Last weekend (28-30 July) I excused myself from work for a much wanted (long promised) short vacation with my wife (of course!) and our 3 year old son. One of my colleagues at office has been recommending Yelagiri to me for almost a year now (Thanks Akhila Arun for the recommendation). Decided to go for it, I booked the room at Taj Gardens in advance – the resort I was told tends to get filled up during the weekends due to high bookings from IT folks from Bangalore and Chennai.
Taj Gardens is a family run farmhouse owned by one Mr.Rahman (who is a retired Leather Businessman). Fortunately when we stayed there we were the only outside guests, so we had the luxury of entire staffs hospitality shown towards us. The rooms are decent bare bone accommodation – No TV, No In-Room Phone and Mobile Signal is also (thankfully) weak in the rooms. The resort area of course is large, with huge playground, park, plantations, rose garden, etc. Best part during the stay for us was that the menu for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner were decided by them – no need to strain your brains in ordering; and the food is delicious/non-spicy home cooked food.
Yelagiri (thankfully again) has literally no major sight seeing spots. The complaint I have with popular tourists destinations are that you go for vacation and end up being more tired and stressed – as you have to get up early, plan and stick to a timetable as everyone around you wants to see the entire place. And you don’t get the much needed rest that you actually went in there for. For me and my wife, we both enjoy the rest, peace and quite – but our son ensures we don’t get it and keeps us on our toes all the time 
The only place to see in Yelagiri is a Tamilnadu Govt. Herbal farm which has a Garden, Park and a small lake (boating included) inside. Next to the Farm is a small Lord Murugan Temple.
If you are in Chennai or Bangalore and want to go for a short weekend get away – I highly recommend Yelagiri.
Journey to Yelagiri
Yelagiri is 240 Kms (220Kms from T.Nagar to be precise) from Chennai. You take the Bangalore Highway (NH 4); keep heading towards Bangalore, just after Vanniyambadi you have to take a diversion on to your left from the main highway. This small road goes up to Jollarpetai Railway Station, but we go only up to a small village in the plains called “Ponneri” and then in the market place take a left into the Yelagiri hills. The route up to Hilltop is easy with just 14 Hairpin bends – the road is narrow, but not difficult to climb up. We started from Chennai on Friday evening 5PM (though initially slotted for 3PM) in my Car and reached the Hilltop by 9PM. On the return journey to Chennai on Sunday we clocked little slower – b’cos we stopped in between at Vellore Hotel Saravana Bhavan for a scrumptious lunch.
Bangalore Highway (NH 4) is part of the golden quadrilateral project of Government of India initially envisioned and started by former Prime Minister “Atal Bihari Vajpayee” and was continued (though a bit slow) by present Prime Minister “Manmohan Singh”. Thanks to Vajpayee’s initial thrust the country now boasts near world-class road infrastructure. What impressed me were the overhead bridges for nearly every passing town, so that you don’t get bogged down by local township traffic. There is however work pending as you near the Chennai end (you can see the status in NHAI website).
I am not a big fan of driving on the highways; I would rather get some eye-closure with good music in the background or sight see during the road trip, so I managed to get my driver Sankar for the journey. I always believe in leaving the work to the professionals – it is the sure way to get the work done best. Sankar dropped us on the hill, returned to Chennai by bus next day; came back on last day to take us back. On the hills it was for me to drive around – which I enjoyed thoroughly.
More about Yelagiri
its a fantastic place… i was here in a hostel for 6 yrs…. go0d place