Valparai

Valparai a less traveled beautiful hill station near Coimbatore in Tamilnadu. It houses many scenic view points and water falls around tea estates. Visitors can make it bigger with a visit to Athirapally waterfalls through a dense virgin forest with great chance to see wildlife (elephants, bisons, lion tailed monkeys...).

Hairpin bends way up to Valparai

It is 430 km from Bangalore, drive up the hill can be tricky through 40 hairpin bends - it is a sharp climb up for about 30 kms. We took few breaks on the way to relax and watch scenic views, we had carried hot milk and coffee essentials to sip caffeine on the way. There are a few water falls and view points on the way, Monkey falls is more popular with tourists. Mountain goats (Nilgiri Tahr) can be seen in typically between 17 and 20th hairpin bends.

Since Valparai is not a well developed tourist destinations, there aren't many good hotels in the city - there are many homestays and few hotels. The best available option one on top is Hotel Green Hill, they actually have a homestay which you can ask the manager there - he infact shifted us to the home-stay next day. This was much better stay. They have a pretty good restaurant downstairs which offered good food for dinner and breakfast.

We drove to Athirapally waterfalls next day early morning, it's about 75km but will take 3-4 hours. There are a few forest check posts where you need to make entry and declare all plastic items that you have, they will check it when you return back - if anything is missing from the list, you'll need to pay a fine. Good to see they being very strict to conserve forests from polythene. It's a great drive through the misty tea estates and thick jungles on western ghat - we did see bisons, lion tailed monkeys and few other animals en-route. There is very little human settlement on this route apart from few tribal settlements, roughly for about 25 km - there is absolutely none. Road is in average condition overall, less vehicles pass through this road as well.

Enroute Athirapally

Enroute Athirapally

Bison - Enroute Athirapally

Waterfall

Sholayar dam, Vazhachal falls and few other water falls are good stops on the way. Entire route is quite scenic and most likely to encounter wild life - overall it is an enjoyable and thrilling drive. Athirapally is called niagara of india, nice view you will get when you get to the bottom of the water fall - we were not allowed to enter water as it was rainy season and Sholayar dam was filled to capacity, water gates would be opened anytime. Otherwise, I heard that they would allow visitors to enter water at the falls. On the way back, we stopped at few tea estates to relax and enjoy good views. Returned back to valparai by the night fall and checked in at homestay instead of the hotel room.

Hike to poonjalai

Early morning we started our next day, as we wanted to return back to Bangalore in the afternoon. Nallamudi Poonjolai was the first spot, winding roads through tea estates will take you to a stop from where you will need to walk through tea plantation for 10 mins to reach this spot. There is a glorious view of other peaks (like munnar, annaimudi...) and valleys from this spot. There are a few patches of light green land in deep valleys that are occupied by tribal.. no roads connect them, it is about 40km walk for them to reach nearest transport.. A special person (Velu) who will greet you at here, he claims to have seen god exactly some day, month, year, hour, min and seconds ago !

View from Poonjalai

There is tea stall where we parked our cars before started walk towards nallamudi poonjolai, we picked up organic green tea powder from here and sipped cup of organic green tea, like it.Our next target was Balajee temple which closes doors by 12 noon and we could just park our car 10 mins to 12.. from there it is a 15 mins climb up to the temple - we really had to really rush to get there by noon and visit to the temple.

Started back to Bangalore and reached Bangalore by 11PM..