Kodaikanal - A Beautiful Hill Resort in South India

Kodaikanal is a beautiful hill resort in the south of India. We had a wonderful trip driving from Bangalore to it.  The highway was really good and it took us about eight hours to reach there with a few stops on the way. It is on the eastern side of the western ghats in the Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu.  The ghat road from Palani upwards is beautiful and closer to Kodaikanal has pretty waterfalls along the way. 

Kodaikanal

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 Kodaikanal is a small resort compared to other hill resorts in India.  It came into its own around 1845 because of the British bureacrats and American Christian missionaries taking refuge here from the summer heat of the plains and tropical diseases. Simla, in comparison, was a legendary hill resort which by the 1830s was famous for its balls, parties and such festivities of the British India, in 1863 it became the summer capital of the British Raj.  Mussoorie, a hill resort in Uttarkhand, established itself in 1901 or so, but was always lesser known than Simla - the Nehru family were frequent visitors here. Darjeeling, another hill resort in West Bengal, assumed its status in 1866 as a refuge for those escaping the heat. Mahabaleshwar, a beautiful hill station in the western ghats of Maharashtra, came into existence around 1829-30, also as a hill resort in British India.  In central India, Madhya Pradesh has a small hill station called Pachmarhi, another British India hill resort developed by the British around 1901. Ooty is in the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu, a beautiful hill station which in 1830 or so became the summer capital of the Madras Presidency of British India.

It was a restful time we had at Kodaikanal and well worth the visit.