On a rainy morning, we ventured out towards Hogennakal. It was not in our original itinerary, but a friendly chat with a local in Yelagiri convinced us to give this a try. The detour was of 90 kms. The roads are wonderful, and the GPS was a life saver. I am very proud to say that my sense of direction has improved by miles. On a couple of occasions, I pointed out wrong routes to Gurdev just based on memory, and Gurdev is great with directions. So, I was mighty pleased with myself :).
The falls are in the dense jungles of Hogennakal, which was once the area where the dreaded dacoit Veerappan terrorized the people. We reach Hogennakal around noon, and it is stiflingly hot. The experience was a dampener. The falls look beautiful, but the place is littered with plastic, dirty, and the water has become grimy. The people visiting are mostly from the lower strata of society. At the entrance to the Falls, you see people washing clothes in the downstream water! I was aghast! There were potbellied men in their kachchas getting oil massage, and later washing themselves off in the water. It was disgusting. How can they expect us to drench ourselves in this water? The water looked a grimy green, and we steered clear of taking a coracle to visit the base of the Main Falls. Gurdev even joked that we would require acid wash if we bathed in that water. Really, the Tamil Nadu Tourism people are doing a horrible job of maintaining these beautiful falls. Besides, you have thugs of all kinds charging you exorbitant fees for some trivial reasons at every step. It left a bitter taste in our mouth. The Falls look beautiful, and there is something called Cine Falls, which I assume is the place where movie shootings take place — the recent one being Raavan. Though I heard that they shot in Kerala. This place, anyway, is at the border of Karnataka, TN and Kerala.
By this time, we were really hungry. There were only roadside shacks and no sit down places to have a meal at, but we managed to find a really tiny place which had a hand washing facility and some ramshackle stools and tables. We ordered a South Indian meal for each of us — the only thing on the menu, and then came the best part — fried fish as an accompaniment. It is the best fish, I’ve eaten in a long, long time. Crisp, spicy, well-fried, juicy, just perfect! I wish I could speak Tamil, so that I could ask the lady her recipe. I think the taste also came from the freshness of the fish. So, we stuffed ourselves with it, each of us having two servings, and it was really cheap as well :). After lunch, tired as we were, we proceeded to our final destination — Yercaud.
Little did we know that this was going to be the best part of our vacation!
Fish pic courtesy hogennakal.com
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