Vijay's Wedding - Hogenakkal - Yercaud

     Vijay's wedding gave us another chance to have a wonderful trip after a gap of 6 months.  Vijay's wedding was planned on an auspicious Friday morning the 11 December 2009, and the reception on 10th evening, the previous day. We were around 11 people planning to attend the wedding (Jayakantan, Santha, Rajesh Punch, Rajesh Balasub, Ananth, Satya, Kiran, Loknath and Pradeep ), but as Loknath didn't turn up because .. ... ..... Kiran and Pradeep dropped their plan as well. We couldn't convince Ashok from the beginning as the calculator knew that the budget would cross 500/- and it would affect his future business plans. There was yet another problem which could have caused us to drop this trip and it was Jacky, the J-Boss's Boss. Jacky would be visible at the end of this post.  And at last on Thursday, we somehow convinced J-Boss who had his plan A, B and c for Jacky's .... and we decided that we would be travelling on Friday. We (Jay, Ananth, Rajesh punch & Sub and santha) started around 5.30pm on Thursday evening from Office and on the way at Porur purchased a gift for Vijay. We then started to roll and made a halt at Ambur for the famous Khaja and Star restaurants where Ambur's special Biriyani was served.  Muttai Veechu, Half boil, Paratta and Biriyani were the key elements in the restaurant  followed by Beeda and Dum. It was Ananth's day out in the restaurant with the pieces, and this piece didn't have a substitute. We travelled on the Bangalore Highway and reached Kaveripattnam around 9.30pm, where Vijay's reception was being held.

We all knew that Vijay would be having a BRIGHT future as he was getting married to a politician's daughter, but we didn't think that the streets heading to the marriage hall would be full of tubelight. It was very easy to identify Vijay's wedding hall as we followed the traces of tubelight and we reached the hall. The entrance had a huge flower decoration where Vijay's and Ashwini's name were embossed.

We got into the hall and to us people from chennai, the mandap (hall) looked very huge. We could see Vijay with his black suit on, with a total getup change, but his thirutu muzhi was cleary visible. The bride looked a little too much for Vijay, but we all know its just another cake walk for Vijay, where girls fall as prey for Vijay's romantic words.

We had a little chat with Vijay, took a snap and moved to our hotel at Krishnagiri and got to bed. The next morning, we went to Vijay's wedding, where it was again a surprise for us, no iyer and no smoke, but full of white kadar. We had our breakfast (pongal, idli, dosai, kitchidi, vada, sweet with coffee) at the mandap, which was too good. Vijay's wedding tooks just around 10 minutes where the party leader gave the THALI to Vijay and the wedding got over with the knots being tied by Vijay.

We then started our journey to Hogenakkal which was around 70km from Kaveripatinam and it took around 2 hours with a few halts in between our travel to let the liquids out and in. As soon as we reached Hogenakkal, we were surrouned by people asking if we are ready to travel in hide boat. We reached near the water falls, and got into the hide boats.

There is a government run counter and the actual cost for a person to travel in hide boat is about 40/-, but the employee in the counter doesn't have any hold and we have to pay a heavy price of around 100/- per head. We took a hide boat and got down from the hide boat within 5 minutes as we have to walk further down on the steps that leads us to the place where the water falls exactly. We again got into the boat and travelled for another 10 minutes and it led us to a small lake where we started to swim in and on the water. The return trip from the lake was amazing with the rocks surrounding us, mini waterfalls and fishermans catching fish.

It was around 2.30pm we left Hogenakkal and we were very hungry, but couldn't find any great restaurants. On our way to Yercaud, we saw a woman selling kuzhi-paniaram at Kariampatti and it was a feast for us. We had around 45 paniaram's which costed just 45 bucks and some watermelon to end our lunch.

We reached Salem and met Sakthi and Mani, schoolmates of Rajesh Subramaniam who guided us to reach Yercaud around 9pm. We had took around 20 pin curves and the worst part is that there are no lights on the road and it is too dangerous to drive in the night, which we came to know, when we came back on the next day noon. At the entrace of Yercaud, Teacher's let us know the way for that night, and we stayed at Hotel Shevaroys, which had a beautiful garden. A double bed just costed 900/- for a single night which is quite cheap when compared to the resorts. At around 12 midnight, we had a walk near the lake and it was too cold. There was a fire light by watchmen and we sat nearby for a few minutes before we went to sleep. The room was too cold and we couldn't wake up on time. Mist covered the whole of Yercaud and the visibility was around 10 to 20 meters only. We then headed to Shiva's temple, which was on top of a peak where the misty wind was blowing. Took a few snaps and videos and started moving down visiting the Yercaud Lake. We couldn't go for a boat ride due to the bad weather.

We then headed returning to chennai where we took a break at Ambur for late lunch and again there was no other option other than Khaja half boils. Mr.Driver had to to back at the earliest possible time as Mr.Jacky was waiting for J-Boss to take him for a ....    We were back to chennai with yet another memorable experience, which was very much missed by Dokka Kiran and Loknath.