Visit To Kodaikanal

Kodaikanal and Ooty are two well known hill stations in Tamil Nadu. Ooty has more places to see, more crowded and a little more easily accessible from Bangalore. Kodai is a little less crowded during non peak season, and most of the important landmarks are within 1/2 a km radius.

Buses, Trains

Train route from bangalore:
Bangalore - Salem - Karur - Dindigal or Kodai Road
Catch bus from Dindigal or Kodai Road to Kodaikanal

Bus:
SETC (Tamil nadu state bus), KSRTC (karnataka state bus) and private operators operate buses from Kodai to Bangalore.
Strangely, KSRTC online service does not show the Rajahamsa and Volvo bus they operate from Kodai to bangalore. We need to go to the bus stand and book it.
In kodai, the reservation counter in bus stand never opens, but bookings can be done through local operators.

I believe there should be some understanding between KSRTC bus service and local operators, otherwise I dont see how they are able to correctly tell the seat numbers available etc.

Buses are available to Palani, Dindigul, Kodai Road, Madurai, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore from Kodai bus stand.

Accomodation

If you do not have car/transport, then opt for a lodge close to the bus stand. Within 200m there are a number of them:

• Hotel Bala, Hotel JC Grand, JC Woodsville, Astoria, Annapoorna right opposite the bus stand
• Hotel Anjay, Hotel Strawberry park, Apple Valley, Golden paradise, Kodai Star, Kodai Crystal, Snooze Inn (Towards Bazaar road)
• Valley view, Sunrise, Pleasant Stay (Slight deviation from bazaar road)
• Kodai Resort, Valley Retreat (towards Coaker walk)
• Hilltop Inn (Towards Petrol bunk)

If you have some transport or if you would like to use local taxi, you could choose

• Paradise Inn, Spring Valley, TTDC tamilnadu hotel
• Hotel Mount view, Hotel Kodai International
• Hotel Gurupriya, Royal Hotel, Spring Valley, Fairstay

The above list is not exhaustive. You could get much more hotels for stay. Charges for accomodation ranges from Rs. 1500/- to 5000/- during peak season. During off season, charges are generally half the above amount. I booked Hotel Mount View. Its decent but the location given in Google Maps was wrong. Its around 1.5 to 2 kms from bus stand. So its not easy to walk specially uphill. We have to hire local taxis. Another point is hot water availability. Most hotels have timings for hot water like 7-10 in morning and 7-9 in night.

Food

Some decent Restaurants include:

• Astoria Veg right opposite bus stand
• Annapoorna Veg
• Dominos
• Rasoi Veg

Places to see

Package tours are available by a lot of tour providers. You can have

• Group tour - Daily packages available for 3 - 4 days
• Individual taxi tour - Rs. 600/- for 6 points, Rs. 900/- for 10 points etc

I went for group tour with SKM travels. The office is within the bus stand complex. They are good value for money in their service. They also provided free cloak room facility for the last day. But there are no refunds for their group tour packages. So its better to book only for next day's outings.

Local Transport

Local Taxis can be hired for Rs. 120/- to Rs. 150/- for a short distance travel (say hotel to bus stand etc).

Boating

Its easily the biggest attraction. There are plenty of boating options - Paddle boats, Row boats, Honey moon boats costing 50/- to 300/-. Cycling is also available. We can cycle round the lake (4 kms). There are also children park, dashing car, skating hall and other options in the periphery of the lake.

Shopping

Shopping places are near lake and near bus stand in Bazaar street. Except this, most of Kodaikanal is just mountains.

Visit To Palani Murugan Temple

Palani is a religious temple town and is visited by millions of devotees each year. Thousands of devotees throng to this town everyday for Lord Muruga's Darshan and is popular as Tirupati in Andra, Dharmastala in Karnataka.

Buses and Trains

I booked my travel through KPN. It takes a night journey from Bangalore. Starts around 10 pm and reaches by 6 am in morning to Palani. I think there will be some government buses (SETC) as well.

Train route is through Salem, Karur, Dindigal. From Dindigal, we can catch a bus to Palani. For advance booking (2-3 months in advance), this is the best route.

Accomodation in Palani

There are plenty of Private lodges. Use Auto only if luggage is too much, otherwise walk towards temple and there are plenty of lodges along the way.

Deepam loge, New Tirupur lodge, Siva Lodge, PTS Lodge, Subam Lodge, Hotel Ganpat are some of the economic lodges. Cost around 500-1000 rupees a day. There may be a rule that only families are allowed. If you are single, or if you are a group of men, maybe they might not allow stay.

Peacock Inn, Vels court are slightly higher budget lodges. Government lodges like Dandapani Nilayam are available near temple, but I dont know if its easily available given the number of devotees.

Food

Hotel Gowri Shankar close to Temple steps is supposed to be the best. Other hotels like Subam, Balaji etc are also present.

Tonsuring

Tonsuring can be done at the lodges itself, but there is an official Saravana Poigai centre on the way to temple steps. They keep announcing that doing it in the official centre is the only 'proper' way to appease the God. There is also a decent bath facility after tonsuring.

Temple

The temple is on the hill. There are multiple ways to climb the hill

• Steps - ~700 Steps to the temple. Good option if you can climb it. Free as well.
• Winch - Old Technology cable car like vehicle. Tickets are 50 rupees and 10 rupees. Frustratingly long wait as the car is very very very slow!
  
• VIP darshan - Only option if there are old people who cant walk or wait for winch. No fixed price, I guess whatever they can fleece will be looted.

Once we reach the temple, there are again various queues.

• Free Darshan queue - For the 'Aam' aadmi or the Cattle class whatever you want to call it.
• 10 rupees Tonsuring ticket - If you have tonsured your head, preserve the ticket, and you can use this queue
• 100 rupees Ticket - Slightly faster queue
• There may be a VIP entrance if you can push a few big notes to the Temple authorities.

Prasadam is again another queue and they sell half a kg for 25 rupees.

Cleanliness, Values, People, culture and God

If you think that Cleanliness is next to Godliness, then avoid Palani. The temple above is well maintained, but the town below is simply a Garbage town.

If you think values like honesty, courtesy, ethics will be the flavour of the town, SURPRISE!!! The town is full of cheats out to make money, fleece the devotees and an anti thesis of how a religious Divine Temple town should be!
The auto wallah asks 40 rupees for 200 metres. The lodge guy says rooms not available even though I can clearly see that boards are put up saying 'Rooms Available'. Everyone from the barber to Temple priest are out to make money taking advantage of the temple's historic significance.

Temple is famous as the abode of Lord Muruga. Legend has it that he was upset with his parents - Lord Shiva and Parvati and came to this town. Whatever the legend says, if at all God exists, I hope he lives in a clean town with some respect to human values and not at this place full of people who are outright greedy, discourteous and unprofessional.

Then why do millions of devotees throng this place? The answer lies in the fact that most of the devotees are poor - Some labourers, daily wage earners, some are slightly better off, but everyday work is tedious and coming here and visiting the temple gives them some peace of mind. The hardship they face at temple is nothing great as compared to the hardship of their everyday lives.

A driver in Kodaikanal told me that he will visit Palani by walking the entire distance from Kodai to Palani (65 kms) which is a difficult mountain terrain. It generally takes him 1 day to walk, one day for darshan and another day or two to get back. While they go in a group, the spirit of adventure motivates them and enables them to complete this difficult journey.

Rested in a lodge in the night, Boarded the Kodai bus early in the morning and left Palani