Hello there!
Last year for my 25th birthday, we took a trip to the ‘princess of hills’ named Kodaikanal located in Tamil Nadu, India.
After a lot of activities on the first day (check it out here in case you missed it), we got some well-deserved rest. The next morning, we decided to head out for a walk to enjoy the cool temperature, greenery all around and the charm of a quaint town.
Once we reached back to our hotel, we packed our things, checked out and called the same driver to drop us to the town bus stop. I wish we had clicked a picture with him given he was very polite, extremely informative and the absolute highlight of the last post.
We then caught a local, overcrowded bus since the only other way around was taxis which were painfully overpriced. Paid tickets which were priced at 50 INR for two (0.59 USD for two), travelled for an hour through a dense forest and then arrived at our destination.
This place was a small village 21KM (14 Miles) away from Kodaikanal, which was lesser known and could be considered truly offbeat. This village mainly relied on terrace farming as a livelihood and is well known for producing fresh, delicious carrots and some extremely fragrant garlic. This village was called-
Our journey did not end here since we had to book a cab to take us to our accommodation, however, we encountered a problem – Network!
It did not occur to us that a small village would probably have limited cell towers. Unaware, we stepped out of the bus and both our phones had no cell reception. We asked around, which was not easy considering the language barrier and got to know that only one particular sim works, which neither of us had. We were stranded on the bus stop with no way to contact the driver to coordinate the pickup.
I noticed a mobile shop near the bus stop and requested the shop owner to lend me his cellphone to make a call since the locals had the required sim card.
While I was typing the driver’s number on the phone, the suggestion popped up where the number existed on the phone with the name ‘Māmā’, meaning Uncle in Tamil (the local language). There was an exchange of laughter and the shop owner spoke to the driver / his uncle about our situation and then advised us to stay there until he came to pick us up. This piqued my curiosity about the town population and a quick Google search later revealed that the population is a mere 5k people. Of course he was his uncle!
The driver picked us up and we started to drive further into the village. We travelled another 4 KM (2.4 Miles) of hard terrain, descending and ascending through few hills and as we reached our destination, we both gasped.
Second image source
Zostel is a chain of hostels all around India (and a few other countries) where they cater to budget backpackers to bougie backpackers. Zostel has significantly simplified the stress of arranging accommodations since its inception in India.
They are clean, safe, friendly and fully cater to ensuring their guests have unique, offbeat experiences. They offer dormitories as well as private rooms and this particular Zostel came with an amazing in-house restaurant as well.
We planned to stay here for two days before heading back home and we booked the private room since it was the eve of my birthday. Our room cost us 5000 INR for a night (58.57 USD) and we decided to stay for two nights for this view from our balcony!
Since we had a long day of travelling, we decided to take things easy and relax until sunset.
We were greeted by multiple fellow travelers at the restaurant later that night, hit it off instantly and decided to make a WhatsApp group. Our group was called the ’20 minutes friends’ since we literally became great friends in 20 minutes. Also, we kinda knew that once the vacation was over, our busy schedule might not allow us to meet again. The property manager then arranged for a campfire and everyone started to gather around to chit chat, grab some drinks and get warm too.
Once the alcohol kicked in, energies started running high with lots of laughing and nobody wanting to head back to the room. Once the bonfire was out, the group headed out to the common entertainment area and there we sang, danced, played and spoke until the clock hit 12. Another girl in the group was celebrating her birthday too, so we had an impromptu packaged cake-cutting (yeah, there’s no cakes readily available here, not to mention you would need to travel all the way to the main town). A couple people then played the guitar and we sang and danced some more.
After thanking everyone for their wishes and playing a few rounds of charades, we headed back to our room for a sound night’s sleep.
The next day, my girlfriend and I booked a cab and began to explore places around this village. We headed to another village called Mannavanur where a well-known sheep farm had been opened to the public. The farm has sheep, rabbits and cows from which the sheep’s and the cows were grazing at the foothills far away. We spent some time going around and enjoying the open fields and great views!
A little ahead of the farm lies a nice little lake called Mannavanur Lake. We spent some quality time there, had a cup of sliced raw mango seasoned with chili powder and made a move quickly since the skies were getting heavy with dark clouds.
While we reached our next few spots to explore, rain had made an entrance and decided to pour like crazy! Making us miss the rest of the tour of these pretty villages. We saw the pre-arranged itinerary of the trip and realized that all these spots are catered more towards families who enjoy a nice picnic. Maybe we might’ve enjoyed some parts of it, and although the driver tried his best to cover all the places, the rain made it nearly impossible to even see them clearly.
While the rain did not plan on stopping, we decided to head back to the hostel. The disappointment lasted until we reached and quickly went away when we had some hot onion bhaji/fritters and a nice cup of hot chocolate!
Perfect way to end a birthday!
Popped open another beer and after some food and fun, we grabbed some rest for the night. We were set to travel back the next afternoon, and wanted to get a head start on the packing with enough time to say our goodbyes since it was our last day in the hostel.
