Holiday Memoir I

10:45 pm, January 7, 2011,
Kodai Resort Hotel,
Kodaikanal.

The last thing I remember seeing as our kingfisher airlines flight took off from Mumbai is looking down on a vast congestion of architecture which was almost claustrophobia-inducing. The first thing I remember seeing as our flight descended towards Coimbatore was the sheer abundance of open spaces and trees.

The heat assailed us as we stepped off the plane and walked to the terminal, causing us to peel off our sweaters. It gave rise to doubts regarding all the reports we’d heard about how cold it would be over here. However, the chill started setting in as we neared Kodaikanal, and we were definitely shivering by the time we checked in.

We set off in the pre-arranged for Indica, driven by the non-Hindi speaking Vijay, who turned out to be a Tamil version of James Bond when it came to driving. Towards the end of the five-hour drive, I realised that James Bond seems to run in the blood of almost everyone who can drive in these parts.

We stopped for lunch after around two hours at a hotel in a town on the way, but it was full of Ayyappa pilgrims who were getting off tourist bus after tourist bus. We finally ate some delicious lemon rice with sambhar and a pungent pickle at a wayside eatery with all of three items on the menu: lemon rice, tomato rice and curd rice. I spent the rest of the journey mostly sleeping.

Till we reached the ghat leading up to Kodai, that is. Vijay Bond’s stunt driving began worrying me after that. I finally decided to go back to sleep rather than wait for every oncoming truck to click us off the ghat, heck-knows-how-many miles down to our death.


Throughout the holiday, Vijay kept up his efforts to make us feel as if we were on a rollercoaster instead of in an Indica. My cousin Ninad later pointed out something very interesting: every time some motorist refused to let Vijay overtake him, Vijay would overtake him anyway, and pause to stare murderously at the poor driver for good effect. I've attempted to capture one of the dangerous moments in this picture.

However, Vijay is a gem of a person. He suggested places where we could shop and eat, and even came with us on our shopping spree in Tirupur to help us bargain, as he knew we didn’t speak the local language.

A driver of a hired vehicle is someone who is always with you till the vacation ends, and we have to be thankful that it was someone like Vijay, and not some shady, cheating crook hell bent on squeezing every penny out of us.




Vijay poses with Ninad and me outside the Coimbatore Airport just before we leave for Mumbai


(More in the next post)