The ancient city of Mamallapuram has been called the town of the seven pagodas ever since the first European explorers reached the city several centuries ago. According to popular belief, once upon a time six other temples stood along with the now famous shore temple on the shores of Mahabalipuram’s rock strewn beaches. Myth has it that the God Indra became jealous of this earthly city, and sank it during a great storm, leaving only the Shore Temple above water (Figure 1). Local fishermen have for long claimed to have had glimpses of at least some of the other temples glittering beneath the waves.
Remember this phrase from movie “Karz”, aka, “1 haseena thi, 1 deewana tha, kya umar thi, kya zamana tha”. I heard and saw Ooty first time in Karz and noticed 2nd time in movie Maine Pyar Kiya - “Dil deewana, bin sajna ke, maane na” (more…)
Bhayya Muddumalai and Bandipur National Park kya ho kar aaye, mere beti ghar mein sabka naam animals per rakh diya hein. Myself “Dinasour”, my daughter Navya “Chhoti Dianasour”, Bete Ujjwal ka “Chhota Deer”, meri niece Aditi ka “Elephent”, Meri wife Dimpi ka “Monnkey”,.mere bade bhai ka tiger, meri bhabhi ka peacock, friend ka Camel. And on top of that, she calls us by these name, watching it on TV a tiger chasing deer, she says, “Tau ji is chasing Bhayya”, I want to take a ride on Sanjeev chacha (Camel).
Well, we 5, me, my wife, my niece, my son and daughter, drove to Masanagudi, Tamilnadu, it is 290 KM from Bangalore, we took Bangalore-Mysore highway, and then towards Ooty/Bandipur. From Gundelpet, there are 2 roads to Ooty, 1 via Bandipur and another one is a Ooty/Coimboter highway. I realised this while coming back, otherwise I was wondering if this is the main route to Ooty. For about 60 KMs, road is not good, there is hardly any road on few patches. We reached Bandipur in the afternoon, had lunch and crossing Bandipur Jungle we moved towards to Masangudi.
Drive is pleasent through the jungle, we saw few deers, langoors, and a traffice jam. Why traffic jam, are bhai, elephent baby and his mother were standing on the the main road, and no body dared to honk to push them aside the road. Watching so many people staring at them, mother elephent secured the child elephent and pushed him on the other side of the road, wow, we are in Muddumalai national park, Tamilnadu. My camera was back in the trunk and I was not able to capture that. We reached Muddumalai city in 30 minutes and inquired about our GlenView Resorts (www.glenviewresorts.com). It was further 15 KM on Ooty road. When we reached near resort, there was no road, I called the resort manager and asked for the directions, he said just follow the road, I said there is no road man, he said, this is the only no-road to reach us. Driving slowly, we found ourselv in a jungle, foothills of Blue-Hills in Nilgiris. There were few other resorts on the way and our resort was the last one. We reached there around 4:00 PM, met resort manager Suresh. Resort was pretty nice, inside the jungle, he allocated us a room on a tree, which was quite big for 3 adults and 2 kids.
Yercaud needs no introduction, but for the benefit of all, here’s a small intro. Yercaud is a quaint little hill station in the district of Salem in Tamil Nadu.This is often referred to as the “Poor man’s OOTY”. I cannot quite see the logic for this. Yercaud is not as crowded as Ooty, and at the same time, it offers all that is expected out of a hill station.
Facts
Yercaud is aprrox 235 kms from the city of Bangalore. The distance can be covered in 4.5 to 5 hrs. The route is Bangalore-Hosur-Krishnagiri-Dharmapuri-Salem-Yercaud. The last stretch (Salem to Yercaud) is 30 kms out of which 25 kms are climbing the hill. This 25kms has 20 Hairpin bends , most of which(19) are near the top. (more…)
