Kodaikanal

Dew-laden flower -- closeup

====


At Kodai, the weather was chilly, but I found it bracing. This is offseason but there were a moderate number of people around. I think off-season touristing of places like Kerala and hill-stations like Kodai is a great idea, if you have the patience to bear with the weather.

As I mentioned earlier, we were taking advantage of a friend who's a member of Club Mahindra which is a timeshare holiday thing. CM doesn't have a resort in Kodai, so through a second-level exchange the Kodai availability came through RCI (the international timeshare company) and then Sterling Resorts another Indian timeshare company, which actually owns the place. This trip was enough to convince me of the usefulness of timeshare holidays. The resort was good, the management was good, there were no hidden charges and everything went fine. Signing up for a timeshare right now is too expensive for me in my current state but I have really bought into the idea and would love to go on more such holidays.

There is not much to do in Kodai if you are an active sightseer ie. want to see lots of famous places or ooh-aah sights. But if you enjoy just chilling in the middle of nature and mountains, or trekking, its a great place with many nice locations. There is a lack of sync between me and Priya along these lines that reduces the potential of a vacation although we still do have fun. And of late I have been sticking to group trips where someone carts you around and you dutifully stare at the sights. I really need to get out of this mode and do something more 'real'. This trip we did do two nice things -- we went all around Kodai lake (6 km) on a tandem bicycle. Priya doesn't know how to cycle but she put enthu pedalling. The bike was old and clunky and it was quite hard work but we had a good time. The other thing we (I) did was get a traditional Kerala (Dhanwantari) massage at the resort, followed by a steam bath. It was quite interesting and I'd do it again, but there were no obvious benefits.

Apparently there are 'magic mushrooms' growing naturally in Kodai that will give you a high. We saw them and we brought one home with us, but since I'm not 100% sure that they are the the right ones, don't want to test it out.

We briefly touched Madurai. Due to logistical issues we didn't spend much time at the temple which was again a bummer. I guess I still haven't learnt how to do this properly.

We got lots of good photographs, perhaps I will upload more of them later. I took my camera manual along with me and started reading it and am discovering that there is more to photograhpy than point and shoot :-).

Blogger is not uploading photos properly right now, so more photos later.