Kodai: Princess of hill stations

The town of Kodaikanal (known universally as Kodai) lies near 7000 feet elevation in the Palni Hills of western Tamilnadu.     Here's a view from near the top, looking southwest along some of the steepest terrain.

Kodai is an Indian "hill station"in the best historical sense.     Hill stations --- Darjeeling, Simla,  Mussoorie,  and Ootacamund ("Ooty") are other famous examples ---  were in earlier days mainly a refuge for British colonials from the heat, dust, and sometimes disease of the surrounding "plains".

Ooty, not very far away in the Nilgiri hills, has often been called the Queen of the hill stations ---  and was once considered to be renamed "Victoria".   Two long articles about Ooty and its history appeared in the New Yorker in 1967.    There one learns, for instance, that both Thomas Babington Macaulay and Edward Lear took Ooty vacations in the 1800s; both of them noticed (and overstated) the resemblance to England.  

If Ooty is Queen, then the younger Kodai certainly ranks at least as Princess.

Traces of colonial days can still be found around Kodai, including in the names of houses and properties:   Loch End, Lochnagar, Red Lynch, Clancullen, the old English Club (now called the Kodaikanal Club), St. Peter's Church (with a pukka eagle-shaped lectern),  and the old English cemetery, where lie the likes of Dudley Linnell Sedgwick, of Cashio, Ireland, killed in 1857 while hunting bison.

Here's another Kodai church, in which I spent many childhood Sundays.  It could be in Scotland.

Bryant Park, near the lake, is a beautifully-kept bit of Victoriana.   Note the (frequent) mountain mist.

Here's another view from Kodai, looking toward Mt Perumal through the mist coming up from the plains.

One of the main Palni Hills streams drains to the town of Palni, about 5000 feet down Elephant Valley, shown here.     The eponymous beasts can indeed be seen in the vicinity, perhaps attracted by fruit and coffee plantations in the area.

The terrain gets even steeper a few miles out of Kodai.   Behind my daughter and a family friend are Pillar Rocks, now a famous and crowded tourist spot but formerly a lonely (and dangerous) hiking destination.