[k149in]

Friday evening, after tiring 5 business days, I felt I needed a good and refreshing weekend. Kolli hills was one place I wanted to visit for a long time. I used to see these mountains on my way from my native (Trichy) to Bangalore.

Three calls to my colleagues, they are all ready for the trip to the "Not so known hill" the next morning. I set their expectation low and they agreed for a very mediocre & shoe string budget trip.

We packed lot of biscuits/cakes and other eatables, as we were not sure about the quality of food in Kolli hills. We also carried a couple of Mosquito repellant (though there were not much of mosquitoes actually)

Searched in Google for the phone number for Nallamthambi resorts and the booking for two rooms were made in the next 10 minutes. Each rooms rent was Rs.420.

My car had enough petrol to reach Krishnagiri Bharat Petroleum bunk (A2B). As usual, though I wanted to start at 4:00 AM, we left Silk Board the Saturday morning at 6:00AM.

Now, before I start pasting the photos, please do not judge the beauty by the photos (the photos were taken with some basic PNS digital cameras). The hills were awesome. This place cannot be compared to Ooty or Kodaikanal owing to lesser altitude (1300 meters above sea level), but the place is beautiful in its own ways.

Lot of windmill blades were on the move as usual. As planned, we had breakfast in A2B and we filled petrol until full tank here. The time was 7AM. In 40 minutes, the journey started again.

Note from the Team-BHP Support Team: Post Edited since it contained various [FONT], [COLOR] and [SIZE] tags. Do not copy/paste content from other applications.

[Gandhi]

Good start. Waiting for rest of the travelogue.

[k149in]

The drive was uneventful. Reached Salem in next couple of hours and continued on the NH7 towards Namakkal. I knew I have to take a left deviation well before Namakkal to reach Rasipuram. The landmark after which one should take the Main left turn was the childrens theme park "Paravasa Ulagam" located on the left side of the road. The left turn was approximately 19-20KM from the Seelanaikampatti circle in Salem. Just adjacent to this main left turn you have the TNSTC Rasipuram bus depot(visible in Google maps).

From here comtinue toward the Rasipuram until you reach the old bus stand. Take the right turn here and continue towards the "Pirivu road". The "Pirivu road" photo can be seen below.

Take the right turn at "Pirivu road" and continue towards Kalapanaikampatti. The roads from here are much smoother than NH7 though they are two lane roads. Driving was a pleasure in these roads.
As you reach Kalapanaikampatti town, start looking for the temple(in the picture) on the right side of the road. Just after the temple, take the left turn for Kolli Hills. Keep following straight all the way upto Semmedu, the town in Kolli Hills.

[k149in]

The roads uphill are smooth, but at least half the stretch is so narrow that width is equivalent of a bus’s width. Therefore, it was important that we horn a lot and wait for response from drivers coming down. Few stretches are so narrow that either you have to come down or the other vehicle needs to go up some distance, incase we meet head-on with vehicles coming down. Some bends are pretty steep that I had to shift to the first gear. The traffic was very less, but we saw quite a lot buses as the one in the photo shown. The place seems to have good connectivity to Salem. Namakal and Rasipuram, the towns nearby. The roads as you can see from Google maps, the road is full of zig zag pattern and looking at the picture, we can easily realize how there are 70 hairpin bends though other hill stations have much lesser bends.
The drive offered some spectacular views, but we could not stop and take pictures as we were seriously running behind the schedule due to slow driving through the villages. We reached the resort in Semmedu by 12:30PM. On the way to the resort, we also saw a Indianoil petrol bunk. The town is approximately 1300m above sea level. Every where you turn around, you could see tall trees with pepper plant around them. There was pureness in the air and we felt easy breathing.

[k149in]

The hotel where we stayed was little different, it has some duplex kind of houses, cottages kind and those looked like a normal room. The price ranged from Rs.250 to Rs.1000. The deluxe room that cost close to Rs.1000 was quite spacious and had a decent bathroom. Three people can stay in the room. The room that we took is a two-person room that costs Rs.420. The bathroom was not looking that great, but we were okay as we were to stay just for a night. The rooms were very basic. It had a 14” TV and bathroom fitted with a working geyser. The best thing was we could park our car right in front of the room. So the car also stayed close. Some photos of the hotel.

[k149in]

The food was average and the chicken 65 we ate; I have never tasted a chicken 65 worse than this. We should have restricted ourselves to a vegetarian lunch. Vegetarian food was little better than non-veg food. We finished the lunch only by 3:00PM.

The first planned visit was to the “Aagasa gangai” waterfalls. People there said it will take considerable time to reach the waterfalls and hence requested us to postpone it for the next day, but we still decided to go ahead. To reach the falls, first we have to travel to the Arpaleeswarar temple, which is close to 11KM from the hotel. We required locals help in finding directions to the temple. In approximately 40 minutes, we reached the Temple. We parked our car near the temple, paying Rs.30 for the parking fee. We decided to skip the temple as dusk was just couple of hours away. Entry fee for the waterfalls was Rs.10 per head. We quickly started to climb down the 1025 stairs built to access the waterfalls. Some steps were at least bigger than a feet in depth and some lesser than a feet. Elders cannot make through to the falls and walking down can be tiring even to a healthy person. We have to be very careful while walking down the stairs and one slip could spell serious injuries. I especially had a tough time even walking down after driving for 6+ hours. After few steps you get a spectacular view of the valley and as you slowly progress, the sound of waterfalls slowly increases. We took some rest in between and we progressed to reach the falls.

[ravibhat]

Thats nice adventure! 70 hair pin bends is something amazing. Load more pictures.Whats distance from Bangalore?

Ravi.

[k149in]

To the waterfalls, you need to swim few meters or you need to use the ropes tied (as you can see in the photo). The water was neck deep at one point and as I was 160 cm. I didn’t know swimming either, I could not go to the falls (mainly because I was scared and was not sure if I can hang on those ropes). I was satisfied looking at it from a distance. The time that we went, there was no rain. I heard the water flow increases rapidly when it rains. May be now, because of heavy rains in TN, there must be water in abundance.

The boys did enjoy very much.

[k149in]

Originally Posted by ravibhat

Thats nice adventure! 70 hair pin bends is something amazing. Load more pictures.Whats distance from Bangalore?

Ravi.

The total distance covered (Bangalore Silk Board-> Kolli hills-> Bangalore Silk Board) was 600KM. Yes, I will load more pictures.

[ampere]

Wow ! Sorry for my ignorance. Did not know that there exists a place like this ! Will try this out. Given the fact that the drive is also nice along NH7, it should be real fun. Even the water is tempting !

[k149in]

The time was 5:00PM and we could see light disappearing fast. We started to climb up and this time it was even tougher. We took lots of rest in between and we reached the temple by 5:45PM. We decided to skip the temple and We started the drive back to the hotel immediately as we did not want to get stuck somewhere in the darkness. Even before we completed quarter of the distance there was complete darkness. The roads to falls were not as good as the roads to the hills itself. There were not many people on the road and it was little difficult to find anyone to assist with the way back to the hotel. I would advice anyone to start from the falls well before dusk.
Some more pictures we took in the waterfalls and on the way back.

Agasa gangai waterfalls on Yahoo! Video

Agasa gangai 1 on Yahoo! Video

[k149in]

Originally Posted by ampere

Wow ! Sorry for my ignorance. Did not know that there exists a place like this ! Will try this out. Given the fact that the drive is also nice along NH7, it should be real fun. Even the water is tempting !

Yes, this was a nice place. Even we were suprised. For those who enjoy Nandi hills, this place will be satisfactory. 70 hairpin bends within short distance was fun, you have a pretty good waterfalls and walking down to the waterfalls, you feel close to nature.

[k149in]

[FONT=Arial]We got back to the hotel and we ordered food that they were comfortable in doing. Result was food being little better than lunch. We completed having dinner and none of us had stomach upset or things like that. The food lacked good taste, but was fresh. At the end of the day, we felt worth travelling this far and the hills did not let us down (though the food we took so far were average). It was slightly cooler than Bangalore and we soon went to sleep hoping for a day as good as this one was.[/FONT]

[laluks]

@k149in.

That's a beautiful place. Thanks for sharing. The falls are attractive.

[k149in]

The next day, after having very good breakfast, we left to the Seeku parai view point. The time was 10:00AM The view point was much closer than the falls. We reached the view point in 20 minutes. We were the only people in this place. In fact, there was no one in the waterfalls either when we were there. Some photos on the way to the view point and then the photos of the view point.