We stopped to stretch our limbs at this juncture, and the feeling was just surreal. The air was hot, but we were standing under a shady canopy of leaves from trees that were centuries old. The silence, once we turned the ignition off, was deafening. Not a soul in sight, every rustle of a leaf, every crack of a twig was strangely amplified. Our voices, so loud and robust within the safe confines of the car, suddenly dropped down to a quiet murmur. I felt as if we didn’t belong, like we were trespassing, and a sense of foreboding crept up among our motley crew. Shaking the feeling off, we got back into the car and drove on, inching ever closer to Thekkady.
The closer we got to the hill-station, the more winding the roads became. Usually, being in a big, beefy automobile of this stature would mean an immediate drop in speed. Steep inclines, rapid turns, and heavy automobiles don’t usually go hand in hand; with this car, though, no such problems. The aforementioned nimbleness came to the fore, and we made decent progress, despite the slopes’ best efforts. Even though we did make good time off the hairpins and bends that made up the final leg of that day’s journey, we still reached our destination well into the night. We stayed at an old favourite, the Coffee Inn, and set our alarms for early morning so that we could go check out the Periyar Tiger Reserve which was just minutes away from our rest stop for the night.
The morning came bright and sunny, as I looked out from my room’s balcony and at a view that exhibited a portion of the reserve itself. Despite the sun, a chill that can only be described as ‘hill-station weather’ permeated through the air. As my need for a cup of coffee grew stronger, I urged my colleagues to get going. We stopped at the aptly named Thekkady Café where a wide range of orders included everything from pancakes to vada-sambar was quickly polished off, and washed down with copious amounts of coffee, of course. You should drop in if you’re in the area, the menu has an alluring spectrum of options available, the food is delectable , and you can’t go wrong with the filter coffee. After a satiating meal was consumed, the Santa Fe was given a thorough clean up, and then we headed towards the crown jewel of Thekkady – Periyar Tiger Reserve.
