The road to Kayar offers the excitement of opening nesting gift boxes, with each passing signpost raising expectations of the gift, tantalisingly locked away. However, having an overly expectant attitude about the last box would be to repeat once again an error our species is heavily prone to: Being destination-focussed and ignoring gentle cues from the road. The long road is locked into the destination, a truth unmissable on the drive to Kayar. Though the Kayar trip (in Tamil, Kayar is pronounced with a drawl, and best put down as ‘Kaayar’) wheels towards a culminating point, it derives much of its allure from unscripted pauses along a course that clocks 13 kilometres.
The experience begins at Chenganmal on Old Mahabalipuram Road, where it unobtrusively sidles into a road leading first to Thaiyur lake, Periya Kayar next, and then Chinna Kayar. As regulars would tell you, the end point of the experience overshoots Chinna Kayar, arriving at Vembedu. The road trip winds up at a hillock. There is a literality to it: Vehicles can swirl up to the top taking a winding passageway.
The timing matters
The dawn is the hour to hit the road to Kayar, as the emerging sun adds the right glint of romance to the drive. Being at the start-point, Chenganmal in OMR, at 5 a.m. or thereabouts should provide the visitor enough time to explore the landscape with a benign sun as the searchlight. Kayar is a hidden trail, lacking fancy eateries and stays, and therefore it is best explored when Nature is an ally and not a searing tormentor.
At Chenganmal, as OMR is just a reflection on the rear view mirror, they are likely to be still gnawed by a sense of not having left the bustling metro behind. Gated communities rear up now and then. The journey slips into delicious rusticity as the Thaiyur lake heaves into view. If that experience is interpreted truthfully, it is not the Thaiyur lake, but what embraces it in an act of possessive and doting love: Dreadlocks of screwpine trees. The trees make a green curtain, shutting the lake from peering eyes. Do not be surprised to run into a resident who sees the screwpine trees as a bulwark against inundation when the lake swells. From the last time this writer had a look-in at Thaiyur lake, the screwpine trees have grown as thick as Rip Van Winkle’s unattended mane. A long, raised concrete pathway leads to the lake. This time around, it seemed to have disappeared into the overgrowths.
The drive continues on a narrow strip of a road winding through Thaiyur reserve forest, which comes under the Thiruporur Range. Eucalyptus plantations roll past, along with thorny shrubs and diminutive trees that characterise forests in these parts. Do not step into the forest tracts; they are out of bounds for you, and that is how they should be kept. There is sufficient quiet and also sylvan sights ahead at both the villages, the two Kayars. Meanwhile, drive on and soak in what the road unlocks for you. On more than one occasion, a pair of puny wheels was carting away what looked like Antoine de Saint-Expurey’s boa constrictor with an elephant in its bowels. A chat with one riding that kind of a two-wheeler uncovered a social side to the two Kayars and other villages in the region: How residents are a market for peripatetic traders selling combs, mirrors and several tchotchkes. The pile riding pillion, wrapped in huge discarded banners contained these wares.
In both Kayars, agriculture still thrusts itself forward proudly, offering fields of paddy, brinjals, chillies and sugarcane. Casurina groves also dot the landscape. However, agriculture is losing its appeal for the younger generation who gravitate towards the IT corridor, many of them hoping for employment as support staff in IT companies.
The bustling metro leans as much towards these Kayars as its residents do towards the metro. The occasional portals of a gated community — still in the making — does greet the visitor. However, the Kayars still remain an ideal place for bivouacking with friendly farmers letting you stop by their stomping grounds.
The road to Kayar logically ends at Vembedu at a hillock atop which a Bairavar temple is situated. Cycling enthusiasts are known to end their trip at the hillock.
A word of caution: The road to Kayar is narrow, a factor a cyclist should bear in mind before hitting it with their pedals. During the recent trip, though narrow, the road (maintained by the Highways) seemed sufficiently bitumen-topped to cushion the drive.
(HIDDEN TRAILS, a column that shows how to be a tourist in your own city, is presenting Kayar to its readers ahead of the long weekend)
