A RoadTrip in Sri Lanka: Day 1- Madurai to Colombo

The Arrival

Even though the flight was on Tuesday afternoon, for me, the trip started officially on Monday night. Since I was the only person to start from Coimbatore, I reached Madurai before the rest of the party who started from Bengaluru. Even though I booked in the last bus to start from Coimbatore, I reached Madurai by 4 am. But I had a plan to kill time till my friends arrive. And I was luckily on time for where the visitors barge into the biggest house in the city and wake its owners every day morning.

If i start to give a brief introduction to Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple, then this blog wont be enough. So leaving you to Google about it, I will continue to the events. So every morning the priests wake the holy couple from palliyarai (bed room) and then the pooja starts for Meenakshi first. In a way, I feel bad for the gods because these priests always start the pooja on time and the gods cannot say ‘Today is holiday, please let me sleep for a while’. But Sokkanathar is lucky; he gets another 30 minutes of nap time before the pooja starts for him.

I watched all the pooja, bought a book about the temple and was watching the pigeons thinking what to do next. At that time my friends have reached. Then we took a cheap room beside the temple and got ready. Again I went to the temple with my friends and finished the breakfast with Sakkarai Pongal from the Prasada Counter and Poori and Pongal from the Kaiyendi Bavan nearby.

Now the time has arrived for us to depart. We reached the Madurai airport; checked in at the SpiceJet counter and got the immigration slips. The procedure was simple; just answered a couple questions in the counter about why I am going to Sri Lanka, how we all got together and planned a trip (Yes, I did mention the whatsapp group),and we all got cleared and boarded the plane.

The plane trip was surprisingly short and even before I finish my Chicken Tikka Sandwich, the pilot has announced that we will start descending to Colombo soon. I did try to look out the window and guess on which part of the Indian coastline we are crossing by comparing it with map.. 

Do you know that each flight in SpiceJet fleet is named after a spice ?

Now we reached the crucial part of our trip: Clearing the immigration in Sri Lanka. Since the beginning of this plan I had many nightmares regarding this, like my visa would not be approved for some silly reasons and I would be asked to return immediately in the next flight. But the real was totally opposite to it. 

I filled the form, approached an officer and spoke only three sentences. 'Hi, Good afteroon!'; 'I work in Indian Overseas Bank.'; 'Yes, We do have a branch in Colombo.'. That's it! My visa is approved! It was so short that we thought there might be a second round of questioning before we exit. But before we know we are out of the airport.

If I could relate that event to an film scene it would be the interview scene of Prakash Raj in 'Abhiyum Naanum'. No one asked me about Bucephalus nor NOC. Then we proceeded to buy the local sims. I have forgotten the exact prices of tourist sims but remember these; Airtel was the costliest; Hutch offered more for less money but couldn't get 3G in most of the places; and Mobitel gives you value for money. If you had liked my instagram photos I posted during my visit, then you have to thank Yogesha for getting that Mobitel sim.

The manager of the place where we booked in Kandy has requested us to pick another guy who is coming from Norway and staying in the same hostel with us. When we asked how to find him he told us that the Norway guy will find us. And as it is, he found us with in five minutes. I believe that manager would have told, look out for the guys who look like natives but standing there with out any clue of where to go next.

Then Sathya called our driver and the van came. It's a Toyota Hiace. Before continuing about the trip, I should say more about this van. I believe almost 80 percent of the four wheeler market in Sri Lanka belongs to Toyota. In that, more than half are Hiace. I have never seen a van model where it  is customised into so many variety and used widely. During our visit, I have seen many variants of Hiace like tourists cabs, home purpose, school van, ambulance, etc..

Within minutes of getting into the van we have realised that we cant rely on the AC of the van on this trip. We knew it was on but we couldn't feel it. We started to Kandy and on the way we stopped at Hotel Euro Star to have our first Sri Lankan meal. I don't want to comment much about the food we had there, except to mention that the Chicken Biryani I had there was my first and last Sri Lankan Chicken Biryani during my entire trip.

Then the road trip continued towards Kandy. Soon we have noticed that the shuffle of the van’s music player repeatedly started playing the first song in my USB for every two or three songs. And the distance from the airport to Kandy looked not so far in the map but the winding road just keeps going on and on. Now some of us started to doze off and other intellectuals like Yogesha were having a conversation with the Norwegian guy about the life in India and Norway. Suddenly Adhithya got the doubt whether Frost Giants really live in Norway or people in Norway at least believe in it like we do! 

The rest of day was just slow and finally we reached Kandy. Without Google maps and Sathya, we would have never found our place, the Kandy City Hostel. We checked in there and left to have our dinner. It took us a couple of kilometres and nearly twenty minutes to reach the main area of Kandy by walk. And to our surprise most of the hotels were shut. Then we came to know that it was a New Moon day and all new moon days are national holidays in Sri Lanka. 

Our vegetarian friends couldn’t find any hotels, so they decided to have some Veg burgers from KFC. but others luckily found a hotel open. We ordered some items but the waiter brought some other items saying only these are available. Now I felt that my vegetarian friends are more lucky. The one unique thing I found here was the food items are placed in a tray and you can take how much ever you want and get bill only for those. 

Then we joined the Veg eaters in KFC and met a guy who was proudly saying to us that the greatest cricket batsman Sangakkara’s home is beside his. Since we didn’t want to upset him by comparing Sangakkara with Virat, we left the KFC soon. We had taken a bedroom with ac and a couple of beds in a dormitory room. I got the dorm and took a lower bed near the balcony. Due to the humidity, we decided to leave the windows and balcony door wide open and I could clearly see the ‘Poya Day’ moon. 

I could feel that the coming week is going to be fun but I was feeling nervous also. I was struggling to get sleep and when I finally fell asleep, I got a night full of nightmares with all my banking transactions running inside my mind in huge LKR and un tallied Lots(A Lot is a combination of credit and debit).

Thanks to Google for always watching me from above!

A RoadTrip in Sri Lanka: The Prologue

The Plan

Every bachelor has a group in whatsapp that discuss where to travel next. This story also starts in a group like that. The aim was simple. Choose a place where we would spend less and gain a lot. As usual, like every men in this country, our first choice should have been Bangkok! I could try to convince you that we chose Sri Lanka instead of Bangkok because of its heritage value and as a teetotallers we would have easily got bored in Bangkok. But the real reason is, we are a bunch of cheapos who thought Sri Lanka would be cheaper than Bangkok and even India!

So the plan started three or four months back. And I am proud to say that I was one of the founding  fathers of the group and chose the dates of last week of March(March 22nd to March 27th). Then comes the plan of squeezing all the places you want to see into these days. All the places were discussed and I was firm that we should not miss any UNESCO cultural sites. Those were

• Kandy
• Dambulla
• Sigiriya
• Anuradhapura
• Polonnaruwa 
• Galle

My friend and the co-founder of the group Sathyanarayanan suggested that we should also see Kataragama and Jaffna. Since we did not know whether any special permission is needed to for Jaffna, we left it. The other co-founder Adithya suggested Nuwara Eliya; but that was also vetoed due to the reason it doesn't have much places to see.

The flight booking was done around Christmas, to and fro from Madurai to Colombo. The tip for fellow travellers: When you fly look for these moderately old airports instead of newly renovated international airports, because the flights departure from these new airports charge you extra. 

The other important thing to know about traveling to Sri Lanka is the ETA(Electronic Travel Authorization) procedure. The rates are in Dollars and you can check it in their site. There is a concession for Indians. No need to worry; it is a simple procedure; just fill the form and you will get the approval within few days. For each person we spent around Rs.1500 INR for it.

Later due to some personal reasons I could not participate effectively in the planning. The initial plan was to travel from Colombo to Kandy via train, and then visit other places via bus. The response of preparing an itinerary was given to Anand GB and hotel booking to Adhi. And I just got busy with applying my No Objection Certificate since I am the only one in the group who works in public sector.

When the date of departure move nearer, the excitement and the nervousness got increased and the plan kept changing and changing and we could not even remember which one is the final. Then Sathya announced that he arranged a car for us to travel in Sri Lanka through his uncle’s friend in Sri Lanka, it eased most of our tension.

I was also little pre occupied with my NOC, since it did not arrive till the mid of March, even though I have applied it in the last of January. Then it got sanctioned just a week before, reached my Regional Office in Coimbatore. Then I got a call from there that NOC was sanctioned in CO but I have mistakenly mentioned the dates as March 22nd March 27th 2015!! Thankfully it was not a big issue and I got the NOC in my hands just a couple of days before the trip.

Now we were all ready. We had everything in need for the visa procedures; packed everything ; arranged for travel and hotels; but still had that rumble in the stomach about our first international trip. And I believe that’s how every memorable trip starts..

Runaway to the Woods - Day 2

Pykara and Mudumalai National Park

On the second day, our destination was Mudumalai National Park. But we chose to cover some of the tourist spots on the way too. There are two ways to reach there; one via the beautiful downhill road with dangerous hairpin bends to Masinagudi and the other not so dangerous but a long way through Gudalur. The Pykara falls and the lake lies on the Gudalur way and so started first in that direction.

On the way, we first reach the Hindustan Photo Films Mfg. Co. Ltd. The products manufactured here are sold in the brand name of 'Indu' which means 'Silver' in Sankrit. Once this company was the proud of Ooty but now it is running in total loss and many VRS packages are announced to the employees so that the government can shut it down as soon as possible. The local people feel that the governments lack of interest to update technology and some of the politician's greediness to swallow this vast property resulted in this slow death of the company. When you move further, you can see all the housing quarters and other buildings of HPF turning into ruins.

  Then comes the Cinema Shooting spot; where the all actors of the southern Indian movies are dancing on the grass hills in the name of duets since the time of MGR, Sivaji, etc. As we have seen this place many times both in real and on the screen, we moved to the next place. The next one in the Pine Forest, which is also a cinema shooting place used by the young heroes now. For example, the 'Paiya' song sequence was shot here. We skipped this place also and moved to the next.

Next comes the Pykara lake and the falls. We decided to visit the falls first. To visit the falls, you have to park your vehicle on side of the road and go on a short walk on a hill up and down. The falls is not huge and more like a natural checkdam but very beautiful.


After the falls we made a U turn and returned to the Pykara lake Boat house. There is a toll for the short road from the main road to the boat house and I have seen better roads than these even inside the deep forests of Ooty. In Pykara, all type of boating are available including speed boating. Since my parents are afraid of the word 'speed', we went on the motor boat seating 8 persons sharing with a malayali family.


After the boat ride, we returned to the Masinagudi road since it is a short route to Mudumalai and in better condition than the Gudalur road. But it is very dangerous with many hairpin bends and our driver said that the police mostly allow only the local vehicles through this road.

We reached Masinagudi at midday and decided to finish our lunch here. Since this is the main route to Mysore from Ooty, and It passes through two National Parks, Mudumalai and Bandipur. Masinagudi has some moderate hotels and I had my usual sunday lunch - briyani (could get only kerala style) here. FYI, Masinagudi also has a CCD.

Mudumalai has been in my checklist for a long time. Even though I have went to through this route to Mysore a couple of times before, I didn't get to see it. When my father was working in Ooty, once my parents came here with some special guests for a night safari, and keep boasting about it whenever I mention the name. So visiting Mudumalai and seeing wild elephants and a tiger moved to my top priority list.

We reached on time for the first afternoon safari. I thought it has better chance of seeing the wild animals since those were not disturbed by any safari vehicle's noise for a few hours. As usual I could not see any animals on the way to Reception Centre, and the board there saying Sighting wild animals is just a matter of luck also didd't help to lift up my spirit.

The safari route was shorter than I thought and a great disappointment for me. The vehicle went on the Mysore route for a short time and took a left turn and went on half circle around the reception center and reached the center from its back. There are many artificial ponds along the path for the animals but most of them were dry and just mud with elephants footmarks. All we could see was many spotted deers and Indian bisons called Gaurs. The only elephant I saw through this safari is the one was a kumki elephant that was tied near the safari van parking shed.



After this very disappointing safari we returned to Ooty and reached home for dinner. Even though I want to blame the Forest Department for having bad safaris like this, I know that it is not entirely their fault too. First, the time I chose to go for the safari is a bad one. Even wild elephants need their afternoon nap. Second, As I expressed in the blogpost about Bannerghatta National Park, when you don't want to see the animals outside captive and in a vast area, you should also be ready to meet disappointments like this.

But the forest department also can do a better job by maintaining the ponds, taking a longer route for the safari and having some resorts like Karantaka is doing in Bandipur. So the final verdict is, if you go in early morning or later evening and have a great amount of luck then you can some exciting animals here and Mudumalai will be a worth trip for you.

Runaway To The Woods - Day 1

This trip was done in the last week of August  2014, and I started writing this blogpost in November. Finally it made out of my drafts in January 2015. 

Ooty is the backyard of Coimbatore. As a resident of Coimbatore, my visits to Ooty should have crossed a dozen by now. But unfortunately it hasn't happened yet. I should have gone there whenever I need some fresh air or a cup of fresh tea in the chilled weather or just when to kill my boredom in the weekends. But, till now every visit of my Ooty is just like a typical tourist who comes once in a year and just tries to cover most of the common places within a weekend. Unfortunately this time also I couldn't change this jinx. But every time Ooty looks new to me and the new addition of my Sony RX100 II to this trip made me feel like a first time visitor; so no complaints.

Why this sudden visit and the reason behind this title ? Last week I had an important test for my dream job. But in the last minute I got freaked out and felt like Short Term Memory 'Ghajini'. So I made a quick plan on Friday evening and told my parents that I want to go to Ooty. The one thing in my parents are more lazy than me is in making travel plans. So after a lot of (useless) discussion, around late morning, my father decided that we will take the bus to Ooty and not the car.  

So after a slow and steady climbing on a government bus, we reached Ooty around 2.30 pm. Since my father worked there for an year, he knew the city and some persons there. We got down in Charring Cross and booked a room in Meadows Residency. 

After a quick lunch in the Oven (the hotel's restaurant and aptly named for its space I think), our first place in the check list was Doddabetta. The light drizzle and the clouds made this, one of my best visits here.

On the way to Doddapetta peak lies the tea museum. The entrance fee is minimal and you can get hot tea as complimentary inside. Also you can see the tea manufacturing stages and get all kind of products manufactured in Ooty here.

From the factory, you can see the Government Arts and Science College of Ooty (Where my dad worked for an year) and Ooty Stone House, which was used as residential place for the principals and soon to be converted as a museum. The Stone house was the first bungalow to be built in Ooty and it was built by John Sullivan, the founder of Ooty. The tree in front of the bungalow is named as Sullivan's Oak in his remembrance.

Back View of Stone House from the Tea Factory

Our next stop was the most crowded tourist attraction of Ooty; the Ooty Botanical Garden. Since the main objective of this trip is to get most out of my new camera, I tried to take as many pictures I can with whatever I know with my camera. It was more like the rumination process of a cattle and somehow I got a few fair pictures in it.

When we came out of the Botanical Garden it was nearly 6 pm, and closing time for the Rose Garden. But using the influence of a former professor of local government college, we gained the permit to go inside (The security's sister studied in the same college). Since this was a off season we could only see a few Roses and most were just buds or already died. The really unique varieties here are Black Rose and Green Rose, which are placed just adjacent to the entrance. I forgot how many total varieties are in the garden but it was definitely more than a hundred. And they are planning to expand the garden further more.


After finishing the Rose Garden we went to the Ooty Lake just for a small walk and a foursquare checkin. With that, the first day of Usual Ooty visit came to an end. But I had high hopes for the second day since it has a place where I wanted to visit for a long time.

My First Safari: A Consolation Trip

Bannerghatta National Park, Bangalore, Karnataka

Sometimes we do an exciting elaborative plan, but what happens is totally opposite to that. But if you are lucky, that will also turn out to be a good thing; Just like how I planeed to visit a friend's marriage in Ranchi and end up in Bannerghatta National Park!


Bannerghatta National Park is 22 km away from Bangalore and has three attractions: Safari, Zoo and the Butterfly Park(said to be India's First). After reading in wikitravel that getting tickets for safari in weekends after 2 PM would be very difficult, we tried our maximum to start as early as possible i.e. 11.30 AM and reached the park by exactly 2 PM.

While buying tickets, you have three options. The normal Non AC bus package ('Grand Safari Pack' I think) is Rs.260 per person and you can visit safari and zoo with it. For Butterfly Park, you have to pay Rs.30 separately. The bus/van looks like the one used by police to transfer prisoners except this is in green color. May be the driver of the prison bus would drive carefully to transfer the prisoners safely which you can't expect in this safari trip. I wonder why they haven't put an warning on the back side of the ticket that says 'If you stand up when the bus is on the move and loose some tooth by falling, the authority is not responsible' ! If you want to take pictures also during this safari, then this bus ride will test the agility of both your camera(autofocus) and yours(moving to the left and right side of the bus).  If you are a DSLR person I wouldn't recommend this option for you, unless you want to break your costly camera also with your tooth during this bumpy ride. Other than this silly reason, this mode is the cheapest and best.

Other than this, there is an AC bus package for Rs.500 which uses the bus/van similar to the ones used in IT companies. There is no fence on the windows in this bus, so you might be able to take better pictures, unless you are so unlucky that the glass window is very dirty outside and your camera automatically focus on that dirt instead of animals in autofocus mode. The another option is by jeep, which costs Rs. 2500 for 4 persons. I saw some Mahindra Bolero going inside while I was coming out, so I hope those are the jeeps used for safari. I think this would be the best option, if you want to take some good pictures without any hurry using your DSLR.

The safari consists the enclosures of deers, elephants, bears, lions and tigers (both bengal and white tigers). The authorities have created artificial water tanks and ponds along the safari road, so you can definitely see all the animals. I have seen so many animals along the road that I really got the doubt whether they really have 100 sq. km area in this national park. Especially the white tiger enclosure looked even smaller than an indoor stadium. But these should be the concerns of the animals and not ours. As a visitor, you are ensured to get what you paid for.



The Butterfly park is near the entry of safari and outside of the premises of safari and zoo. It is said to be the first of its kind in India. Even though, most of the butterflies looked same to me in black color, there are many inside (also outside) and you can find some interesting or big ones too.

Even though I have resided in Mysore for six months and Chennai (near Vandalur) for an year I didn't visit Zoos there. So this was my visit to zoo after a very long time.  Though we were unfortunate not to see the white peafowl dance and an awaken king cobra, we were fortunate enough to see some interesting activities of rat snakes, lizards and leopards. We also saw a lazy bear lying in supine position and got choked from a sugarcane which it was eating. It also has a large number of macaws. Many monkeys could be seen outside rather than inside of the cages. The other animals are fox, ostrich, owls, deer, porcupine, etc.



So, Finally, Is this place worth visiting or not ? Yes, Definitely it is. It might not be worth to plan a trip just to visit here, but if you are around Bangalore and free for a day, you can visit here and have a good time.

P.S: There's a Hillview Restaurant inside the premises. Since I haven't tried it, not sure about the quality and price of food available here.

A Blog for Travel

Whenever I am bored of my favourite hobby, i.e. 'Doing Nothing', I engage myself in other hobbies like Travel, Photography and Writing. So, On the line of my 'One Blog for One Hobby' policy, here is my latest blog.

Even though I have travelled to many places of Southern most of India (Tamilnadu and Kerala) during my childhood, I don't consider those as 'my travels' since the main aim of those travels were either a meeting my dad wants to attend or a temple where my mom wants to offer her prayers. But, Thanks to the great kings of Tamil Kingdom, our literature, culture, art and architecture are so intertwined with each other and only the old temples stand as the relics of these. So, with my parents interests of Tamil literature and religion, I also got the interests in History, Architecture and Travel.

Apart from my school tours and two IVs during college, I don't remember many trips of my student life. Then my internship at Infosys Mysore came; The golden days of my life! From here onward the trips were done in my own terms and I went on one of the most memorable trips with my friends to Somnathpur and Talakad in Karantaka, during this time.The next notable trip of mine was to Mahabalipuram after I got posted in Chennai; Then the solo trip to Pondicherry with an awesome early morning bike ride on East Coast Road, to visit my parents; Then to Kannur to attend my friend's marriage; and the rolling stone did not gather any moss after that.

But exactly on the same day of last year, Something changed in the way of my travels. For the first time, I took all the initiative and planned a family tour to Hampi, an unknown place with an unknown language. It was the first time I took the control in my hands from my parents for arranging everything and it was a proud moment to watch them enjoying the trip. Happy with the outcome of last year, this year also I planned and went on a trip to Aurangabad, which took me farther from my hometown and comfort zone. Even though there were some small hitches in these trips, over all these trips were very successful.

So, To commemorate the anniversary of my own travels and to write more about the travels I have done in the past and going to do in the future, I start this blog.