Coorg trip travelogue (02/04/10 to 04/04/10)

It's been quite a while now since I last wrote. Blame an overdose of work at office for my lack of posts on blogger for the past 5 months. A vacation was long overdue for quite a while now. Our gang wanted to go for an ad-hoc trip over the long weekend on April 2nd (being Good friday), 3rd and 4th. This time we thought we must avoid the regular lodges and resorts and try something different and better. What better than a traditional coorgi (not sure if its supposed to be spelt as coorgie or coorgy ;-) ) homestay? This was an ancient house called Ashok Bhavan located in madikeri town, about a furlong away from the famous viewpoint, 'Raja Seat'. It was the only place we could manage to find accomodation in, after a previous booking at an estate was goofed up the homestay owner and allotted to someone else. The plan was to go by 1 of our own cars, owing to the convenience and the opportunity to experience the challenging ghat-section driving that the area is so famous for. However what was supposed to be 5 participants became 6. That outnumbered the seats in our cars; we were forced to hire a Toyota Innova since that would guarantee an extra degree of comfort as opposed to other cabs, not to forget the same comfort and luxury as any of our private cars that we initially planned to take (hyundai accent/honda city).

Day 1 - Kushalnagar Buddhist monastery / Dubare elephant camp / Abbey Falls / Omkareshwara temple / Raja Seat / Madikeri town visit

We were supposed to start pretty early from Bangalore on friday. The plan was for all of us to get picked up one-by-one at our respective homes, fill the car fuel tank up with diesel and leave bangalore by 4am. However that was not to be. The cabbie whom we had hired was foolish enough not to inform us about the depleting diesel levels in the tank and to our horror, we found the car stuttering to a standstill just outside my friend's house (after picking up everyone else, that is). Then there was a half-hour drama with 2 of us having to rush to the nearest petrol pump with a 10 litre can and trying to wake up irritated pump workers to get them to help us. Finally the fuel was brought, filled and we were off on Mysore road after this early morning fiasco. The driver more than made up for his folly by maintaining a constant 100-110kmph on the Bangalore-Mysore expressway. We crossed Maddur at 6 and reached Mysore at roughly 7.30am. We stopped at Indra's for breakfast. The only flip side was having to wait for half an hour till 8am for the restaurant to begin operations!

A view from the Bangalore-Mysore expressway at sunrise

A short break on Mysore road

Breakfast time at Mysore - Waiting for the restaurant to open

After breakfast, the next route was to take the Mysore-Hunsur-Kushalnagar highway. After roughly 90km, we came to our first itinerary location - the buddhist monastery at Kushalnagar. There was some kind of Tibetan refugee camp over here. The Buddhist monastery is okay for a half an hour stop, not more than that in my opinion. There is nothing spectacular about it, except for the brief glimpses of buddhist culture and architecture that you get to view here. There were a few geese and turkeys being reared in a garden outside the monastery and that was about it.

At the buddhist monastery

The idols inside the monastery

The time was almost 11am. Our next target was Dubare elephant camp, especially after one of our friends who had been there earlier kept hurrying up scaring us that the place would close down by noon! This place required us to take a deviation from the main highway for about 15-20km. It is a small, man-made island located around 200 metres from the mainland, which can be reached by wading through the 3-4 feet of shallow water. Not that any of us bothered to take the trouble though. There were motorboats ferrying tourists to and fro for a nominal sum. We preferred this over the former method. At the island there is nothing much to do, except for watching a huge board which displays all kinds of trivia you would ever want to know about the elephants they rear and domesticate in Dubare, from the elephants' ages to their heights and weights. There were elephant rides being organized, from an elevated platform to alight / board the elephants. We went for an elephant ride, only 4 adults allowed at a time on 1 elephant. Not really worth the amount that they loot you there for a 50 metre-long ride and back.

View from the island at Dubare

One of the elephants being bathed in the afternoon heat

The next stop was at the homestay itself. We had some trouble locating the place and the friendly caretaker (resident at the homestay) was kind enough to come to Raja seat (which is pretty close to the homestay) and escort us from there. The house in itself was very rustic and traditional. The furniture was pretty bare-bones, the flooring was old fashioned red-oxide and the doors were all made of solid wood. However there was an old television set in this place, fitted with Tata Sky connection. That was all we needed at nights, quite obvious with this IPL fever at its peak in April. After checking in and freshening up, we were served a simple yet sumptuous coorgi-style lunch by the caretaker, Mr. Ravi. It was homely and devoid of any artificial substances. All vegetables were home-grown organically. Needless to ask, after the tiring travel ordeal and the sumptuous lunch we all settled in for a brief nap till early evening.

Ashok Bhavan - the homestay

We left the homestay after 4pm for a close-by sightseeing place, Abbey Falls. This being a popular tourist spot, it was no surprise that we were greeted by hundreds of similar fellow tourists on the same mission. The waterfall had almost dried up in this sweltering summer heat and there were only a few trickling streams of water to give it the presence of a 'waterfall'. The area has been cordoned off by the authorities to prevent tourists from getting into the water there, supposedly due to surprise water currents causing a few calamities last year. After a few moments of exploration with our newly purchased DSLR cameras and a few photos later, we decided to head towards another landmark in Madikeri, Omkareshwara temple. Not that any of us are religiously or spritually inclined at our young age, but the temple is supposed to be hundreds of years old and is known for its architecture. Originally not in our itinerary, we visited this place at the insistence of our homestay's host. A few minutes was all we spent over here. It was already dusk and we decided to proceed to other places on our itinerary.

Abbey Falls dried up during summer?

The prehistoric Omkareshwara temple

The next landmark was Raja seat. This is a hyped-up location. It is just a viewpoint from which you can have a breathtaking glimpse of the entire Brahmagiri hill range which encompasses the Coorg region, but nothing more. Of course, there are the usual signs of commercialization- the entry tickets, well maintained lawns and flower gardens, musical fountains and the like. The Musical fountains started at 7pm and we were forced to wait till then. Time to take out our the SLR cameras again and fire away to glory. Some of the fountain shows were spectacular, albeit repetitive. It was getting close to 8pm after all the fountain shows concluded so we decided to have dinner at Madikeri town, which was just a few minutes away. We had our dinner at Hotel Athithi Veg. which looked like the only decent place on the street. The waiter took our order, came back 10 minutes later and said those dishes weren't available! We chose alternate dishes and 10 minutes later he again came back with the same reply! After a lot of fretting and arguing with the waiter we finally got to eat disastrously sour curd-rice, half-cooked fried-rice and gobi manchurian which was so artificially red in color, it looked like it had been garnished with Asian Paints royale finish! A visit to a neighbouring juice shop brought down the thirst and the flying tempers. We were soon on on our way back to the homestay, and settled down to watch IPL on TV. This brought an end to Day 1 of our trip.

Musical fountains at Raja Seat

More musical fountains

Day 2 - Bhagamandala / Talakaveri / Cheluvara falls

On day 2, three of us woke up early and decided to head out to Raja Seat at daybreak, assuming we could get a clear sunrise view to photograph. My friend and I even took along our cameras' tripods to get the setup right and capture as much of the sunrise as was viewable. To our dismay, it was cloudy and the sun wasn't visible in the horizon. After around an hour of taking in the fresh early morning breeze and a brief stroll in the adjoining park, we headed back to join the others who were still asleep!

The view from Raja Seat at dawn (sadly it was cloudy that day)

Raja Seat gardens

Some more flora at Raja Seat

After a lip-smacking breakfast at the homestay it was time to head out to our next destination - Bhagamandala. This place, called 'Triveni Sangama' is significant for the fact that 3 rivers meet here and then head down towards tamilnadu as the river Cauvery. From Madikeri, it was around 45-50 kms of ghat section roads so we took close to an hour and a half to reach this place by 10am. Apart from a few eateries and a prehistoric temple there was nothing here of scenic interest, to our disappointment.

Bhagamandala - the base of the hills

From there, we headed towards Talakaveri, the birth place of the river Cauvery. It originates in a natural spring on a hill. The spring has now been commercialized and converted into a temple, as you would expect. There are stairs from the temple to the summit of the hill which you could climb if you feel really adventurous. We walked barefoot to the hill-top on the scorching concrete steps and were literally sprinting to avoid our feet getting burnt! It was a really hot day and we were all sweating bullets by the time we walked back to the air-conditioned confines of our Innova in the parking lot. We stopped on the way back from the hill at a shop named 'Coorg Spices' selling obviously spices, honey, honey jam, home-made chikki and similar things. After a ton of shopping at this place, we resumed our descent back to Bhagamandala. Lunch was completed at one of the eateries. The food was the regular south indian meals, you can't expect too much in these areas ;) A couple of my friends who had upset stomachs after the previous night's dinner at the infamous hotel Athithi, decided to settle for tender coconut instead of eating something again!

Talakaveri, the birth place of river Cauvery

After lunch and a few enquiries for directions with other cab drivers who had stopped in the place, we proceeded to Cheluvara falls which was located around 30km from Bhagamandala. Bad roads and sudden, unexpected heavy rain caused some delay, but we weren't complaining. The wet roads with the greenery-filled coffee and pepper estates on either side made Coorg look more beautiful after the showers than ever. After rain stopped, we took a break and stopped to take photographs of the superb location. We managed to reach Cheluvara falls by 5pm after quite a tough time of searching around. There were very few signboards directing us here. There are no steps leading to this waterfall. You have to trek roughly around 200-300 metres down to this place. The just-concluded rainfall had made the terrain extremely slippery and I had quite a time getting down here, what with that mammoth SLR camera bag to lug around. There were a few tourists here, mostly techies from Bangalore ;) We managed to spot a rare water snake near the bank area. There was also an adventure camp on the top of the falls, with enthusiasts doing a backward rope-climbing down the falls. I am not sure what that is called, perhaps 'Rappelling'. After spending an hour here, we headed back to Madikeri town.

Rain drenched roads along the way to Cheluvara falls

The plants receive a much-needed shower in the summer

Cheluvara falls

A close up of the waterfall in motion

One of my friends had fallen sick with acidity and an upset stomach and we dropped him at the homestay before heading to a restaurant near Raja Seat, this place was called 'Raj Darshini'. It was a decent place with better ambience than Hotel Athithi. It resembled the service-sections of namma Bengaluru's umpteen 'Shanthi Sagar'(s). We ordered a full course meal and the food was quite satisfactory, the only bad thing being the very late service, which was no surprise considering that the place was choc-a-bloc with tourists. After dinner, we had to pay a visit to the doctor with our sick friend for his treatment. Another tiring and eventful day came to an end with some more IPL action on TV before we finally retired to bed.


Day 3 - Virajpet / Irupu Falls / Nagarhole wildlife sanctuary / Mysore / back to Bangalore :)

Day 3 was already here. One of my friends and I had a lot of fun waking up the others in the morning with sadistic methods, including playing the irritating IPL tune next to their ears, to smacking them with the morning newspaper roll to sprinkling cold water on their faces ;) After getting ready, what awaited us was a delicious coorgi breakfast of Kadubus and Sagu. Post-breakfast, we left the homestay at around 10am after settling the dues and over-tipping the hospitable host Mr. Ravi for organizing everything well. After a short break at Virajpet, we proceeded along the Virajpet -> Nagarhole -> Mysore route. The roads were disgusting. Cars with low-ground clearance will take a mammoth beating if they ever venture on this stretch. I could imagine what could have happened to our cars had we actually gone ahead with our previous plan of bringing along our road-hugging, ultra low-stance sedans, a.k.a the accent/city ;-)

Wanting to stop at Irupu falls required us to take a de-tour from the main highway and re-join it at some place later on. Irupu falls was probably the best maintained place in my opinion, with ample parking space, pay & use restrooms, an eatery, a restaurant and adequate signboards directing you to the place. After paying the entry fee, we had to take a 700 metre pathway through the forest to reach the falls. The path is made up of concrete steps with lots of benches to sit down and take rest along the way, lest you feel tired. A small stream runs through the forest along the path making the whole walk very picturesque. Making this place more accessible obviously means it would be crowded. There is a platform where tourists can take bath below the falls. I thought this should have been avoided; the water in that area was frothing due to the soap/shampoo usage and the entire area was littered with plastic bottles and biscuit packets, etc. It was sad to see human interference plaguing this otherwise beautiful place. We were done with this visit by around 1pm. We resumed our journey to Nagarhole forest.

A stream that runs beisde the path, all along the way to Irupu falls

Picturesque setting with a stream in the middle of the forest

Irupu Falls in all its glory

We failed to find any restaurant along the way from Irupu falls to Nagarhole. This meant having to skip lunch and settling for some junk food, snacks and leftovers we still had in our car. If you plan to visit this place, be sure to carry your food along or else don't plan this place during mealtimes. There is no restaurant in sight for the entire stretch, and the ones that exist only serve pork :-( We entered Nagarhole forest after checking in the vehicle details at the forest department checkpost. The rule here is to not get down from the vehicle at any point inside the forest for safety reasons. The authorities have setup cameras all along the stretch and you will eventually be penalised heavily at the exit checkpost. We managed to spot lots of deer and langurs but nothing more than that.

Making our way through Nagarhole wildlife sanctuary

We stopped at the sanctuary office to find out if we could get jeep safari rides into the forest but there were only Safari buses available (akin to the ones at Bannrghatta national park) and those have mesh windows and coverings so it was impossible to get good snapshots of wildlife with the obtrusive mesh. Meanwhile, a stag had strayed into the parking lot and was enjoying the attention it was receiving from all the tourists ;-) It was 2.30pm in the afternoon. After deciding to skip the bus safari ride and continue the journey instead, we completed the close-to 80km ride through Nagarhole forest and stopped again at the exit checkpost. Much to our amusement, what looked like a bunch of drunk, spoilt college kids/brats were held up there for stopping their cars and getting down in the forest ;-)

Guess whom we met in the Nagarhole forest department parking lot ;-)

The road less frequently travelled

A bison who didn't like being disturbed at lunchtime

We took the Nagarhole - Hunsur connecting road and this stretch was very well maintained. Our innova kept up the pace with constant speeds of 100-110kmph. Within no time we crossed Hunsur and headed towards Mysore city. After a suggestion from one of us, we decided to stop at Hotel Siddhartha, Mysore at around 4.30pm for a late afternoon lunch or early evening supper, whatever you could call it. After stuffing ourselves with idlis, dosas, gulab jamuns and bajji-bondas, we entered the last leg of our trip journey- the Mysore to Bangalore drive. There were no more breaks after that and we covered the 130km distance in close to 3 hours, despite Mysore road being fully crowded. It actully resembled my Home-office commute along outer ring road than a highway!

We reached Bangalore via the NICE road - Kanakapura road connection and it was time for everyone to say goodbye and alight at their respective homes. A long weekend and a fantastic holiday had come to a close and it was back to our concrete jungles, the 3-walled cubicles and routine techie life once again :-)


KK