• 4 motor­bikes
• 5 mus­ke­teers
• Gen­er­ous doses of rain
• Dol­lops of deli­cious food
• Loads of scenic routes and trails
• Plate­fuls of hot bhajjiya
• A few bot­tles of Coorg wine to taste
• And 1 place to Linger around

Mix all of them and shake gen­er­ously. And voila — you get a per­fect mon­soon week­end!

The rains came down on us as soon as we entered Coorg. It was, as if, the higher pow­ers had lis­tened to us and granted our col­lec­tive wish. We started off at around 6 am in the morn­ing from Ban­ga­lore, stop­ping first at Kamat Lokaruchi (and how could we not?). Many idlis, chow chow baths and cof­fees later, we were back on the road again. If this would have gone as planned, we should have reached, in 5 hours. Ah, but it was not to be!

We took a lit­tle longer – 9 hours to be exact. It was a trip “punc­tu­ated” with many food breaks as Sameer put it rather suc­cinctly later.

We would have prob­a­bly taken a few more hours, but lunch was wait­ing for us at Linger, Sameer’s cosy cot­tage in Chet­ta­mani. So, after Madik­eri, we sped towards Bhaga­mang­dala and at around 2 pm, we were finally rewarded with the first sight of Linger.

Nes­tled amidst trees and rest­ing on a slope, with a view of the fields and the moun­tains beyond, Linger is def­i­nitely a place that lives up to its name. When we reached, it didn’t take us too long to relax, put our feet up and take in the lazy atmosphere.

And the food. Of course, I have to men­tion the food – we lit­er­ally pounced on it, our hunger hav­ing reached unbear­able lev­els after the long journey.

So what does any­one do at Linger? The name should speak for itself. We took the name seri­ously. Hop, skip and jump away is the Cau­very river. We strolled across enjoy­ing the cool evening air and the cloudy skies. We got back and set­tled in with bha­jjiyas, tea (and more tea) and then onto din­ner. There was a bon­fire and Sathish had got­ten into rather high spir­its by then. Deva admits that he was sleepy but didn’t want to hurt Sathish by cut­ting him off. This of course meant that they stayed up till late lis­ten­ing to Sathish’s tales. I, of course, did the smart thing and went off to sleep.

The next day, after a lazy and long break­fast (I did go for a short walk down the vil­lage road just so I could say I did some form of exer­cise!), we decided to head towards some scenic trails. A good deci­sion indeed as Sameer took us into parts of Coorg coun­try­side we’d never get to see oth­er­wise.

Rain drenched and green, Coorg puts on it’s pret­ti­est face in the mon­soons. The roads snaked through lit­tle vil­lages and up and down like a roller coaster. We stopped once just to gaze at the rain clouds com­ing in and what a sight it was – the per­fect spot to build a mon­soon get­away cot­tage!

Back to Madik­eri vil­lage for a sump­tu­ous lunch at Coorg cuisinette – if you’re in the town and are inter­ested in local del­i­ca­cies, this is one place you should head to. Even the locals eat there, which says some­thing about the food! Loved every­thing includ­ing the yummy motta (egg) curry and all of us came out of the hotel clutch­ing our stom­achs. Back again on the trails, we dis­cover some more nar­row coun­try roads till we hit Linger.

Once we’re there, ennui and a nice feel­ing of con­tent­ment set­tles in. There’s more bha­jjiya, cof­fee and tea. And then there’s an intense scrab­ble game which goes on till late evening. Rules are bro­ken and re-written and cre­ated. We argue about words (dewax, new­ly­wed, ad) and some that prob­a­bly don’t actu­ally exist. I think the inter­est­ing part about Scrab­ble is about how vehe­mently you can “deny” a word exists. The other side (who is superbly con­fi­dent till now) is now begin­ning to show signs of crum­bling. “No, the word doesn’t exist,” you say con­fi­dently and calmly and that’s the end of the argu­ment. Of course, I still lose.

Any­way, much fun and head bang­ing ensued and the hus­band who was using his word­power com­bined with Deva (cheat­ing it’s called in layman’s terms!) won the game and gloated for a while. We were eas­ily dis­tracted by din­ner and then it was time to call it a day.

The next day, had a lovely break­fast – a rice poori which is a deli­cious Coorg dish, teamed with potato and brown channa curry. We of course wanted to “linger” around a lit­tle more, but then it was time to bid adieu. At around 1030 am finally, got back on the bikes, packed and hit the road.

The boys decided on a “scenic route” – and that it def­i­nitely was! Even Sameer dis­cov­ered new roads unknown to him till this day. Instead of 9 hours, it took us a record 11 hours to get back. And just so we didn’t for­get that it was a mon­soon ride, the rains hit us just as we crossed Raman­garam. From there we took the Kanakpura detour to avoid Mysore road traf­fic and then hit a few villages.

Around 17kms before Haro­halli, when ask­ing for direc­tions, I smelt food. Omlettes to be pre­cise. An old man sit­ting behind the counter was busy serv­ing them out so we had our fill. From there we hit Haro­halli, Kanakpura Road, and were back home close to 10 pm at night.

What a day, what a trip and what a ride!

- The Coorg Mon­soon Ride album
– If you want to do a bit of “Linger-ing” around, do visit the web­site for more details.