About Thally:
Thally is a town in Denkanikottai Taluk in Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu, India. It is named as “Little England” by the British during their regime mostly due to its cool weather.
It was just a speedy getaway to spend the New Year night with close friends. So when one of the friends was planning to his friend’s farm house and he asked if anyone was willing to join for the new year, we all jumped in as it was just 2 hours drive from Bangalore and it was a perfect quick getaway. So Sumathi & her son, Vinodh & Sandhya, Shilpa & her 2 kids, Sur & myself along with my friend Suresh joined for the getaway.
We had an early start as Vinodh needed to go to the farmhouse to hand over the key, to tidy it up since it was left abandoned for some time and it was unused. We thought since it was a weekend, if we liked the place, will extend for another 2 nights so we packed extra for the same. So we started our drive and stopped on our way for a quick breakfast and headed to Thally. It was a nice drive and towards Thally the place had a perfect weather and it was great to drive. As we entered we saw there were quite a lot of Brick making plants and admired the greenery all around.
As we reached the place, we were in shock to see the rooms were dirty, toilets didn’t have door and it was disgusting. Literally we wanted to run away, but some of our friends joined later, so we had to wait for them, as they reached only late evening. Now we needed to distract ourselves from this place, so we decided step out for lunch. We found a Dhaba within a kilometre from the place that we stayed. We had a decent lunch and we came back.
The staffs were still not helpful as the place remained as dirty as ever. Since we knew there was no hope now, we just gave up on them and decided to enjoy the moments with the great friends around. So for some time, we killed it by walking around the property as it had lot of greenery around and for sometimes we tried playing badminton with the damaged cork as we didn’t have any other choice.
Later in the evening, we headed for the barbeque as the staffs arranged for it, thankfully that was great. As we started enjoying the food, the power went off and added to our disappointment, they didn’t even have a single candle or emergency light. We tried to use our mobile torch for some time and slowly everyone’s mobile’s battery was dying. Then we had to look for a place to sit until the midnight. Since none of the rooms were usable, we needed something to spread on the floor to sit it on it. Thankfully Sur had tarpaulin in the car, So that came in handy. We spread the tarpaulin and we all fitted ourselves in that. It was more than 3-4 hours and power still didn’t come back. Finally, Suresh had an idea, to use car lights. So he brought the car close to the hall, switched on the headlights and that helped us with some light.
We were just wishing that the power comes, at least to celebrate the new year. Thankfully just 15 minutes before midnight the light came as a ray of hope and we were overjoyed. So we wished everyone a happy new year, cut the cake and then started playing cards. We stayed till dawn as new card game taught by Vinodh was interesting. We also were waiting for the sun rise, to run away from this place as quick as possible.
Another interesting and disappointing thing was, this property had water fountains and swimming pool which looked beautiful in the night with the lights, but they were equally very dirty, filthy and full of algae. Now the staffs who were trying to add more water in the swimming pool forgot to turn off the pipe in the night, so the water started coming to the hall where we were sitting. This time Sumathi’s pet dog was unlucky as his bed became wet due to the overflow of water.
Another funny and scary incident was, there was one toilet which was near the hall for us to use for emergency, which had a rat in the room where this toilet was. Every time we needed to answer the nature call, we wished we didn’t see the rat and we tried our best to avoid going to the toilet itself.
As soon as the sun rose, we picked our things within few minutes and were ready to leave as we had not unpacked our bags in this place after seeing the situation here. So it made is easier to just get up and leave. Just before heading out, we had a quick photo session. As we were planning to leave there was a rat, getting drowned in the water fountain close to the entrance. Sandhya said it was the same rat which was in the room, even though we wished it was dead, we couldn’t see it getting drowned. She was too scared to touch the rat to help, nor Sur as he didn’t succeed as well. Finally I tried to save it with the dust pan which was lying around and am sure rat would have been overjoyed that we extended it’s life time before it was getting shortened. Then it was time to just get out from there.
After two hours of drive, finally it was a sigh of relief once we were back home. In spite of being the worst place, we had fun as we had an amazing group of friends. We knew all of us were annoyed and upset but we all together tried to forget that and created the best of memories for each other.
One hell of an adventurous New Year getaway came to an end, but it gave few biggest lessons for all of us.
- Whatever the shittiest situation is, you can still turn around and make it beautiful…
- It also matters most is whom you are with….
- Having good friends will make every negative emotions disappear.
We were glad that we had the best friends around and that’s all we needed to start the new year fresh and with best memories. Even though, this place was not even worth a penny but the FRIENDS made this new year every worth the visit with greatest of all memories.
Stay Safe…. Please get yourself vaccinated….