The Dunnottar Walk: A Self-Guided Loop Through Old Kodaikanal
From the lake through Upper Shola Road, Bombay Shola and St Mary's Hill to La Salette, Upper Lake Road and home again.
Route at a Glance
Start and finish: The Dunnottar Bungalow, Lake Road
Route: Circular
Distance: 7 km
Walking time: About 1 hour 45 minutes moving time; allow 2½ to 3 hours with stops
Difficulty: Moderate; several sustained climbs and descents
Terrain: Public roads; some sections have limited or no pavement
Map:The Dunnottar Walk on Google My Maps
Best approached as: A morning walk, particularly on busy weekends
Important: Several houses on this route are private homes. Please admire them from the road. Traffic can be heavy on Club Road and other sections. Kodaikanal's shola areas are also gaur habitat; keep your distance from all wildlife.
Follow The Dunnottar Walk
The whole route is plotted on Google Maps, with the principal landmarks marked along the way. Open it on your phone before you leave the house and follow it as you go.
The route follows public roads. Road conditions, traffic and access can change. Please follow local signage and conditions on the day.
There is a walk we have been giving guests at The Dunnottar for years.
It begins at our front gate on Kodaikanal Lake, leaves the water almost immediately and climbs through some of the older residential roads above it. Along the way are early Kodaikanal houses, shola forest, an old cemetery, a French Catholic church, the town's former thermometer factory and La Providence, before the road falls slowly back towards the lake.
Most of the route follows public roads rather than a walking trail. Some sections are steep. That is also why we like it: you move through the town rather than around its principal sights.
We usually tell guests to take their time.
1. Leave the Lake
Step out of The Dunnottar and turn left, keeping Kodaikanal Lake on your right.
In less than 200 metres, take the road climbing up to your left onto Lower Shola Road.
The lake disappears fairly quickly behind you.
A little way up, you pass Serendip, followed by Sunny Side.
Sunny Side belongs to a much earlier Kodaikanal than most of the town you see today. Local histories generally date it to 1845, when it and Shelton were built among the settlement's earliest bungalows.
That makes Sunny Side older than Kodaikanal Lake itself. The lake was created in 1863.
It is worth remembering this as you walk: the houses came first. The familiar landscape of modern Kodaikanal was still being made around them.
Continue uphill until Lower Shola Road meets Upper Shola Road at a T-junction.
2. The Old Cemetery and Bombay Shola
At the T-junction, our route eventually goes left.
But first take a short detour to the right.
A few feet along is the Old Cemetery, beside Bombay Shola.
The cemetery is easy to pass without noticing. Behind it is one of the remnants of the native shola ecosystem that once covered much more of the Palani Hills.
This is also one of the reasons you will sometimes find people standing quietly along these roads with binoculars.
Birdwatchers come for the shola species in the canopy. Gaur also move through these areas.
Look and listen, but keep your distance from wildlife.
Return to the junction and continue along Upper Shola Road.
3. Upper Shola Road
This is one of the quieter parts of the walk.
The road moves between houses and trees, and there are stretches where the canopy matters more than anything built beside it.
If you see birdwatchers stopped along the road, there is usually a reason. Early morning is particularly good for simply standing still for a minute and listening.
Eventually Upper Shola Road brings you to Club Road.
The mood changes quickly here.
Club Road can become heavily congested, particularly on weekends. Cross carefully and continue onto Daisy Bank Road.
The road climbs steeply and bends to the left.
Near the top, look back and to your left.
On a clear day, Perumal Malai comes into view.
4. St Mary's Road
At the next T-junction, turn right onto St Mary's Road.
You are now walking towards the Kodaikanal television tower, one of the easiest structures to identify from many parts of town.
Continue past the tower.
Soon afterwards, on your left, is the site of the former Hindustan Unilever thermometer factory.
The factory produced mercury thermometers and was closed in 2001 after mercury-contaminated glass waste was found to have been improperly disposed of. The contamination, remediation and responsibility for the site became one of Kodaikanal's longest-running environmental controversies.
There is no reason to linger here, but it belongs to the history of this particular road—and of the town.
Continue uphill.
5. La Salette
Soon the blue and white façade of Our Lady of La Salette comes into view.
Walk up the steps.
The church gives this part of Kodaikanal a history quite different from the British and American missionary story usually associated with the hill station.
Its origins are French.
Father Louis Saint-Cyr, a French Jesuit, came to Kodaikanal in the nineteenth century. The foundations of the La Salette shrine were laid in 1863 and the church was consecrated in 1866.
Saint-Cyr is buried beneath the extended shrine.
The relationship between France and Kodaikanal becomes more interesting a little later in this walk, when you reach La Providence.
Before leaving, walk to the higher ground around the church.
On a clear day, the land falls away towards the plains. Periyakulam lies far below.
Then return to the road and continue with the church on your left.
For more on this history, read The Kodai Chronicle's excellent account of La Salette and Kodaikanal's French connection.
6. The Fork to Vattakanal
The road begins descending.
At the next fork, the route divides.
The road to the left heads towards Pambar Falls and Vattakanal and, beyond that, the route towards Dolphin's Nose.
Leave that for another day.
For The Dunnottar Walk, stay right and continue towards Upper Lake Road.
This section is part of what makes the walk useful to first-time visitors: within a relatively small part of Kodaikanal, the town shifts between residential roads, shola, religious history and long views towards the plains.
7. La Providence
When you reach Upper Lake Road, look to your right.
You will see the entrance to The Tamara Kodai.
Long before it became a hotel, this was La Providence.
The original Baynes Bungalow was built in the late 1840s and later acquired by Father Louis Saint-Cyr—the same French Jesuit connected to La Salette. It became a rest and training house for Jesuit priests and was renamed La Providence.
You have therefore just walked between two surviving pieces of the same French Catholic history: the shrine on St Mary's Hill and La Providence below it.
At the T-junction, turn left onto Upper Lake Road.
8. Pambar Cottage and Upper Lake Road
Continue along Upper Lake Road.
You will pass Pambar Cottage, another of the private old Kodaikanal properties along this stretch.
When the garden is in flower, you can sometimes see part of it above the boundary.
Please remember that this and several of the houses along the walk are private homes. The road is the viewpoint.
Shortly after Pambar Cottage, the road divides again.
Upper Lake Road continues towards the Kodaikanal Golf Club and Pillar Rocks. They are worth another journey, but not this one.
Take the road descending to the right.
9. Down Through the Trees
The route now becomes quieter again.
Follow the shaded cement road downhill, with patches of shola forest to your right.
There are places here where the trees open unexpectedly and you can see Perumal Malai and the lake together.
Continue until you reach another fork.
Leave the cement road and take the road on the right, descending through the bends towards Sterling Kodai Lake.
The climb is now behind you.
10. The Marsh
At the bottom, turn left and continue past the Sterling gate.
To your right is the wet ground through which part of the Kodaikanal catchment reaches the lake.
This is not wasted land.
The Gymkhana Marsh is part of the lake's natural filtration system. Water from the surrounding catchment passes through the marsh before reaching Kodaikanal Lake; its vegetation helps trap and filter material along the way.
It is one of the less conspicuous but more important parts of the lake landscape.
Continue down the road.
The water eventually appears again ahead of you.
11. Back to the Lake
When you reach Kodaikanal Lake, turn right.
From here there are no more decisions.
Follow the lake road back towards The Dunnottar.
The final stretch is about the water again: boats, horses, walkers, eucalyptus and whatever weather has arrived since you left the house.
Eventually you return to the same gate where the walk began.
Only now you have seen what sits behind the hills immediately above it.
That is why we keep giving guests this route.
It is not the quickest way to see Kodaikanal.
It is one way to begin knowing it.
If you are planning this walk
The house the walk begins from: The Dunnottar
Reaching the hills: How to Get Here
The town and what surrounds it: Kodaikanal
The walk starts at our front gate. If you would like to do it from the beginning, stay with us.
— The Puliyadi Family
