Yelagiri Hills

At the last minute, we all decided to go on a road trip to Yelagiri Hills, it's 167km outside of Bangalore in Tamilnadu towards Chennai. Originally we were going to go to Ooty but our driver wanted to celebrate Ugadi with his family. My cousins decided to join us and since Ravi drives, we were back in business. Yercaud was booked so Yelagiri Hills was our only option, we wanted to go somewhere at a higher elevation since it was going to be hot everywhere else. Yelagiri Hills is not as high of an elevation as Ooty or Yercaud but the weather was quite pleasant there. It's not a very touristy place, there are no 5-star hotels and restaurants and it certainly wasn't crowded. As our guide books says, there isn't much to do there but eat, sleep, relax, take a small hike and repeat. We checked out the cottages at Silent Waters Retreat, they had built new bungalows in a small gated community. The cottages were painted in bright colours and were quite lively looking. We were almost going to stay at one of the cottages but then decided to at least check out Landmark Hotel where we had already made a reservation. I'm glad we made this decision. Landmark was a much better option for us, they had a children's park, badminton courts, lots of grassy areas to play on and a restaurant. We made good use of all the facilities and spent a lazy afternoon playing soccer and badminton. At night, they setup a bonfire and they played a movie in the open air, albeit not a child-friendly one, it was "Ghajini". The amazing thing was there were no mosquitos or exotic bugs so it was very lovely sitting outside. The food in this area was not very good, we tried our hotel restaurant, the Hotel Hills and both were mediocre and our options were quite limited.

On the drive up the hill, there were multiple families of monkeys perched on the ledges staring at us. At one of the scenic spots, we wanted to get out, but my cousins were scared of what the monkeys would do, we saw some other families get out of their car so we did the same, took some pictures and quickly got back in. The monkeys just stared at us and did nothing more. They would however come from all directions when we slowed down or stopped the car.

The next day, we went boating. At the park, there were lots of vendors selling fruits such as sour mangoes sprinkled with salt and chilli pepper, guavas, figs and durian. Durian seems to be sold in abundance and was obviously in season. I was the only one keen on eating some so instead of buying a durian which is apparently quite difficult to cut and way too large, I just bought a few pieces.

We spent a leisurely couple of days at the resort, we heard the area is very pleasant and picturesque in November and December, maybe we'll head over there for a weekend in the winter.