Through the mystic roads of Coorg

Our criterion for finding a homestay this time was simple – The cheapest place in Coorg. We found Blue Mist homestay online at Rs. 600/head/night – breakfast included. We started on Friday evening at 6 and reached Kakkabe at 12 in the night. After trying to find the homestay in the deep, dark, dense and wet roads of Madikeri in the middle of the night, our host Vijay called to guide us. We were almost prepared to sleep in the car under a street light maybe to provide us a false sense of security. To our surprise, it was a beautiful bungalow with a huge verandah and the view from here was serene. Coorg decided to keep us in the dark throughout our stay as a tree had done a fabulous job of disconnecting Kakkabe from any source of electronic entertainment. To top it, there was no network and we had to stand on one leg with one hand up in a corner of the house to catch a bar of it. All we had was each other for everything and I think we made the most of it.

After gobbling down some sumptuous Coorgi breakfast, Vijay drove us to the base of Tandiyandamol in his super cool jeep. He picked up meat on the way for our lunch and dinner. Pavan and Priyanka salivated at the thought of pork while Aishwarya and I dreamt of hot chicken sukka. We had to wait on the road for over an hour as another tree decided to fall and block the road. Aishwarya and I walked up a nice small hill like thing where we met an Ex-Airforce person who invited us home for a quick coffee. He told us stories of how he gave up city life to live around trees, growing coffee and whatever else for a living. People scared us about Tadiyandamol trek. They said the leeches will suck the life out of you, it’s raining cats and dogs, and you will have to hide behind a rock at the peak because the wind is too strong. Undeterred we started the climb and it turned out to be a pleasant and beautiful trek. There is a well laid out path and you really have to try hard to get lost. There was one thing that turned out to be true though – We HAD to hide behind rocks. The wind at the peak was so strong that we had to hold each other and walk. We laughed so much about how this made us look.

We finally ate (so much food) at Madikeri and started our drive to Kushal Nagar. It is one of the most beautiful drives with unreal green fields on either sides. So in love with the place I was that I forgot to click pictures :( The monks prayed at the Golden temple and the sound of their prayer was hypnotising.