Before I start off describing the events from day 1 of Coorg trip, let me tell you that I am sitting on a machan, laid over a 20 feet jungle tree. It is early in the morning and I am getting the first glimpses of the place we are staying. The giant mountains of the Western Ghats have yet again, successfully been able to stop the clouds passing over them. I can’t see the peak of the mountains right now. Our tents are mid way through a hill, it is lush green, with hundreds of trees all around. The sun has never been able to come out of the clutches of the clouds. I can smell the freshness all around, the grass is moist, the land still wet with the recent rains. The machan is made of wood and a ladder leads you to the top. You can see greenery everywhere. What a way to start your morning! I can hear the birds chirping and there is an echo of their cries. You can as well hear the response the bird is getting from another bird sitting for away.
The last trip we had been was Papikondalu and it was a great success story. A mind boggling number of people (29) had made it to that trip. It had been quite some time that we had all gone out, and Anish started off the idea to go to Coorg. He had bought some land in Coorg and we knew that he had created a “resort like” place amidst the forests. His website had some great pictures taken by him in the estate.
This was second trip to Coorg, and I was awestruck by its breathtaking beauty, so I knew what to expect. The first trip was a memorable experience.
I and Hrishi started off from office at 4:00 P.M. and were joined by Neha. We went to Hitec City railway station. Our train was at 4:30 P.M., it would drop us off to Kachiguda. We all met at the Hitec City station We reached Kachiguda station by 5:30 P.M. We had to board the Bangalore Express train, which would start at 7:00 P.M. It is just amazing how time flies by when you have friends along - you never know you travelled 50 minutes from Hitec city to Kachiguda and you never know how you spent the next one and half hour in the Kachiguda railway station. We would reach Banglore the next morning and we had a bus waiting there, which would take us to Coorg.
Out train started on time, we got busy requesting our fellow passengers for exchanging their seats with us. I had unfortunately got my soft luggage suitcase and every body’s reaction to it was that of surprise and “he is crazy” one. I had to explain each one of them that there were clothes inside, and nobody else sitting in it. I thought I should throw it away on the railway track. We had all got either upper or middle berths and we successfully occupied 2 consecutive compartments. “Dumb Charades” ruled again, movie names of all languages, including Marathi were being guessed at. We ate dosas for dinner. We had got 50 dosas parceled – yes you read it right - 50 dosas. The dosa wala was surprised at the order and Anish had to convince him that he had heard the number 50 right. I slept by 10:30 P.M., the Dumb Charades game was still on.
04-07-08:
We reached Yelahanka (you better say it right) at 6:15 A.M. It was a home coming for me, it felt great to get down here. Our bus had already arrived and we headed towards Pavani’s house which was in Yelahanka New Town. Her family had arranged for our bath and breakfast. Before the trip I remember asking her if she was sure of inviting 23 monsters to her house. When we reached all the arrangements had been done. We took bath and freshened up. We were treated with Idlis, Upma, Chutney, Sambar and Mysore Pak. Upma was awesome, there had been a hint of extra ghee, which made it even more tastier. We thanked her mom and sister for the efforts they had put.
We left Yelahanka by 10:30 A.M. and drove towards Mysore road. The road was free of my craters, the ride was very smooth. The music being played was good, “Pal Pal Dil ke pass” and “Zara Zara” soothed my mind. Every note played by the metallic flute in “Zara Zara” song was so good.
We decided to visit Tippu’s winter palace near Srirangapatna as we had ample time. It is called Daria Dalut Bagh. It has a huge garden with lots of trees and plants. They had maintained the garden pretty well. The palace has every wall painted with beautiful pictures of Tippu and his father Haider Ali’s life and their army. It also has paintings of the different forts that were a part of Tippu’s kingdom. These painting are drawn by the Englishmen. The most beautiful painting was that of a young Tippu in his army dress. The picture is multi dimensional; Tippu’s eyeballs seem to move with you.
We had our lunch at dhaba and set off for the Nagarahole forest.
This was my 3rd trip across the forest. Only the first one where an elephant charged us was eventful. We did not have any animal spotting, let alone the deer who pose for the camera without hesitation. Anish was lucky enough to spot a tiger right on the middle of the road the previous time he was here. He had spotted a Leopard as well. But we cannot get that lucky in life always.
The forest was lush green due to the rains. You could smell the freshness. The air was so pure and you could feel the chill. Thousands of insects were crying out. You get “Discovery Channels noise“. Oh how much I loved that noise. You feel one with nature.
We crossed the forest and entered Coorg. It was getting dark. The mountains and the coffee estates had started. The gardens which led to the bungalow of the estates belonged to heaven. They have lines of hibiscus and rose shrubs which would be in full bloom whenever I see them. Pomegranate, Jackfruit and Mango trees are also present. They have a variety of crotons. How I wish I had my house here. Keep my needs to a minimum and enjoy the nature.
The coffee leaves were glistening in the dim moonlight. It was the first day of the lunar calendar and I could see a streak of moon in the sky. The stars were so big and clear. Hrishi was all excited about them. Soon we were driving in pitch darkness surrounded by trees, only the road being visible to us.
We reached Bethel Estates by 9:00 P.M. There was a campfire already and people were sitting around it. There were 4 huts. I entered one of them and was astonished at the level of detail Anish and his colleagues had looked into. There was a double cot on which 4 of us could sleep. The blankets and towels were arranged. The bed sheets were clean and neat, the pillows fluffy and lighting arrangement perfect. There was an aesthetic feel to it. Outside there was a kerosene lamp burning, which added to the beauty of the hut.
The girls had already talked a lot about the restrooms. There was both western and Indian style toilets, the bathroom was clean and dry. There was even a sink! We were provided with dettols, toothpastes and hand wash liquids. I mean look at it -we are right here in the middle of a jungle on a mountain and you find facilities of a five star hotel! Hats off to Anish and his team.
We sat around the campfire and had our dinner. We went to sleep soon after. During my last visit I remembered how awestruck I was when I woke up in the morning. I knew this time was going to be even better. I could not wait to get up in the morning.
05-07-08:
Pinky had kept her promise. She woke me up at 5:45 am. Hrishi and Neha also woke up with a jolt for the high voltage “Chheettaan” cry she gave. I stepped out to see one of the most beautiful site. There was a huge chain of mountain in front of me and thick clouds over it. It seemed as if it is going to rain anytime. I could see the path we had taken last night, the cottages and the machan. There was thick forest with thousands of trees over the mountains. The scenery changed every 5 minutes over the mountains due to the movement of the clouds. The air was fresh and pure.
I had coffee and tea. The big event for the day was white water rafting. We had planned for this after our last visit as we had seen pictures of it. All of us were pretty excited. Today would be a big day for all of us. I was to go in the first batch. 13 of us set off in Anish’s jeep with Arun.
The drive to the start off point was full of scenic beauty. On either side of the road, bushes of little flowers were planted which were in full bloom. We were crossing across a mountain and we could see coffee plantation covering the whole slope of a mountain. The mountain was pretty deep, there were trees in between the coffee plants. You could see chain of mountains all around you. The flip side of coffee plantation is the clearing of jungles, a lot of trees are cut when coffee is planted. Yet, there was so much of greenery all around us. I remembered I had seen the same beauty during my last visit, when we had visited the Bharpole Falls.
We stopped after driving for 30 minutes. We had to walk for about half a km. There was a proper jungle path and there was a thick vegetation all around. I really missed my camera. Only RC had the camera, as we were asked to carry nothing in our pockets.
We arrived at the take off point and we saw that the rafts were getting ready for us. Air was being blown into them. I could see that the paddle, helmets and life jackets were brand new. We signed the disclaimer, I remembered the day I signed a similar one for the paragliding in the Himalayas.
Somehow signing this was less scary. We were given instructions of the basic commands like “Forward”, “Back”, “Left forward (Right Backward)”, “Right forward (Left Backward)”, “Over right”, “Over left”, “Hold” and “Get down”. I could not wait to get into the water.
We finally took the raft into the water. I and SV were the two in the front of the raft. Our instructor was Ashok and he repeated and made us perform the commands. And then he asked me to jump into the water. I remember I went to Gachibowli stadium to learn swimming giving this day as one of the reasons. I had learnt all the techniques of free style, including breathing. I was confident enough of my survival. I remember the days when I was swimming close to the walls of the pool and getting frustrated when I wasn’t breathing properly, the days when I used to push myself and tell that I am going to swim without fear. All of these were bearing fruit today.
I love water and the moment I jumped in, I started enjoying it. I flipped to my back and looked up to the sky. It was an amazing feeling, so relaxing. I felt so free, floating along the gentle flow of water. I could lay down there this way for hours. I had indeed lost the fear of water! A 1000 ways to stay happy in life!
Each one of us repeated the same exercise so that all of us get used to the water. We then started off towards the first rapid. We were paddling forward, the stream was fully surrounded by thick jungle, a scene you watch in “Anaconda movie”. The speed of the raft were gentle, the mountains were staring at us, the trees moving gently with the wind, the climbers and shrub in sync with it. It was cloudy and soon it began to drizzle. Rafting in the rain is a fantastic experience in itself.
We came across our first Rapid “Morning Coffee”. We quickly followed the instructions of Ashok to head towards it. It was a pretty small rapid, there weren’t much rocks and we soon come through it. We were juggled quite a bit, and we were overjoyed.
We soon came to a place where the water flow was very gentle. This was a swimming pool for us. All of us got out of the raft and got into the water. I swam as much as I wanted. I flipped on to my back and relaxed my body completely.
We got back into the raft and soon headed towards to the second rapid “Grasshopper”. Even this rapid was a pretty small one, although the rocks were in a bigger number than Morning Coffee. We missed a few instructions and soon found ourselves stuck on a rock. Ashok moved the raft a bit and soon we were on track. I looked back at the rapid at the moment we were crossing it. The water was indeed gushing along with great force.
The third rapid was a lengthy one and was called as “Wicked Witch”. The command “Left down” and “centre” were now used into action. This rapid was a good one. It shook us up quite a bit. The rock formation was pretty impressive. As we moved forward, the jungles on the mountains were replaced by tea plantation. This is owned by the TATAs and until our drop off point, it was more of tea and tea. Although there are very few trees in between the tea plants, the scene is beautiful. The plants were cut with uniform length and were dense.
We were now going to the last and biggest rapid of all – the “Big Bang”. The Big Bang was a 3+ stage rapid which is considered quite dangerous. We parked our rafts and trekked a bit to have a look at it. The gush of water was enormous. The speed of water was high. There was a wall like formation of the rock and it seemed like the gates of a dam were opened for the water to flow. This was going to be big!
We were back on the raft and started towards the rapid. We were carefully listening to the instructions of Ashok. We were pretty soon at the centre of the rapid. We were all in the centre of the raft, the raft proceeded with unprecedented speed and we felt as if were out of control. It had shook us badly enough. We were through it, and what a fantastic feeling it was! We had finally accomplished it! Another dream come true for me. The next one would surely be in Hrishikesh in the waters of Ganga.
We were on shore and carried the raft back to our vehicles. We soon reached Bethel estates.
We had planned to scare the hell out of the guys who were to go in the second batch, and trust me we were successful. Many wanted to backout after having a look at it. But ultimately all of them did it and had great experience.
We relaxed in the evening with Antakshari and dance. For a while the power generator was not on and there were no lights in the estate. It was a big chance for me to listen to the jungle sounds. It started to pour soon after if you try to venture out you feel you are being hit with something sharp - such is the force of the rain. The sound of rain is very loud and at times you feel you are not able to hear a conversation.
The toads, crickets and thousands of insects celebrated the rain in a big way. They were crying out with their highest pitch. It was a complete Nat Go experience. Nature had come alive.
We ended our big day by 10:30 P.M.
06-07-08
I woke up early in the morning and wrote the blog on the machan for about an hour. The view of the mountains from the machan changed very frequently. The clouds were not allowed to move past to mountain, so they travelled to the easterly direction. As a result of this movement of clouds, it rains for a few minutes, sunshine is back again after a few more minutes. So you can never really prepare for the rains. Anish told me that this was the reason why this part of the land was never used for coffee plantation. The rain is so heavy and continuous that the plant would not retain the berries. Pepper is the only crop that can be grown here.
The tree leaves had water on them and they glisten in the sunlight. I was able to hear the laughing bird cries that I had heard the last time I was in Coorg. Anish told me that this was the hornbill.
Our plan for today was Dubare water rafting, elephant interaction and the golden temple at Kushalnagar. We started very late. I had missed the trek that was done by team 2 when we had been for rafting and I was lucky to get a chance to walk through coffee plantations that led to Anish’s estate
The previous days rain had spelled magic on the coffee estates. It was lush green. I adopted the “shoot at sight” order for my camera. Everything was beautiful, how much can you capture on camera? I recorded all the sights in my mind.
The bus journey to Dubare was a beautiful one. I saw hundreds of gardens of heaven that I have described earlier. I could see hibiscus trees with over 50 red hibiscus flowers in full bloom. No words to describe them. The route was worth to be driven on bike. I promised myself I will do this one fine day.
We reached Dubare and finished lunch. We were very confident today as we had done a more dangerous one yesterday. We were in 3 rafts. We had to cover a 6 km stretch of the river Cauvery in about 2 hours. We set off and pretty soon we were inside water. Everybody was enjoying. I swam as much as I wanted.
There were very few rapids. Crossing them was uneventful. We then came to an area where on one side of the bank we had cultivation and the other bank thick forest. Trees would bend down at a number of places almost touching the water. We saw Kingfisher birds. This was truly an Amazon Jungle river experience, the way they show it in Anaconda like movies. We got into the water here too, and we were drifting away with the current, swimming effortlessly. I went on to my back and relaxed every muscle of my body.
Some of our guys who did not raft went for elephant interaction where they saw elephants being fed and bathed. One could join the mahouts in this exercise.
We left for the Golden temple at Kushalnagar. We could see the Gopuram of the temple illuminated from a distance. It was beautiful. I could not wait to have a closer look. When we reached the temple, it was completely dark and so we could not see the gopuram at it’s majestic best. We had started late, and we were paying a heavy price, it was unfortunate.
The temple complex has three temples. We entered the first temple which had 8 statues of Buddha’s reincarnations. The statues were gold plated, about 10 feet high and were beautiful. They were the gods of knowledge, wealth, health, power etc.
We then left for the second temple where we saw many reincarnations of a goddess. We went to the third temple ( I did not know that this was the main one) . As soon as I went into it, I remember opening my mouth in astonishment. I was facing 3 huge statues, the Buddha in the center and his two incarnations to his left and right. They were 60 feet in height, were gold plated and had inscriptions on them. It was calm and relaxing inside. We couldn’t help but meditate for a few moments.
The one thing common to the temple complex were the beautiful wall paintings. They were 5 feet tall depicting the life of Buddha. There were paintings of demons too. It is bit weird, but we felt that the Buddhist paintings were somewhat violent. The use of colors were exquisite, they chose dark colours.
I was really disappointed as we could not see the temple in the day. I was not able to gather all the information on the statues, the life of Buddha and the temple complex. I will definitely visit the temple the next time I am in Coorg.
We shopped at the Tibetian Market and had noodles. We started on our way back. It was pitch dark. We were tired and sleepy. My sleep went to a toss when I spotted a huge animal from the headlights of the bus. I didn’t take time for me to realize that it was a young female elephant. I jumped out of my seat to have a closer look. We had finally spotted a wild elephant! After we had passed it, the guys told me that there was a cub alongside. I felt like punching them when they asked how I could have missed it, instead I slapped my forehead. I cursed my luck.
We were back by 12:00 midnight. We all hogged like hell. I had not expected many of them to eat, but you know Warehouse Warriors are hatke when it come to food. We had a good sleep.
We all got up early as we had to catch the 6:15 PM train to Hyderabad. We packed our bags and thanked the staff, Rakesh and Arun profusely for their hosptiality. They had done a fantastic job. I was a bit disappointed as the trip was coming to an end. It had rained again last night and the forest looked even more beautiful. I went up the machan to have one last look at the mountains. It was very cloudy and I could see a waterfall down the mountain, which had formed due to the heavy rain.
We had our breakfast and set off towards Bangalore. We danced to the music. I saw all the beautiful roads, coffee estates, fields, more gardens of heaven that I had missed when during our onward journey. I feel I am short of words, you have to see it to know the beauty.
We passed through the Nagarhole forest. It had rained here too and the forest was wet. We had no sightings of any animal except for deer and Langurs. The drive was beautiful through the forest.
We had a race against time. It was 2:30 PM and we were near KRS dam and had not yet finished lunch. We felt we would miss our train. We quickly finished linch and set off.
At this juncture I need to mention about our driver Prakash. It seemed he was the younger brother of our driver to Leh, Radha Mohan – stupid and stubborn. He was not ready to listen to us and did his own thing. I had got this impression on the very first day. He wanted to drop us off at Majestic instead of Yelahanka.
At 4:30 PM, we were 40+ kms from Bangalore, and the unthinkable and dumbest thing happened. We ran out of diesel! How could a driver not estimate how much fuel is left? He caught an auto to go to the nearest fuel station.
He came back pretty quickly, fortunately. By this time we had decided that we would ask him to drop us at Yelahanka, as we knew there would be less traffic and our train would reach there by 7:00 PM only. 45 minutes were crucial for us.
But the driver would have none of it. He did not want to drive the extra 20 KMs. The whole world knew about the Bangalore traffic, and yet we had this adamant joker who wanted us to drop us at Majestic. Then started the roller coaster ride. He drive rashly honking all the way. He was impatient, swearing at others and even overtaking from the left.
We were soon caught in thick traffic on the outskirts of Bangalore. No there was no way we could have taken a deviation to Yelahanka. The driver kept honking and honking. At 5:45 PM, we reached the road parallel to the Majestic railway station. We had the luggage of 24 people tied at the roof of our bus, and we knew we did not have the time to unload it. It was then that Raju did his heroics. While we were stuck in the traffic, he climbed up the bus. The traffic started moving and he balanced himself. I don’t know how he managed to do that but we were dead scared. What if a traffic police caught our bus? What if brakes were applied suddenly?
But Raju was a breed apart! At the next traffic bottleneck, he started passing the bags. People were staring at us. We quickly passed on the bags inside. The bus started to move, but Raju continued to pass on the bags, including my dreaded suitcase! When he joined us back, we gave him a good round of applause; he had saved at least 7 minutes of our time.
The traffic jam was still on, and I and SV ran out to see if there was another entry to the railway station. We were lucky to find one where the parcel services were being carried out. We ran back to the bus and informed our guys, and all of us got off and started running towards the platform. Our train was at platform No. 2, and we ran all the way carrying all our luggage. We had made it at 6:05 PM, 15 minutes ahead of the departure! What a thrilling experience!
At the end of it all I feel immensely satisfied and happy. 24 of us had made it to the trip, many of them were first-timers! It was so easy to get along. There was not a single moment of resentment or complaint, nor was there any groupism. The Warehouse Warriors had successfully completed yet another trip.
I feel that traveling is one of the most important habits one can develop. It teaches you a lot of things. It helps you conquer your fear, giving you a new belief and confidence. Trivial issues faced in everyday life seem to become small. It helps you understand the bigger picture of life. It shows you how to be happy with every small thing that nature offers you.
