Meghamalai, (March 2018)

This is a post I pulled off a blog I used to manage over 2 years back. As any sane human would, I cringe at my old writings but, then, cringing at your old self isn't something to be guilty about, precisely because that indicates personal growth. That's something I should grow to appreciate because, inevitably, my meticulous record keeping is going to cause me some major embarrassment in the future. Of course, the nostalgic embarrassment is fun. My reason for this documentation is related to history, but more on that on a later post. Anyway, this was me a couple years ago.

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meghamalai

I was pretty averse to the idea of going to this hill station called Meghamalai near Theni, Tamilnadu. My school had just closed for the post-exam vacations and I felt that leaving the very night of the last day of school would spoil the spirit of the short vacation (just 10 days).  But my parents told me that the place was very scenic and interesting. I felt somewhat convinced and decided to go along with them.  So, on the 23rd of March, we set out for Meghamalai at 9 pm along with a couple of our family friends. The sleeper bus was at  9:35 pm. We reached Theni at 8:30 am in the morning. We booked two rooms at a hotel at Theni, freshened up, and had breakfast at a restaurant and started our journey.

The hairpin bends' roads were fine, though strips of road were yet to be tarred, which was one of the reasons this place was kissed by the beauty of the absence of human touch. Soon, we were driving on the straight road lined with trees on both sides with the hill in front of us (a hill station road trip classic).

But as we got closer to the top, the majesty of the hills just seemed to grow though the quality of the roads seemed to worsen. After a long, arduous journey, we reached the cottage that we were to stay at. We stayed at the Sand River Cottage by the Woodbriar group. We were treated to a delightful, scenic view of  Meghamalai. The main part of the beauty of this hill station is the fact that it was very silent except for a few bird sounds. For a city boy like me, that felt very relaxing and haunting at the same time. But the reason for this is the low connectivity of the region for tourists and the relative obscurity of Meghamalai. Ironically, this would positively affect the biodiversity, silence and the exquisiteness. 

I had got my novel, 'The Peacock Throne' with me as I thought that I could actually write my novel there. But I managed to write just about nothing; believe me, I was so enthralled with the sights to behold. Meghamalai's elegance is the tea plantations that look like rolling meadows, as green as green can be. At the heart of Meghamalai is a lake.

In the evening, we went to the the Venniar Tea Factory and we got to see all the machines and processes involved in the making of tea. Then we left for Maharaja's Mettu, a high viewpoint from which Kambam, Theni and other places could be seen. It seems that minutes prior to our arrival, a bison had been spotted there. We started the journey back to our cottage at 6:30 or something and as we drove back, I saw how desolate a place Meghamalai was. It was super-spooky driving through the forest at the time. I felt sorry for the Meghamalai citizens who had to live in this desolate place with a very low population density. And to add to it, there are always tiger and leopard sightings while elephants are a common sight.

At night, my dad told me that our cook and assistant-guide had told him that an elephant had been seen 2 days earlier just outside the electric fence of our cosy little cottage. And he continued the onslaught naming a few more animals like bison and whatnot that had been spotted close to our cottage. That scared the daylights out of me. I snuggled under the covers and slept peacefully after probably 15 minutes of eerie silence and all my family and I listening intently as, for years we had not experienced this kind of quiet. There wasn't the whir of the fan or the light whoosh of the air conditioner. Just silence.

In the morning, my dad woke me up saying that were going for a walk outside. That understatement cost me a lot as I refused to get up (Hey! It was cold and the blankets looked like the better option compared to a mere 'walk'). You might be wondering why I am emphasising on the 'walk'. It was because it seemed that they had spotted bison and an elephant on the other side of the lake and they also went near the lake.

I took some photos of flowers with our D-SLR (though my dad took better), we left at around 11. We endured the bad roads and ate at a small restaurant at Chinnamannur (a small town near the foot of the mountain). 

We went to Surli Falls, a waterfall that many people had described as scenic. We walked a path strewn with leaves and trees lining it with a heck lot of monkeys. I am afraid of many animals and one of it is the MONKEY.

I hate monkeys this because once we were travelling back to Chennai from Yercaud (another hill station) and we saw a monkey sitting on the wall of a hairpin bend. We had some food and we lowered the window to give it. But then this thing jumped on the window and tried to claw the food we had taken from the food cover. Unfortunately, I was the person sitting near this window. My grandmother who was with us shooed the monkey but it didn't go away. I rolled the window upwards forcing the monkey to fall back. My dad drove the car away quickly. If you had heard my heartbeat, it would sound like Lewis Hamilton's car. So then we kept walking for about a kilometre and we reached a place where you had to climb a lot of stairs to reach the Falls. We could hear people screaming and squealing in joy. We decided to climb the stairs but when we reached the Falls, we were disappointed as there was no big deal about the waterfall- neither was it high nor was there a lot of water. People were acting as if they had never seen water before.

But by that time, I would give about anything to get out of that monkey-infested place. I kept up my arguments saying that monkeys were human beings' closest ancestors and were very cunning and devious like us. My dad kept telling me that monkeys, like other animals didn't attack humans unless they felt they would be attacked or if the humans had any bags. That was very evident as the monkeys were very much attracted like moths to a light to bags and covers and would poke their heads and hands inside bags even if people were holding them, much to the horror of the people. We had not carried any bags, not even a handbag so everyone except I was very calm. But as we made our way halfway back, my own arguments started sounding hollow to myself as not even a single monkey had even looked at us. Suddenly a monkey, jumped and clung on to my mother. My mother pushed it down. But it stood there, confused, between all of us. I suddenly got a rush of responsibility and using two stones I had picked up on the way for protection, I made a noise and scared the monkey away. I just couldn't believe it, I had faced my fear (though this incident terrifies me more). My dad told me that he had taken back whatever he had told about monkeys being harmless and everything.

We then stopped at Veerapandi and killed some time as our bus back home was just at 9:25 pm. Surprisingly, we even stopped at a supermarket to buy about nothing. Then we ate at a restaurant in Thane called Hotel Maruthi and had our supper. 

We boarded our bus and as I lay down on my bed, I quietly hoped we could return to Meghamalai once more, some day.

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Well, not really proud because it misses all the flamboyant writing that I've come to be associated with at school and elsewhere.

But hey, not bad, kiddo.