| Re: Vagamon heights - A surprise package
Went to Vagamon heights during the ugadi weekend. Drove all the way from Bangalore.
Onward Journey - We (The home minister and myself), started on April 10th at 2.00pm. The plan was to halt at udumalpet (Via Kanakpura road) and drive via munnar/chinnar to try our luck in spotting wildlife. By the time we reached Annur, it was 7.30. Since I am not a fan of night driving on road without medians, we halted for the night at Prabhu Lodge, behind the temple. A neat little lodge where we paid 650 for a non-ac room. According to the local cops, even actors stay there during film shoots it seems !! The next day, we left at 4.30am and since it was early morning, ditched the shortcut via karnampatti, and took the usual avinashi-tiruppur route to reach Palladam and then onto to Udumalpet. We stopped at the Amaravathi dam checkpost for a quick breakfast and then drove onto Munnar, Idukki and then onto vagamon. We did not stop for too many view points as it was hot and most of the tea gardens were dry. We reminded ourselves that we must do a trip during monsoon.
At Vagamon Heights:
We checked into vagamon heights at 12.30pm. It was a solid 8 hour drive from Annur with two breaks of 25 mins each. The total distance from Bangalore was 620km.
At vagamon heights, we were given the nestling cottage. The resort has a total of just 5 cottages. Since it was summer, our plan was to just laze around and check out the property itself. We were given a tour of the property and some view points, and also trekked to a small peak on on of the mornings. We had booked a three night stay in the property.
If one makes a trip during monsoon, the property has a nice mini-jungle where one can walk around.
The home minister got a few books for herself to read, while I just keep staring at the trees around me. It is not for nothing that we men have the nothing box in our brains ! There are portions where you do not have mobile connectivity and thankfully enough, our room was one. There is mobile connectivity at the dining hall. We did take a laptop along, which was used to catch up on a few movies during the night.
Even though the property is quite good and has excellent VFM, I would still recommend Fringe Ford in wayanad, if one is interested in having a chilled out vacation and would also like to have some jungle sightings.
At the end of the trip, I requested the property owners to curtail the use of plastics. All guests are served bottled water (in kerala ! for god's sake, where people drink that nice hot water) and the food bowls are wrapped in plastic sheets !!
I forced the staff to provide me with regular drinking water, and as is always my wont during my travel to places like these, bought back all my garbage with me. I prefer doing my bit to make sure that places like those do not have my garbage at-least !
Return journey - We started at 12.30pm and since we wanted to return back to Bangalore that day itself, we chose the Theni-Dindugal-Banaglore route. The road from Dindigul to Theni is more or less complete and one can safely do 100kmph. However, we did see an overturned Mahindra 17 seater, which overtook us. It looked like he swerved to avoid something oncoming at him.
The distance from Dindugal to Bangalore is 370km and the toll we paid is 370rs ! It looks like highway travel is becoming an expensive proposition.
We were greeted by massive amounts of traffic at the Attibele toll gate (no surprises in that) and reached home at 10.30pm, A drive of 10 hours with two breaks of half an hour each.
The total distance was around 550km.
Shyam | 
24th June 2009, 11:06
(1)
Thanks
