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  • Day 53

    Kodaikanal - The "Lake"

    January 10, 2019 in India ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    We arrived at Kodaikanal at 7am and as I was woken to a guy yelling last stop I was very discombobulated when I got off. He kept hassling us for our hotel to which we didn't have one and then he kept saying oh I'll take you to one etc. I snapped... And said "I've literally just woken up, I don't even know where the hell we are and we need a couple of minutes to pack and get off the bus. Indians do not know how to leave you alone when they can see dollar signs in their eyes!! After a couple of minutes we were able to orientate ourselves and feel a bit more normal. We let the guy show us a hotel but we had to wait for a while to see the room. Huge crowds started pouring in and he said we should see a few other hotels, come back and then choose. So we did. We saw a few places but they were all pretty crap for the same price so we told the guy we would just go with the first one as it looked like a proper hotel. We filled in the guest form and when I said the agreed price was Rs 700 the owner said a flat no. He realised he could get a lot more customers for more expensive so he wasn't willing to bargain. Bear in mind we had been wandering round with our backpacks for about an hour now so I was not at all pleased. I found the guy who had supposedly negotiated this price and gave him a piece of my mind. It was an absolute waste of time so we walked off in search for ourselves. The guy kept following us and I as calmly and politely as I could told him to get lost haha He just wanted to gain commission and wasn't even showing us places within our given budget.

    We then sat on a step looked on line for a couple of options and decided to just go in and see if we could bargain. We went to a hotel called Jayaraj, we got the price down to 500 and then went to check out the room. It was freezing and very run down but meh. Just as I was about to say OK Will spotted mice droppings on the bed! So we quickly declined. He then showed us another room which was in a separate building. I must admit the room was knackered looking, but it didn't smell like damp like most of them, it wasn't really clean and it was even more of an icebox than the last, but it did have a hot water tank. We ummed and ahhed for ages and eventually just agreed as we were tired and in need of a shower.

    After a good freshen up and a few internal screams due to feeling so cold in the ice room we got out in search for breakfast. We had Pooris and lots of cải tổ warm us up while planning the day. The plan for the day is to attempt to find scooter hire for the next 2 days and just get our bearings around the lake.

    We went down to the lake and wow what a mess. Now to be fair Kodaikanal had been hit by a cyclone in November so it was very clear that they were still doing a lot of work to clear up the destruction, but our expectations of the "Lake" soon decreased. Sure it was a lake but it had tatty stalls all the way round, you couldn't actually sit down and enjoy the scenery because there was a huge fence around the lake. To be honest it was an absolute let down. We started walking around laughing at the situation when Will decided to turn it into even more of a comedy, by hiring a tandom bike. The tandom was definitely for kids and was hilarious. First Will was on the front and it went quite well. Then half way round we switched and I just couldn't steer properly. Will was so heavy on the bike and everytime he cycled he would bump his knee into my bum as he was too tall. I haven't laughed so hard in such a long time. All the locals were laughing at us along the way. It was great half an hour of fun.

    In the afternoon we went exploring up towards upper lake view and we sat drinking tea. We were having no luck with regards to getting a scooter and found out that the taxi union opposed scooter rental so once again the taxi mafia were able to do and charge what they like to tourists. We had quite a long walk back and decided to try hitch hiking. It worked! Some uni students in a jeep picked us up and brought us all the way back to town.

    We walked past the local bakery and it seemed super busy so we went in to see what was happening. Outside everyone was eating ice cream so obviously we had to try it too. The owners were soo sweet. They gave us overly generous tries of all the flavours, I must have had 2 scoops worth of tries, before I settled with a really yummy Pear ice cream. When paying they gave us a veg pastry on the house too. I'm obviously coming back tomorrow 😋

    We then went for dinner at a small cafe and had veggie burgers with nachos. To be honest it wasn't great but worth a try!
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