Couple of months back, I went for a trip with my family to hogenakkal falls.
I was pretty resistant in the beginning for this trip, considering that it was a long distance to cover 400 km (200+200).
We started @10 am in the morning. It was a sunny morning. None of us knew the way. We had a picture of the google maps. At around 11 am we were on the highway reaching Hosur. At this point in time we were not too sure of the best route to take. We were in search of a petrol bunk and we did get one.
Tej said "Full Tank"
Meanwhile I asked the fellow there "What is the best way to Hogenakkal?'
He said the National Highway route (the one suggested by the google map) will be 30 - 40 km more than the state highway route. I thought that this would total to ~70 km in total extra driving and I asked Tej to take the state highway route. We started driving and found that roads were very bumpy and there were many deviations to take to reach. I think we almost asked 10 people on the way - "What is the way to hogenakkal?'.
We finally reached at 1pm. All of a sudden many people surrounded our car, stopped us from moving ahead. They asked us to take a parking ticket. It seemed as if it was a rule to take parking ticket before entering the place. We refused taking the ticket and went and managed to park the car at a safe place. We had prepared lunch and had got a lot of chips etc for this outing. We loaded our bags completely with all the eatables and started. On the way one fellow followed us asking if we wanted a trip till under the falls.
At first we were reluctant taking a strangers boat to the falls. He then showed his ID badge, and we were convinced to take his boat. He asked us 1500 in the beginning, after negotiation he agreed for 1000 Rs.
This package included the boating upto the falls and taking us to a spot for lunch and free time for few mins and then back to the place where we started.
6 of us in the boat including the boat fellow! It was a round boat, made of bamboo. The depth of the water below us was a minimum 70 ft. Man was it scary. A boat that looked weak and 6 full grown people in it with out any life jackets! And the best part was only Tej knew swimming among all of us.
It was a very hot afternoon and water was simply perfect (it was cold). He row'd us for 5 mins and we reached a small hilly area where was had to walk and catch up with him once again at the other end. This place had the view point of the "Hogenakkal Falls". It was beautiful, must say !! We caught with the boat guy down the hill, and there it was "The falls". He managed to take us close to the foot of the falls. We were not under it for a long time though, it was amazing. We then headed to a place where we rested and had lunch and took rest for 30 mins. Then we were on our way back, the same route that we took to come.
It was 6pm when we started for home and 10 pm when we reached.
