Yercaud

Lia found Yercaud on a map almost by accident, a scribble of switchbacks climbing out of the Salem plains into the Shevaroy Range. We’d been warned off Ooty by a Bangalore friend who called it “a parking lot with a lake,” so when he mentioned this smaller hill station nicknamed the “Poor Man’s Ooty,” we rerouted without much debate. The drive up took longer than expected, the road doubling back on itself through curtains of coffee bushes, and by the time we reached 1,515 meters my ears had popped twice and the air had gone thin and cool in a way that felt like a small miracle after weeks of Chennai humidity.

The town itself organizes around Yercaud Lake, which locals also call the Emerald Lake, and the name Yercaud makes sense the moment you see it: “yeri” for lake, “kaadu” for forest, the two words fused into the place itself. We rented a rowboat for less than the price of a coffee back in Mexico City and paddled past families picnicking on the banks, the water genuinely emerald under the afternoon light, ringed by hills thick with coffee plantations and the occasional orange grove flashing orange against all that green.

We hiked out to Lady’s Seat one evening, arriving just as the light started going gold over the valley, and then again the next morning to Pagoda Point, where the mist hadn’t fully burned off and the view came and went in waves. Kiliyur Falls took more effort, a steep descent that had Lia complaining about the climb back up before we’d even reached the bottom, but the falls themselves, dropping through a narrow gorge, were worth every step. On our last afternoon we walked up to the Shevaroy Temple, dedicated to the goddess Servarayan, whose name gives the whole range its own — a modest, unhurried place that felt like the right way to close out a trip that had been unhurried from the start.

What stayed with me most, though, was breakfast at our guesthouse: local coffee, still faintly smoky, and a plate of bananas grown somewhere on the slope just outside. Nothing dramatic, just good coffee in a quiet town that never once made me feel like I was fighting a crowd for the view.

When to go: Aim for April to June or October to February — that’s when Yercaud’s cool air and clear skies are at their best, well before or after the monsoon turns those switchback roads treacherous.