Me and Suresh at Kodai

Me and Suresh at Kodai

I was sitting in the shop in college, having a cold drink with a friend and her dad. It was very hot.

The class scheduled for that afternoon got cancelled. So I don’t have any classes for 36 hours. Such periods of inactivity do happen, but of late they have increased in frequency.

I went back to my room, already depressed, not knowing what to do for the rest of the afternoon, other than napping or chatting on yahoo messenger.

Suddenly a flash occurs in my brain. I have cash, I have my motorcycle. Why not go on a long trip somewhere? I went to Suresh’s room and tell him that the classes are cancelled. We decided to go to Kodaikanal.

We packed up and left at 4.30 pm. We filled up gas and did some basic repairs at the workshop and off we went. The first stop was supposed to be done at a dhabha at Dindigul (some 100 km from Trichy). Some 20 km from Dindigul, we got caught in a drizzle, and we stopped for coffee. We wait there for 10 minutes and we push on.

After some time, it started raining heavily, and we pulled by at a village tea shop. The shop had a thatch roofed front sitting space, and the whole place was crowded. We somehow managed to find space for ourselves, our helmets and our backpack. We could not afford to get wet because we were not carrying any dresses in our bag. If we get wet, we have to be wet the whole of the night, and the next day we would have to buy clothes in Kodaikanal.

We sat at the shop, talking, talking and drinking coffee after coffee, and in my case, cigarette after cigarette. The breeze was cool and there was no power in that shop. Was a very nice situation to be in. Surrounded by unknown people, talking about agriculture and local gossip.

It was 8 pm by the time it stopped raining. We started off and stopped at Batlakundu for dinner. We go to Nellai Nadar Mess and have parathas and chicken. Was really spicy and hot. It was 9 pm by this time, and the hill section of the ride was yet to be negotiated. We hurried to the ghat section and traveled about 10 km in the hills, when it started raining again. So we decided to turn back and go back to Batlakundu and stay there for the night.

The biggest looking lodging house was Crystal Palace, and the room would cost Rs. 550. They do not take credit cards. So we had to ride another 10 kms to find an ATM and draw cash. We finally went to our room and slept.

We woke up at 6 am and resumed the travel. We got to Kodaikanal at 9 am, incident free and safe. We had breakfast, dosas and pongals! they taste good outside our college mess.

We first went to Green Valley View, a.k.a., Suicide Point. The whole place was misty, with the sun showing in short intervals. Whenever we could see through the mist, we were staring down a vertical fall, many thousands of feet in depth, with the monkeys hanging on at the edge by the roots and grass. They were amazing, so unscared by the dimension of the fall or its consequence of it!

The sun showed for some time and we were able to enjoy the vista for some time. Then we left for Moir Point. The name Moir comes from the British engineer, Charles Moir, who lay the foundation for a road to Munnar, which would cut down around 30 km from the travel between the 2 places.

We parked our bike on the road and we have to climb down a steep incline. The incline was slippery, due to the rain during the previous night. We were being pulled down due to the steepness of the incline. Halfway through, our legs were shaking due to the balancing and by the effort we put in to go down slowly. We got to the end of the incline.

I will describe this place. The incline ends at a dead end. There you take a left turn and a small path leads to a rock. The path itself is an open danger. There is a wall of sand on one side and there is nothing on the other side. So grab the wall and pray to god that you don’t lose your grip! Then you come to a rock, you can sit on it. You better do that. Coz there is nothing on 2 sides of it! The place is still misty so we are not able to see the other side of the rock. Slowly it clears and God, I have never seen a more awesome vista. Miles and miles of green in front of us, some thousands of feet below us though. Untouched forests. So many shades of green. No civilization exists when you see from there.

Every time I tried peer over the rock, my legs started shivering, inadvertently. Then we devised an idea to peer over into the abyss below. We would crawl over to the edge and look down and crawl back! And it worked. We were indeed looking down at an abyss, at least 3000 feet in depth, with the cliff face dotted with roots and grass. The bottom of the abyss was a vast valley, a very dense forest.

We manage to crawl back to the safety of some distance from the edge and we even managed to take some photos of ourselves in this place and of the place itself. The climb up to the road was like a punishment for all those late mornings, lazy afternoons, and heavy dinners and the many cigarettes!

After this, we did not have energy to go anywhere, to even drive the bike. So we went to the lake, found a nice spot near the water, along the road and sat down there and were talking till lunch.

Then we went to a Punjabi hotel and had a good lunch. We then went back to the same spot along the lake shore. We had planned to stay for one more day up there, but decided against it and departed from there at 4.30 pm, planning to get back to college at 10 pm.

We were barreling down the roads. Good roads, less upcoming traffic. Never stopped anywhere for 40 km. Suddenly I felt the bike wobbling a bit. Then we found that the back wheel was flat. We took out the tool kit and started to dismantle the wheel. We did not have the right spanner to remove the wheel. We finally managed to do it with a larger sized spanner, in a quite ingenious way, thanks to Suresh and a good Samaritan.

I stopped a bus and got on, to find a mechanic shop. The bus was so crowded that I had to hang on on the foot board with one foot, with the tyre in my free hand and one leg dangling outside the bus. The bus was surprisingly fast and my arm was aching like hell, hanging on to dear life, lest I should fall out!

I find a mechanic shop in a village, get the tyre fixed and I head back on another bus. I sat down near the driver to tell him where to drop me. It was getting dark and I saw a motorcycle parked sans its rear wheel, and a person standing next to it. I stop the bus and get down. The bus went away. I realize that it was not my bike, and the guy was not Suresh. I had down at the wrong place! I ran behind the bus to make him stop again. But he never heard my heart felt cries for help!

I had to beg another traveller on a motorcycle to give me a lift. He did and I got back to our spot of bother. We start fitting the wheel again, only to find that we had lost a nut without which we cannot fix the wheel! And it was dark already. We start looking for it. Crawling and feeling for it on the road and by the rocky pavement.

Two cars stop, and some 10 guys get off them. They are on a high and decide to focus their head lights and their attention to help us. So 12 people looking for a nut! Still no results.

The guys decide to leave and they hand over a candle to help our search. So we start searching using a candle and our cell phones. Then 2 guys bless us with the headlight of their Bullet. They are drunk too. When we were losing hope, they started searching and Suresh finally found the nut. Someone had kicked it to the pavement. 90 minutes of searching. The world is a nice place and people are mostly good to other people – my lesson for the day.

We quickly fit the wheel and start moving, only to find that we had not fitted the brake properly and we did not know how to fix it. So we had to drive for 30 km without brakes. We finally find a mechanic and get the whole thing fixed, and off we go, towards home and rest.

We stopped for dinner at Dindigul at 10 pm. And chicken has never tasted so good!

We reach college at 2 am, without further calamities. We had clocked 515 km in a day. Every bone, joint and muscle was aching, esp. the posterior muscles. But there was a feeling of contentment, a sense of achievement, of an adventure successful. Of being free, roaming with no one to hold me. Of the wind against my face, pure air in my system. No baggage to carry. I was feeling light, to put it simply.