Blog reader and now blog­ger Divs writes, “Where are more pics, Anita?” So here’s espe­cially for him a travel diary and more pics from my recent trip! And thanks Divs for the pics and your home­s­tay details (check end of post on where to stay). It might be use­ful for those of you plan­ning trips to Coorg.

A jour­ney through scenic Coorg

Day 1: Sept 30

On the Road

After attempts to start bright and early at 5 am in the morn­ing, we finally left the city around 6 am. Chandra’s Tata Safari was the vehi­cle for the trip and there were six of us packed in : Chan­dra, Deep­san, Sil­vester, Rajiv, Venkatesh and me.

After 2 hours on the road, the hunger pangs began to set in and we sighted a likely break­fast place around 8.30 am where we packed in a ful­fill­ing south Indian break­fast of idlis & dosas.

Beauty Spot

The roads were rel­a­tively okay till around noon after which they dete­ri­o­rated. The only con­so­la­tion was that the view out­side was great! We were, after all, tak­ing the long scenic route. When we reached the Bisle For­est Reserve, we got a glimpse of the gor­geous peaks of Kukke Sub­ra­manya and Push­pa­giri from what was called the Beauty Spot. After spend­ing some time wan­der­ing around, we con­tin­ued on our way. We were pretty hun­gry by the time when we reached K Sub­ra­manya and set­tled for South Indian thalis.

Chan­dra had to con­cen­trate on the road being in the driver’s seat, but all of us didn’t have any such respon­si­bil­i­ties so we had a nice time instead!. Sil­vester kept every­one enter­tained with his con­stant nat­ter and got him­self a new name — ‘chatterbug’.

Ah, Madik­eri!

At about 7 pm, we reached Madik­eri in Coorg all decked up and get­ting ready for the next day’s cel­e­bra­tions. We had another two hours at least to go before we would reach our intended des­ti­na­tion of Balele : a small town in remote Coorg. If you look up the map, chances are that you won’t find it. After tea, in a restau­rant which did not seem to want to serve us, we finally set off on the final leg of our journey.

It took us a good two and half hours since the roads were bad and the vis­i­bil­ity at night on the slopes was low. We found Balele finally but there was another catch. Get­ting from the main town to the home­s­tay. We no longer had cell­phone con­nec­tiv­ity. Venky had called ear­lier and got­ten some vague direc­tions like, “fol­low the road till you get a coconut tree with a board where you take a right and where you see a small mud road, etc. etc.” He was obvi­ously con­fused by the end of it and also man­aged to con­fuse us.

Fol­low me!

We did go down many a mud road and found our­selves on a wild goose chase. We even woke up an old lady at one of the estates and she gave us some kind of vague direc­tions. Back on the road we saw a jeep approach our vehi­cle. We stalled the vehi­cle and asked for direc­tions. “Fol­low me,” were the only two words the dri­ver said as he exe­cuted a quick U-turn and we were left with no choice but to go where he was tak­ing us!

My imag­i­na­tive mind worked over­time and I began see­ing gory visions of us being led into a deserted plan­ta­tion, where we would be held cap­tive for days with­out food or water! Thank­fully, after about 5 kms we sud­denly turned into the gates of an estate, which was appar­ently our home­s­tay. Relief. I could feel it ooz­ing out of my pores!

As it turned out, the home­s­tay folks thought we were lost and decided to send out a search party. We were so relieved to see hot din­ner laid out on the table that we imme­di­ately helped our­selves to large por­tions and had our fill. After 16 hours on the road, it was time to call it a day. A night actually.

Aunty (prob­a­bly see­ing me with five boys) insisted I sleep in her room. “Some girls get scared on their own you know,” she explained to me. I was only to glad to find some­where to lie down.

Day 2, Oct 1:

Ani­mal farm

I woke up to the vio­lent chirp­ing of birds, like I had Ani­mal Planet run­ning inside my head. I thought for a moment I had woken up in a bird sanc­tu­ary by mis­take. Only later I realised that Aunty & Uncle kept birds. And dogs too. There was a labrador, 3 poms & 3 daschunds. They all had to be kept caged though, as Aunty explained later that they get pan­thers in that area which car­ries off ani­mals. Hmmm. Not a nice thought as we were wan­der­ing around there late at night ourselves!

Break­fast was tra­di­tional Coorg fare after which we went and lazed around in the front yard. Aunty had a nice gar­den filled with beau­ti­ful pot­ted plans and there were beau­ti­ful big but­ter­flies flit­ting around everywhere.

Irpu Falls

It still took us a while to get ready for our excur­sion for the day. We started off around 11 am and reached the base of Irpu falls around 12.30. The walk to the top is about a kilo­me­ter or so. The place was filled with vis­i­tors. We reached the top and spent some time roam­ing around. Sil­vester, Deep­san, Chan­dra and Venky climbed onto some rocks in the mid­dle (that were rel­a­tively safe) and did some pho­tog­ra­phy from there. Rajiv and I were just con­tent to watch the pro­ceed­ings from a com­fort­able view point.

At which point it began driz­zling. So we had to run back to the vehi­cle. It was not until we were on our way back that we all dis­cov­ered leeches on our legs. I had two fat ones that had fin­ished off guz­zling some of my blood and were now on the floor of the Safari. After eas­ing them all off, we started off for the Nagar­hole for­est. By about 4 pm we had entered the for­est just in time for the safari. Since we were in a 4WD, we were allowed to go into the jun­gle with a for­est guard. We drove inside the for­est, green and lush in this sea­son. We didn’t sight much in the way of wildlife, except a lot of deer.

The Nagar­hole experience

After about 2 hours, as dark­ness set we had to return. While leav­ing the for­est, on the way, the vehi­cles had come to a halt because of a wild tusker right on the path. We waited till it went off the road and when we passed it we got a glimpse of the beau­ti­ful wild ani­mal. We also heard what alarm calls of what sounded like some­thing being killed, but we had to con­tinue since we couldn’t stall for too long. After an hour or so we realised we had missed a turn somewhere.

As a result we had to take the long way back to our home­s­tay and got back only at around 10 pm. Chicken : coorg style wait­ing for us. Six hun­gry peo­ple imme­di­ately pounced on the food!

Day 3, Octo­ber 2:

Laz­ing around

Sil­vester and Venky went off walk­ing early morn­ing to a field some­where nearby. I couldn’t raise a mus­cle, as I was just too com­fort­able. I barely man­aged to get up around 9 to catch break­fast and some tea. And sit out in the front. Went for a small walk down the estate. And then came back and lazed around again. We finally left the home­s­tay around noon.

Dam!

Chan­dra wanted to take the long route again this time via Kabini. So it was back to Nagar­hole for­est and then onwards to Kabini. There we headed to the dam where Rajiv, Sil­vester perched our­selves some­where and enjoyed watch­ing the sun play­ing hide and seek. The back waters of the dam shone like jew­els where the sun man­aged to beat the clouds and make an appearance.

Chan­dra, Deep­san and Venky went off on a long walk to the end of dam and appeared around an hour later. Every­one sud­denly got hun­gry since we hadn’t had lunch, we con­sumed a few kilos of bis­cuits. The sun was going down just as we were walk­ing out of the dam enclo­sure, so we watched as the last rays of the sun kissed the trees and the skies turned into a palette of colours as the sun went down.

We con­tin­ued on to Mysore from there, around an hour away. I wanted to have really good dosa and Venky’s friend rec­om­mended a place called Ramya Drive Inn hotel.

We left Mysore around 8.30 pm, antic­i­pat­ing traf­fic on the road, but it was rel­a­tively okay and after a cof­fee break, we reached Ban­ga­lore a lit­tle before midnight.

Trip Details

Route to Coorg (the scenic route!):
Ban­ga­lore > Kuni­gal > Chan­naraya­p­atna > Has­san > Sak­lesh­pur > Bisle Reserve for­est > Kukke Sub­rah­manya > Mer­cara > Vira­jpet > Goni­coppa > Balele

Route to Ban­ga­lore
Balele > Nagar­hole > Kabini > Mysore

Total Route: Around 900 kms

Home stay: The Hacienda, Balele
Rs 1000 per per­son per day inclu­sive of all meals

For more home­s­tay options you can also visit:
Home­s­tay Kodagu

Home­s­tay option from Divs:
Viju and Nimi, Bid­danda Estate (+91–9845637503)
Coorg Home­s­tay

Photo Album:
Coorg Coun­try | Macros | Por­traits