It was a
Friday morning, before the workday began contemplation for the weekend was a routine.
It was decided that it'll be a breakfast out. Now the main question to be answered was where? There were options like a popular south Indian restaurant within a kilometer from residence, a drive to the famous lokaruchi Kamath on Mysore road.
Suddenly recalled our friend's suggestion " It's been a while we haven't had a weekend trip". That's it. Immediately we rang her to check if they were game.
We decided on Coorg. Now the task was whether we'll manage to get a round trip cab. We decided to book for accommodation on reaching.
We placed a booking for round trip Innova AC and going by our recent experiences with call drivers and can we were ready for rejection. However, since nothing is over till its over we began to wait for a callback.
Our friend called in the afternoon for status and we informed that the waiting was still ON. Finally around 5.30 pm we received a call from our cab provider and the cab was finalized. The driver also intimated that these days Coorg is usually full during the weekend so it is better we book for accommodation before the start. Our friend and we immediately managed to join a conference even on a busy workday and we made the hotel booking. We booked a quaint resort called
'Brook Stone Villas' from agoda.com. Now we were all set for the trip.
Saturday 6 am my friend and her dad got picked up. We were also ready , and got picked up by 6.30 am. We knew we had a 6 - 7 hours drive before we reached Kushalnagar.
7 a.m - Tea break from a small ubiquitous tea stall on ORR
We took NICE road to reach towards Mysore road. There was very high and slow moving traffic in Mysore road due to ongoing road development. At around 8.30 we took a pit-stop for breakfast at A2B on Mysore road.
The drive was taking us longer than expected, but we were enjoying the beautiful green roads and were stopping in between for some or other refreshments. Our next stop was for some tender coconut and we too a stop amid the lush green sugar cane fields.
The drive continued and we entered the Tibetan camp at Bylakuppe. It was almost 1.15 pm when we finally reached the Namdroling Monastery also know as 'Golden Temple' colloquially. As soon as we were about to disembark from our cab, it started pouring. We had to buy an umbrella to begin our site seeing. We spent almost an hour in the golden temple compound and had a plate of piping hot momos at the eatery run by the monks before we moved on.
We drove a little further and finally settled on Minister's Court restaurant for our lunch. We ordered chicken lollypop, rice, fish curry, egg fried rice and fed ourselves to heart's content. It was good to see other tourist vehicle also parked in the area as this restaurant was far from the populated tourist area.
We made a move towards Coorg now. The drive became more scenic as we crossed the beautiful winding roads towards Madhikeri. We decided to check-in to our resort and then take a call if we wanted to visit any other places. The road to our resort was hidden in greens and we moved at a very slow pace as the road was in shambles and we were scared if our car would give up. It was a very scenic route though as we moved through the coffee plantations scattered with blooming hibiscus. We reached at our resort at last and it was a very calming and quaint place. We were instantly felt relief after a long day of travel.
The check-in was quick. There was no network signal available at the place but this were better once we got access to wi-fi. We ourselves had to carry our bags to first floor. It will be a disadvantage if you have senior citizens travelling or if you are carrying a lot of bags. We got two adjacent rooms. The rooms were clean warm and inviting. Each room had an attached balcony with a sit out that looked out to the mountains at the back.
We decided to stay back at the resort and enjoy the property. This property has 11 guest rooms a small dining area and a great surrounding. If you walk towards the back side, you'd see the multiple hues of green around and the floating clouds. Since we visited during monsoon the mud roads became slippery while it was incessantly drizzling. We had 2 rounds of tea and pakoras for our evening snacks around 5 pm. We ordered for our dinner and took the rest of the evening for rest. We had chapati, alu-gobi and Coorg special pork curry for dinner. All the preparations were very tasty. Kitchen and restaurant service was quite impressive. It continued to rain through out the night and we slept with natural cricket chirping all around us. It was an experience I never had in the past.
Sunday we woke up around 6.30 a.m. We wanted to visit the back side of the property to explore the foot-hills but due to rains through out the night the road became very sludgy. Also, the staff informed that there could be leeches around, so better not step out to the woods. We decided to explore the metalled road. It was surrounded by coffee plantation, hibiscus tree, there was a mango tree, guava tree, a wax apple ( jamrul) tree. There were date palms scattered here and there too. We came to know the area had both coffee and pepper plantations but we could not recognize a pepper plant.
We came back to room and prepared hot tea/coffee and enjoyed the natural beauty of the place for some more time. It was checkout day for us, so we got ready and ready and headed to the dining area for complimentary breakfast. There was milk, corn flakes, idli-sambhar- chutney, upma, bread butter, tea, coffee, poori-sabzi on the buffet. Eggs for breakfast were available on payment. Food was again great at this place. The property had 2 dogs and they always followed us whenever we stepped out. It was a very enjoyable experience.
We checked out from the resort at 10 am and moved towards center of the town for some spice and souvenir shopping. Then onwards we moved towards Abbey fall. To see the waterfall we had to climb down few steps, but the descent was worth it. The waterfall was at its full glory and it was filled with tourist. However, we managed to enjoy a while there and click some nice pictures.
Our next and final stop was Raja seat. It is a very picturesque and well maintained garden in Coorg. The serenity and beauty of this place is just unparalleled. The different hues of green and the panoramic view from this place is worth a few repeats. We stayed here for around 30 minutes but had to cut short due to a heavy spell of rain.
We had noticed few nice Tibetan food joints in Bylakuppe the previous day so decided to visit the place for lunch on our return. Unfortunately the food joint whose map & google rating we were following didn't have seating capacity so we settled for the place bang opposite to that. While the service was good the food was just okay.
We continued to drive for next 7 - 8 hours and again faced a lot of traffic in Mysore road. We took a tea break in A2B food court on the way and reached Bangalore around 10 pm. We were very tired from the long drive but were glad to be home to catch a good night's sleep before the work week began.
Even though we travelled for very log hours but this unplanned trip was a great way to break the monotony of regular life. Monsoons made the places very vibrant and serene and it turned out to be a good travel experience overall. Can't wait to start the next trip!! 🙏
