finding a wider market too. The Chennai area is a hub of auto manufacturing and assembly in Asia. Shortly after we passed the Ford plant, we noticed these mysteriously covered vehicles passing us. Were they on test run for a new, still secret model?



One of the principles of shared transportation here seems to be that there is always room for one more person. Sometimes this is for practical reasons, such as transporting workers to and from a job site.



Other times, it's just for fun. After a long uphill hike on Monday, my co-workers convinced a passing jeep driver to give them a ride for the last few hundred metres.



Traveling the roads of Kodaikanal can be breathtaking, in a good way or a scary way or both at the same time.



While traveling on one-lane switch back roads lacking guard rails, one may at times be moved to invoke divine protection. To assist passengers in this regard, a plaque depicting the major faiths of India was prominently displayed at the front of the bus. Given highway driving habits in the region, a moving bus may actually be one of most likely places one will find such diverse believers united in prayer under one roof.