Another roadtrip to quell the thirst of a roadie. In what would later be called a chilled out couple of days, me and a bunch of 5 other idiots would experience some things oddly unbecoming a normal sightseeing experience. As it happened, the six of us met at Mysore Road bus terminal in the dead of a cold July night with the assumption that buses plied to Salem quite frequently. When we went there we found that the frequency wasn’t what we needed to worry about. None of the weirdly shaped, “jhathang!” colored flashy long boxes of metal had seats that humans willingly sit on. We passed when the first bus left, but when the second bus offered nothing better than its predecessor, we boarded it without much choice. We did our best to sit toward the center to negate the vibrations of the shaky bus, but when the driver smiled and switched the lights off, we sensed malice in our further drive.
God’s divine plan seems to have included us surviving it, for so we did, as we woke up at 3 am at Salem Bus Stand. What you tend to expect in this scenario is an empty bus stand. But Tamils, let me tell you, don’t sleep. There were at least 500 people awake and seemingly waiting for something amazing at that ungodly hour. It was then that the stench hit us. We were walking about and the toilets at the end of the area had picked on us. We held our noses and made a run for it and boarded a random bus that headed to Yercaud. As we made conversation with fellow Bangalore travelers, a big neon sign flashed “PMS” in three flashy colors atop a hotel.
When I woke up again, it was cold as hell and the bus was winding up a hill at great speed. When it stopped and we made our way to look at the view from Yercaud a dog came running toward me. I thought it was just friendly. When we went hunting for hotels in the direction where the dog came from, we found Hotel Select, an unassuming ill-maintained lodge. I entered to find a man staring at me like he didn’t expect company. I asked him for a room to his surprise and he shook out of it and said “Oh yes, rooms. Come see” and walked off to the stairs. I had put my hand on his desk on a book. An unexpected glance showed me an outline of a man with arrows to his parts. The caption read in bold: ANTICHRIST and the ANATOMY OF A MAN.
Shaken but not stirred, I let him lead me up to the rooms. He opened the door and I saw bloodstains on a cot. He suddenly took us to another room. We said the room was ok. He asked us what price we wanted it at. This was odd. It felt like he was only too happy to give us the room and it was almost like he’d give us at whatever price we wanted. I played it safe and told him I would come back for it after breakfast and ran out of there. The next lodge we tried had two types of rooms: single and double. A single room was a 10×15ft box with a bed in which a normal sized man could sleep. A double room was the same with an extra table. The owner wanted the six of us guys to sleep in a single and a double room! Not knowing what exactly his intentions were we made our way out of there not interested in rooms anymore.
Balaji knew of a place called ‘House of Peace’ that offered accommodation. After 6kms of walking, misleading directions, wicked stares, and a lot of debate we found a Veerappan lookalike on an Activa heralding the DMK flag, who offered to help us. And he did, for we were in the christian missionary rest house in 15 minutes. The guard of that place was a happy-go-lucky character like you wouldn’t believe. He would listen intently to whatever you say and nod his head very happily, no matter what you said! Always! A nun smiled and offered us 3 comfortable rooms and we snatched that offer.
After that though, things mellowed down for Christ’s sake. We had a trek, which was a walk along a long winding tarmac road and a real trek for about 0.3km to see Kiliyur falls. It wasn’t that great but was not bad either. We chilled out a bit and spent the afternoon. The evening we checked out Pagoda point, and Lady’s Seat and Gent’s Seat, all viewpoints. It was as if Yercaud was built just to look at Salem from a distance. The DMK’s symbols were on every inch of the land. A night refreshed us enough to take a taxi ride to check out Shevaroy’s temple, a cave temple and a very beautiful Botanical garden which to me, was paradise. The place and the weather can only be described as “chilled out”.
When we headed back to the bus stand to go to Salem, we saw the ‘Antichrist’ man from Select creeping up upon us. We hurried and took the first bus out of there to Salem. And with that the crazy Yercaud trip came to an end. We bought tickets for the evening train that allowed us to have a quiet meal, still thinking of all the characters that Yercaud hid under its belly.
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Travelogue:
Yercaud is a nice hill-station that offers a 1-2 day vacation with cool weather and nice greenery any time of the year. You can reach it via Salem. Buses to Salem are very frequent 24 hours a day from Mysore road Bus stand, but make reservations for good buses. Local buses cost Rs 90.
Buses to Yercaud are similar frequent through the day and will take you there for Rs. 11 in
about 3hrs. Salem is also connected to Bangalore by trains which need at least 2 days prior planning for reservations, to be on the safer side. Rs.150 approx for Sleeper.
Accommodation: “House of Peace” (Locals refer to it as Kanadi Bangal) is a christian missionary that also maintains a travel guest house with clean rooms and bathrooms for Rs.225 a day (includes food). A youth Hostel is situated more centrally, next to Hotel TamilNadu, near the Lake. A more posh option would be the Hotel Shevaroy’s nearby, or the Sterling Resorts near Lady’s Seat.
Food: Local hotels are plenty with most offering decent local food. Shevaroys offers a multi-cuisine restaurant with rates similar to Bangalore’s. You’ll eat well with 100-150 in your pocket.
You’ll eat, for around 20 outside.
Going Around: All places are near enough to walk for the average tourist. Taxis are available and they take you to and fro in 3 directions. (6 people can sit comfortably in one taxi)
1. The trek to Kiliyur falls, a waterfall (Rs.200)
2. Pagoda Point, a viewpoint, Cave temple, Beers cave (private), Botanical Garden, etc. (Rs.250)
3. Lady’s seat Gents seat, rose garden, children’s park (latter two close by 5pm) (Rs.100)
The Lake is centrally situated and has row- and pedal- boating facilities.