Is this place called Kodaikanal for honeymooners? No its not. It’s a place of cheaters. Well, if you can get round without being cheated than definitely this place is for you, because here you'll get to see some of the spectacular scenes, waterfalls, and landscapes.
It all started with an idea to visit places in Tamil Nadu, as it’s been couple of months here in Chennai, and since Kodai (KodaiKanal) as I had heard was a cooler place. I wanted to experience some chill long after having lived in Chennai for 6 months.
Some of the things that you get so see, rather I end up noticing are not so pleasant.
It was Thursday night at about 8.30PM I and my colleague reached Koyembedu Bus Station in Chennai. The bus was already in the station, and as I was looking for the bus, I noticed on the sides of the bus, the puke of all those who had travelled in those buses. It was a nasty scene, and I was hoping to have a decent tour.
We reached Kodai after we had visited Madhurai, the city of temples, in short the city of Madhurai is famous for its Meenakshi temple, and it’s mammoth and very nice. Definitely a place to visit and be aware of cheaters!
As we got down the bus in Kodai a huge group of touts mobbed us, they were holding pamphlets of hotels and the photos of the places they would take us around. But we managed to get out of the place by saying we had already booked our hotel. We had not actually booked any hotel. It was an unprepared decision to go on a tour and was pretty much unplanned. The idea was to stay in a cottage for couple days and laze. We saw the board of restaurant, which read, "North Indian food, Gujarathi, Punjabi and Rajastani food". I thought may be we could get some information about different accommodation available and about the place in general, so I thought we should have dinner there and please the owner so that he'd be happy to share the valuable information that we were desperately seeking. I guess, what I thought was a stupid idea, well, that's what I thought, and couldn't think any better than that. The food was old, that's what my colleague told me, I was very cautious and very choosy in eating from the Thali (meals) and hoping that I'd not fall sick after eating this food. The hotel owner seemed to appear pleased and introduced to a guy by name, Farook Abulla. I made this guy happy, by saying, "Oh, so you are the former CM of Jammu Kashmir !". He was happy to hear me say that and he said it was the same year when he was born and formor CM of Jammu Kashmir had visited the Kodai, and hence his father proudly named him after the then CM of Jammu Kashimir. So, Farook, took us in his tata sumo, to show us the possible hotel were we could stay. It was stupid that I choose to stay in the first hotel that he showed me, not because the hotel was bad, but because, I initially wanted to check all the possible places and then decide about the hotel. Well, we made a choice to stay in the hotel named "AppleValley". We had a bit of problem with this hotel, rather a big problem. We had to visit police station to get rid of this problem. I'll come back to this problem later!
Well, as we had already paid for our two day package tour to Farook, the tour bus was outside the hotel waiting for us the next morning. Farook had taken 300Rs more from us, we got to know about this from our co-tourists on the first day. So here we get cheated for the first time, not a big cheating though. The guide was nicely rude to us or rather rudely nice, which were way, and I he had to repeat what he described about the place to us in Hindi. For some reason, I don't understand why, he was not too happy with us. God knows!
The tourists are supposed to pay the tour guide a fee in proportion to your satisfaction to his conduct and his description of the places. Needless to say none of them were satisfied with the way he presented. So, these tour guides have a very unique way to collect their fees from the tourists, they collect the dubious entrance fees for the places where there would be no entrance fees at all. And don't you dare to ask for the entrance ticket! And then at the end of the tour they literally make you feel guilty if you didn't pay their fees! I guess this is where all the tourists including me got cheated. I guess, most of the tourists were oblivious to this cheating, I wish I was oblivious too, and wouldn't have felt miserable!
On the first day of the tour the weather was not as cold as I was expecting it to be, but it was cold enough, and the places were good, all that was appealing was walking through the clouds, the freshness of the air, the beautiful green pastures, and the view of mountains covered with clouds below were we stood. There is a lake, its perimeter could be around 5km, it’s in the shape of star fish, so you really don't get to gauge the perimeter of the lake, but you'll discover to your surprise the hidden edges of the lake as you go by its shore. There were people cycling around the lake and some were peddling the little boats in the lake. I didn't want to get damp, so I decided we take a walk around the lake. As I was walking there was always a hope that we would soon complete perambulating the lake, it never seemed to happen! We shot each other, I mean with the camera, and other sights and sceneries. There is a garden besides the lake, its good. But I advice not to go any closer to the public toilet there, God help you if you are in a hurry!
At the end of the first day we got back to the hotel, to find our belongings moved to another room, which was cheapest of all the rooms, we could make out by the look of it. Of course we had agreed to move into a room which was better than what we were living in. Contrary to what we had agreed, the hotel guys put us in a cheapest room and demanded more than what was the tariff of the current room we stayed in. Here I was cursing myself to have chosen to stay in the first of the hotel, with out even enquiring about the other hotels. For some reason, I wasn't happy about what was going around. The hotel guys didn't budge to give us a better room and asked us to checkout if we weren't satisfied. We didn't want to go out in the middle of the night and get cheated again the money hungry touts. So, we decided to compromise and stayed. Suddenly in the middle of the night, we heard the knock on the door, and there stood the hotel guys wanting us to pay the full amount of our stay, which was double the actual amount. I refused to pay, and told them politely that I would seek police intervention if they didn't let us stay without bothering us. Then they left us, let me repeat the name of the hotel, its AppleVally! It’s not funny.
The second day morning, we just started off on to our tour without confronting the hotel guys. To our nasty surprise, the guide and the bus driver was very rude, and they even asked us to get down the bus. Needless to say we felt bad, and shocked at the behavior of these two strangers. After empathizing with these guys, we got to know that the hotel guys had badmouthed about us to these guys. The hotel guys had told the driver and the guide that we, broke down the glass of the hotel, and that we were drunk and did all sorts of mischiefs. The driver was a typical egotist, didn't bother to apologize for his unsavory conduct, but the guide quickly apologized and remained nice till the end of the day's tour. Of course he cheated with the dubious entrance tickets, for which we didn't get any tickets, and later he pleaded extra nicely for his guide fees, and we felt guilty and we still paid him. It was not so nice experience with these two guys, but rest of the day went well.
Here is what we saw on the second, some of the beautiful chasm, valleys, and unforgettable trekking! Gosh, when we were going down the hill, I was aware how difficult it would be while climbing back, but was eager to see what was lying ahead so we darted down the track. We almost came down a kilometer or more down the hill, to a point called dolphin view. This was one of the best views that we had come across. The valley was far wide spread and deep down, and clouds seemed to fill in the valley, now and then when the clouds cleared away we could see the valley deep down. This is a good place to take pictures, of the valley and of the people. Here I had asked the local photographer, to take just one photo me and my colleague, instead, he took seventeen photos and demanded the money for the all the photos. We sensed we were in deep trouble, but we resisted. After a long and heated argument, we left without paying and he left the photos with us saying they were of no use to him. This was not so good experience! Now, the toughest part of the trekking lies ahead, to climb back to where started from. The journey wasn't just exhausting. It was much more than exhausting! And I was thinking that this place was definitely not for honeymooners, they would be double exhausted! Don't ask me how? That's what the local guide told us! He said, he goes up and down the track thrice a day, and he wasn't sure after he was married whether he'd be able to. Before this we had visited a water fall. The water was chill, it was really chill, I didn't really get wet, but it was fun wading through the shallow water and some photo shoots.
Here comes our visit to police station of the Kodai. When we checked out we insisted that we didn't want to be charged more for the last room we stayed in, but the guy at the reception didn't budge. So we left our luggage in the reception, and went to nearby by police station. The police man asked us to wait for half an hour and I felt we'll never be heard, and thought this was a bigger mistake we did. Soon after my colleague started talking to him in Tamil, he was more receptive to him than he was to me! Of course Tamil helps in Tamil Nadu, but can't save you from being cheated!
The police man summoned up the hotel guys twice before they could arrive, and when they arrived, these guys saw me writing a complaint. They requested the policeman that they would sort the issue amicably. Policeman gave his number to call him back if there was any further unfair deal. We thanked the policeman, and finally the manager of the hotel agreed to us. The manager appeared very nice to us, and harsh to the guy at reception. I was very sure that the guy at the reception acted on the words of the manager, and now the manager had twisted his role.
Here comes another ordeal, Farook had humbly book us tickets back to Chennai, and you know how much commission he took from us? The cost of one ticket, isn't that too much of a commission, 50% of the amount? This was again a cheating, but we couldn’t bother much about it. We had spent used up most of our time in police station and settling our hotel bills. We had to catch our bus back to Chennai at 6.30pm sharp! By the time we arrived at the bus station it was 6.20pm and not more than 6.25pm, but the bus had already departed. Luckily or unluckily I spotted Farook, he immediately got us into a taxi, and we could catch our bus on its way. As we stopped the bus and tried to get it, the conductor and the one of the passengers pushed my colleague down. I was pissed of with this, but we struggled to get into the bus. Our dear conductor, the old man, had already sold our tickets to some other people for premium price. We had to stand for about 2 and half hours to get to seat. The conductor was now afraid, as my colleague threatened him that we were highly connected people and he could get him suspend! This actually works! This worked with the policeman too. Nevertheless the policeman was the better than most of the other policemen I had come across.
Just 5 minutes after we got into the bus, we came across a big waterfall, much bigger than what we had seen during the day. The tour operators had skipped this spot though this place was five minutes from the bus station. Cleary, this experience of ours indicates that Kodai, is the place of cheaters !!!
To sum it up, you go to Koadai only if you have thick skin, not because it’s cold there but because of the other reasons.
