The Waterfall Story

I have always been very fascinated about visiting waterfalls. Though I am not very keen to actually go and enjoy in the flow of water, I simply love the sight and sound of the water gushing down.

I have not been to any of the great waterfalls so far, but I have vivid memories of the waterfall I went to when I was hardly 9 years old - The Thirparappu Waterfalls in South India .The second great experience was during my training days in Trivandrum, when I visited this place called Golden Valley.

Our trip to Yelagiri (a hill station in South India) gave me an opportunity to enjoy in waterfalls.Though the waterfall was not extraordinary in any way, we had to trek for around 3 hours to reach the falls and the waterfall was just the right medicine to remove the effects of the tiresome trek.

One major problem with all waterfalls is, crowd. The crowd usually gets too unruly in and around waterfalls. The Yelagiri Waterfall had no crowd, thanks to the tiresome trek!

After marriage, I always wanted to go to some waterfalls with my husband, as I loved sharing moments with him. During our Honeymoon in Srilanka, we had 3-4 waterfalls in our itinerary and for one reason or the other we were not able to visit even one! I was very disappointed! My husband consoled and promised me he will surely take me to some waterfall in India sometime soon.

A few months later we went on a family trip to a hill-station, which was quite famous for its waterfalls. It was not even Summer season but the Rain God was not in favour of me visiting a falls. I never gave up, in spite of the guide telling us there is not even a drop of water in the falls, we visited 2 places, which were just the way the guide had described.

Seeing my enthusiasm to visit waterfalls, the guide made many many inquiries and told us that there is one falls down hills which has lot of water and that we can visit it on our way to the station to catch the train. My father was least interested to visit the place and I convinced him saying the fact that there was a lot of time to kill before the scheduled time for our departure. He commented it was a waste of time,money and energy and I did not bother!

The guide gave us the details of the route, destination etc. except one most important fact - the timing! There was a rule that no visitor is allowed inside the area after 4 P.M., without knowing this we reached the destination five minutes after four, thus history repeated itself, I did not see a waterfall again!

All this never destroyed my determination though it did dampen my spirits! The next trip was to Bangalore, my husband's aunt said there is a waterfall in the outskirts, some 2.5 hours drive from home. We reached the destination and we were told that we had to trek down ten minutes to reach the falls.

As we went nearer we heard a lot of shrieking and shrilling of people from below and I got so excited. As we moved on, I could not hear the sound of water of gushing and slowly the doubt factor arose in all our minds. It was indeed proved when we reached the place. The force and quantity water that comes from our wash-basin tap was more than what was witnessed by us in the falls. Then we realized all the shrieking was as a result of anger and not joy!

On our way back, we decided to visit Hogenakkal, a very famous waterfall in South India. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday and the crowd was unimaginable! The whole place was so damn dirty and the crowd was too unruly. This was despite the fact that the main waterfall did not have water falling at all! This was too much of disappointment for me.

As all stories should end, this story also has a happy ending. My latest visit to Coimbatore, finally satisfied my waterfall thirst! The story of me visiting Kovai Kutralam ( the falls in Coimbatore) has an anti-climax too. In our inquiries, we found that the waterfall did not have enough water. I was also confident, thanks to my multiple experiences, that the waterfall will have no water falling, we did not take a second set of clothes, not even a towel/napkin!

Alas, when we reached the destination, there was water gushing and I felt the water droplets hit my face. In spite of not having clothes to change, we had a lot of fun in the water. For the first time ever, I felt happy and contented for catching a cold!