Yelagiri Trip – Family comes FIRST!!!

12/6/2011

Family comes first is the virtue of every citizen leaving the land of different cultures. A good family always stays together when there is happiness and when there is sorrow. Every single emotional movement inside the family stays inside a family. Thinking that my cousins and myself decided to have a trip with ‘THE FAMILY’ to a place called as Yelagiri. Wikipedia defined the place to be one of the exotic places in South India.

Yelagiri is a hill station in Vellore district in Tamil Nadu state, situated off Vaniyambadi – Tirupattur road. It is located at an altitude of 1410.6 metres above mean sea level and spread across 30 sqkm. The description also talked about the sports ventures in the place like para-gliding and rock climbing. As anyone, my expectations were high. But, what did I find? I was really disappointed. I expected it to be really cool. But what I saw was really disappointing. The place was completely deserted and most of the places which we visited were really hot.

The FAMILY comprised of myself & my bro, dad, mom, cousins, their mom and dad. We had rented a Toyota Innova. Innova was way too powerful than our 1.2 ltr beat. Although, innova was damn powerful, I always had a soft corner towards Beat because it was our first car. It was my dad’s and uncle’s idea to visit Yelagiri and that too, in a single day, which was way too much to ask for. The ride inside the innova was a bit congested and wayward because, there were 9 people inside the car. We tried almost all possible combinations in seating but almost all turned to be a failure.

The initial route to Yelagiri seemed to be really nice. The nature contours seemed to be a beauty of its own.

After major hair pins and mountain underpasses, we entered into the flood of eucalyptus trees. Its beauty was stunning.

After the eucalyptus stretch we entered into the town section where we stopped near a temple for offering prayers and rituals. I often wondered - it is said the temple is a place where people not only go for prayers but also having a peace of mind. In most of ancient temples in India, especially in south India they have great Banyan Tree in front of the temple. The reason for having a banyan tree in and around the temple is not only a cultural one but also a scientific one. It is said if we meditate under this tree. It has a capability to purify our thoughts by instilling pure oxygen into our blood-oxygen system. By pure oxygen I mean that air free of pollutants. Every single thing which we learn as culture has a scientific reason behind it. When we arrived near we saw a bunch of jackfruits placed at the entrance.

We had cultural moment then at the temple. We offered our prayers and rituals at the temple. At the entrance, I saw the weapon used by Lord Muruga - Vel(It is a weapon used by ancient tribal hunters).

Vel...

Just outside the temple I was able to see a peculiar variety of chameleon. It had a orange-black tinch to it. My bro took a really good pic of the chameleon.

Just outside the temple I was able to capture a photo which changed the way I approach photography. I always needed to instill a cultural feel into picture. So I decided to take a picture of piercing of Vel into one's hand. I had the courtesy of Cousin Vidya who volunteered to take up this task. I told her to place her hand in a particular angle and told her to have an expression as if like it is piercing into her hand. She did a fantastic job in doing so.

Here I made use of the same technique which I had used in college trip to wayanad.

Later that day, we decided to go for boating in the nearest lake. That boating was the only memorable moment in the whole trip. We pics of the splash of water with very high shutter speed.

After boating we took some pics of the lake aerial view.

My uncle then said that there was a falls near the lake called as the Jagathambha Falls. The name sounded horrific so expected it to be horrifying falls. It was worse than we expected it to be. The coming from the falls was less than water coming from the nearest tap. On the way to falls, we had an opportunity to ask to a person who was coming from the falls, He said "there is a lot of water, you can bath for hours.". Whatever he said was true (sarcastically) water was almost close to tap water and it take hours to take bath in this stringent waters. Most of the family members criticized my uncle for coming this long way. 

We didn't wait long we decided to head back home (bangalore). On the way back to home, we decided to stop near Krishnagiri Reservoir for the sunset.

After we left Krishnagiri to Bangalore, on route I tried some photography trials on sporty lights. I took picture of sun from the window of the car going at 80kmph with low shutter speed and high aperture. And this is what I got.

We finally reached Bangalore and headed back it our homes feeling disappointed and tired. I still hoped that we could have a week where everything could be changed in single trip. I hope I'm not wrong! The Hunt continues.......