Mysore- via Kodaikanal!!!

"Second trimester" is a phrase any expectant couple longs to hear, since that is the only time during the entire term that travel is recommended. Ours started towards the end of September, and ever since, the wifey and me have been planning a weekend getaway a la our trips to Ooty, North Kanara and Pondy. The festive season done with, a chance came up when we won a free 2 night trip to a destination of our choice thanks to some offer at Giria's, the electronics store where we bought a TV recently. Sonal made some calls and we chose Kodaikanal, a 11 hour drive from Bangalore according to our trusted companion, the Outlook Traveller guide.

We decided to start driving on Thursday evening after work, stopping overnight at Salem in Tamil Nadu, a straight 200 km drive along the NH7. Or so we thought.

It was raining on and off the week before, but that's not uncommon this tim eof year so we didn't think too much of it. The drive via Hosur to Krishnagiri was amazing as usual. 90 km of smooth 4-lane highway later, we crossed the Chennai turnoff and crossed over onto NH7 proper.

That's when our nightmare started. Krishnagiri to Dharmapuri on our map was about 46 km, and I blithely predicted we'd be there in an hour, even accounting for heavy traffic. No sooner had we started this section, having taken a snack and loo break just after K'giri, than our plans started to unravel, and fast. Apparently this part of TN had been pounded by heavy rains for the last couple of months or so, which reflected in the sorry state of the roads. Actually, beyond a point there wasn't any road, just one crater to avoid after another in some nightmarish obstacle course designed to test the most challenge-happy rally driver. Well, normally one loves to step up to the challenge, but remember this time there were other considerations and about halfway to Dharmagiri, we realised that continuing on this course would be utter madness, unless we planned to use the services of a midwife somewhere further down the highway. Somehow we persevered to the next civilised town. Around a quarter past nine, we made it to the town centre at Dharmagiri, where to our delight we found a nice AC room in a decent hotel called Sarvanna Bhavan. "Decent" in a purely relative sense, since the previous hotel we recced was a hellhole with no running water in the toilets and seemingly occupied only by drunken salesmen.
Some dinner and cable TV later, we turned in for the night, bitterly disappointed at the mess our much-planned weekend trip had degenerated into. The next morning we headed back to Bangalore, dreading the nightmare two hours back to Krishnagiri. But maybe because we'd already done it the previous evening when the light was really bad, the trip back was much smoother. After Krishnagiri, on solid tarmac again, Sonal had a brainwave: could we drive all the way to Mysore instead? After all, doesn't tourist season in that city peak around Dassera-Diwali? Could I somehow manage to secure accomodation at our guesthouse there at the last minute? By now, I was feeling so guilty about not having thought the damned Kodai thing through that I pounced at the chance of making amends. A couple of quick calls to the office later, it was done. Though they were running nearly full, Donald at the ILI guesthouse, who thankfully turned out to be an old acquiantance, promised that he a room would be ready for us when we arrived. Considerably cheered up, the trip to Bangalore and then onto Mysore went like a breeze. We stopped at a nice place somewhere between Chennapatna and Maddur for lunch, a motley collection of restaurants including a 24-hour Coffee Day.
Check-in was smooth as promised, at around 4 p.m. I had deliberately undersold ILI to Sonal, telling her the guesthouse facilities were "adequate", what could we expect at the last minute, etc. You can imagine her shock and utter delight when we finally stepped onto the campus and inspected our five-star room, with the attached patio and the fantastic bathroom. A couple of looooong hot baths later, we visited the closest food court and discovered that the food on offer was as good as the lodgings. The Mysore facility has changed almost unrecognisably since the last time I had visited, sometime in 2003 with a client team. The previously desolate campus is abuzz with activity, teeming with youngsters all undergoing their compulsory training before proceeding to full-fledged corporate life. There is a supermarket, beauty salons for both men and women, a full-fledged clinic, basketball and volleyball courts, a gym--- everything the Bangalore campus has and more, and infinitely more beautiful! Sonal remarked that it's like stepping into a foreign country and, blasé as I am about such generalisations, for once I had to agree!
She claims we could happily have spent the entire two days without stepping out of the premises and she'd have felt the trip was worth it. But of course, we did visit the magnificent Mysore palace, Chamundi Hills, the awe-inspiring Lalitha Mahal palace and Tipu's old capital of Srirangapatna as well. The drive both ways was smooth and fast, about two and a half hours on an increasingly sexy piece of road. What started off as a disaster actually ended up being a very enjoyable weekend trip for the two of us.