Bangalore to Meghamalai in 3 SUVs: A nostalgic hill station trip

Very few places can hold its beauty after a decade without taking a hit from tourism.

BHPian megazoid recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Some trips are done for nostalgia and this one fell in that category. We first visited Meghamalai in the November of 2013 and wanted to rekindle old memories. We had great memories of the place and our stay. It offered a good drive, some unspoilt scenery, a stay with a view and good food.

What we had in our mind when we set out. We were going to be three cars, a Hilux, a Creta NLine and a Fortuner.

The Old Sandriver Cottage with our Thar (2013)

The furry friend (2013)

Ready and careful (2013)

The two pictures below are at the same place. The Thar in 2013 and the Hilux in 2024

Thar on a bridge. Notice tea in the background

More dense today

The traffic on a Friday was expectedly bad as the Creta and Hilux drove toward Salem. We decided to break journey at Salem and instead of catching up on sleep, went around eating at twelve midnight at the 24 hour cafe at Grand Estancia, all the time promising that we would start early the next day.

The thing with drives is that somehow everything falls in place to make the drive possible and we did keep our promise of starting early. Roads were deserted and we made rapid progress. Both the cars were relatively young with respective odometers under two thousand kilometers. They got a good workout and also presented us with plenty of photo opportunities.

Traversing the plains

We had breakfast at Vedasundar, the local hospitality was top notch and the food was delicious. Thereafter it was a straight drive to Dindigul and then onto the Theni stretch which on that day was deserted. The drive went smooth and we hit Chinamannur. After labouring with vehicle checks and some emphatic head shaking conversation at the forest check post, we were on the climb to our stay in the hills. This drive needless to say was the highlight. Got to "Sandriver cottage" which was our place of stay and we were in for a shock. The place didn't look familiar even though we had very clear memories of the place. The tree was missing, so was the Malabar giant squirrel. I kept asking the caretaker in broken Tamil about the tree and the squirrel and he had a funny expression on his face. After much deliberation and discussion, we got to know that the original bungalow was elsewhere and this was another bungalow renamed as the earlier one. All this was done for logistical convenience as they wanted the stay options grouped together and my dreamy nostalgia of sharing meals with the squirrel came crashing down. But the present bungalow was very nice and overlooked the lake and the tea gardens and had all the good bits of a plantation bungalow. We quickly made ourselves comfortable as we waited for another friend to join us.

The three car convoy

After a drizzle

Such places have a funny way of making grown men do stupid things as we kept running around for pictures, heard stories of animals in disbelief and were so gluttonous that it gave the cook some creases of worry on his otherwise smooth forehead. We spent much of the afternoon staring at the vast expanse of tea and forests through high powered binoculars and saw nothing but the clouds and then adjusted the camera controls to shoot fast moving mammals and managed to only catch a lumbering peacock that looked quizzically at our enthusiasm. Took the Hilux out and went around on the tea garden trails and had a good time snaring pictures. The weather was sublime. We had a little drizzle with the mist playing hide and seek, making it an enjoyable excursion.

A postcard setting

Soothing to the eye

A cup of tea

Good views

dwarfed by the trees

Picturesque

The caretaker was full of enthusiasm and regaled us with stories of his encounters in the estate. A really touching moment was when the cook saw our photos from the ID proofs submitted and instantly remembered that we had come earlier many years ago and came by to see us. That felt incredible. A truly nice moment when Pushparaj surprised us with his smile. He was the cook who had been at the earlier bungalow in 2013 and was now doing duty at the newer one.

Wet drive

Covered in mist

Fortuner disecting tea gardens

A beautiful entrance

One has to cross this to get to the bungalow. Makes for a good stop.

Wondering what to make of it all

God's painting

Very few places can hold its beauty after a decade without taking a hit from tourism. I must admit that this place looked even better than when I first saw it thanks to the strict enforcement of no plastic and very little stay options.

But it was a reality check as we got out of the checkpost. There was plastic thrown everywhere, as if celebrating the freedom of no penalty, after the excruiciating difficulty of keeping a hill station clean. Sigh! We have a lot to do to prevent this land from becoming a large trash can.

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