We were three of us. Sumeet, Ashutosh and myself. The summers placement was just over and with a 5 day break ahead of us, we planned to visit this little known hill station near Salem. We started on a fine November morning from Bangalore to Yercaud on my car. The distance was 240 kilometers.
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| Rainbow on the way@Yercaud |
Starting at 8 in the morning, we were fast enough to enter the town around 1. En route I drove my car into a stray dog. The incident was going to upset a lot of our plans.
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| Road of 36 Hairpin Bends@Yercaud |
We skimmed through few hotels. The luxury of own car allowed us to search far and it was sheer serendipity that we ended up with heaven. Sterling Resort was not a resort as such. Our first impression was that of a hanging paradise. Our room was valley facing. For 2700 a day, it was a great deal for the three of us.
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| Tickmark Tourism Hot Spots@Yercaud |
We decided to have our lunch in the room only. By the time we were done, the clouds also parted and we could clearly see the magnificent view of Salem from our room. We spent the evening driving around the hills and boating in the Emerald Lake. Later we had our share of drinks sitting in the terrace and watching mist playing with our view of twinkling Salem at night.
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| Emerald Lake@Yercaud |
Next morning we woke up late. We started with a high point from where the town was visible. The Monfort School has an expansive campus as visible from top. We then visited a string of so called hot spots including Pagoda Point, Bell Rock, Gents Seat and Tipperary Estate. The only thing we missed was Kiliyur Falls. The path to the falls is tricky and it takes 5-6 hours going and coming back.
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| View from Sterling Resort@Yercaud |
We started at around 3 from our hotel rooms and reached Salem comfortably before I realized that the accident with dog had damaged car's radiator. We ended up towing our car some 100 miles back to Bangalore with the help of a local garage. I would call even that as some adventure.
