I am a Coimbatorean. I have been living in this city for so many years now. We Coimbatoreans have the habit of darting straight to the Nilgiris at the drop of a hat. When you have guests at home, then that is our weekend destination. If the mercury starts shooting up, we head straight to the lap of the queen of the mountains to get some relief.
But I had always taken the road to the mountains, through all those hairpin bends. Though many times we did make plans to travel by the famous heritage NMR (Nilgiri Mountain Railway), it never worked out for some or other reasons. Most of the times, we didn’t get the reservations confirmed. Sometimes, we had to cancel the trip for personal reasons. Or the train would get cancelled in rain or fog .
In February, my partner and I completed 40 years of married life. We decided to do something special on our special day. What more could be more special than going on our much-longed train trip to the blue mountains? We started making plans after booking our tickets online. To our great surprise, we got confirmed tickets, maybe because we planned our trip on a weekday. Of course, it wasn’t easy for two 60-plus people like us to make travel plans, and we were stepping out of the house for travel after almost two years now. COVID-19 had limited senior citizens no end. We had many fears to overcome. My partner had just recovered from a bout of COVID-19 a few weeks ago. A cancer survivor, I feel tired all the time and I identify myself with a famous Hindi song which says “Sou gram zindagi hai sambal ke karchi hai”, which roughly translates to “I have only hundred grams of life, so I have to spend it diligently!” All this did not deter us. So off we went on the designated day! It proved to be a beautiful experience and am thankful to our grit and God.
Raj vintage
The NMR happens to be one of those beautiful things that we got from the British. Operated by Southern Railway now, it happens to be the only rack railway in India. Seeing the steam engine gives us that vintage feel we were waiting to experience. From the moment we started at Mettupalayam, we started loving every small detail of our travel. Now I realised why this mountain train and Nilgiris have always remained a darling child of our filmmakers. From David Lean to Mani Ratnam, all must have found it too hard to escape the charm of this mountain beauty.
As we were seated in the first coach next to the engine, we were able to see how beautifully the train climbed the mountain slowly but steadily, occasional streams of water falling from both sides and sudden darkness when travelling through the caves now and then.
Each station such as Kallar, Hillgrove, Runneymade or Coonoor had a charm exclusive only to hill stations. The chilly weather, all-pervading eucalyptus smell and greenery all around transport you into a lush fresh world. It is a five-hour travel. We were really wondering if I would be able to sit through the whole journey, but what happened was I was standing most of the time watching the train from behind the driver. How deftly he navigated and how beautifully the train was climbing! Here I was looking through my binoculars and taking photos now and again. I hardly felt the time pass and before I knew, the journey was over.
I have to mention here the friendly staff, cautioning us at the right time to close the windows so that those clever monkeys loitering all over the hills wouldn’t get a chance to snatch our things! Our ticket examiner proved to be a great entertainer. A stage singer previously, Valli would break into a song now and then. Sometimes it was an old Ilayaraja number, sometimes an old Malayalam or Hindi song. She would be playing anthakshari with the bunch of youngsters travelling with us. Her golden voice, deeply resonating the emotions behind all these songs, made our travel unique. Waiting to retire in a couple of months, she declared to me that two things she loved most in her life was travelling on the NMR and singing! I understood what she meant.
I am glad I shed my fears and undertook this beautiful journey. After all, as somebody wisely put it, “World is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” Well, I have always been an avid reader, so I tell myself I will read and travel as much as I can while I am here on this beautiful earth!
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