Tips to Travel to Halebidu, Belur & Sakleshpur, for you & your folks too

Considering the acres and acres of greenery around you when you are staying in a Spice Plantation or a Tea/Coffee Estate, know that you will have creepy-crawly visitors throughout your stay. We stayed at Cloud Alley Homestay which is available only on Airbnb. It's a fantastic place surrounded by 3-5 acres of coffee plantations. The cleanliness bar was up high, their provisions were on-point, and they even had a little temple where my mom-in-law kept our Little Kanha (Baby Krishna) well-equipped with Pooja items. But I will admit we had things flying and crawling into the house constantly. Hence carry a bug spray, odomos, keep a 'chappal' handy, or if you really can't deal with it, then don't pick a place like this.

4. Monuments that are photographed well aren't necessarily worth a visit

- Manjarabad Fort is a Star-shaped fort built in 1792 designed by a French architect to mimic the Citadels back in France. But due to lack of maintenance, there isn't much left of it except the outline. You can distinctly see the star shape only if you own a drone camera and it is worth climbing 200 stairs only if you plan to carry a bed sheet, a picnic basket and spend a good 3-4 hours having a family picnic there.

- Shettihalli Church as well is just a bunch of pillars left after the whole place was brought down to ruins. There really isn't much history here. It's a church which was being built by the French in their famous Gothic architecture which was suddenly abandoned and left incomplete. The road leading to it is quite bad or maybe it was just Google taking us down a bad route. There is garbage strewn everywhere, so if you are a photographer going to click photo-journalistic pictures, then you've got a tonne of Photoshop work coming your way. The only significance of this place is that the place gets submerged in water during the monsoons & very high tides and you can do some boating around it. But even then, it wasn't worth the rocky detour.

- Bisle Viewpoint was another hype and disappointment. It was a last minute addition to the plan on someone's recommendation. I mean it's got a moderately lovely view and as a matter of fact it is a panoramic view of the 3 Bettas (Mountain Ranges) - Kumara Parvatha, Pushpagiri and Dodda Betta. But if you are from the North of India, then you have already seen the best hills and mountain range views. Bottomline - driving 55 kms to get here, is just a waste of time.

5. Trekking is not always difficult and meant only for the young

If you are going to places like Sakleshpur and Chikamanglur, you'd rather opt for trekking experiences, no matter how small. If you are bunch of young kids then pick tougher, more time-consuming treks like the Railway Bridge Trek, Agni Gudda Hill Hike, Jenukal Gudda Trek, Mullayanagiri Trek, Kemmangundi Trek etc. Since I was with my in-laws, we did the coffee plantation trek. The Estate where we were staying at, took us for a 1-hour trek where our home-stay manager showed us the coffee farms, the different types of coffees they grew, how they grew it, how they picked the crops, he also showed us other spices & fruits they grew on the farm and the 2 in-house ponds, trekking up the little rivulet back to the house. Luckily, my mom-in-law is a plant enthusiast, so she got busy picking things of interest and dropping it into the bag I was carrying around. This ended up being a highlight experience of the trip.

Now that I have "drawn open the curtains" on these little truths, let me also talk about the best part of the trip.

The First day turned out to be the best day of the trip.

- The Bahubali Statue is definitely a must visit. The real time to visit it is during the Mahamasthakabhishek but that happens only once every 12 years and the last one happened in February 2018. So there's a long wait for the next. Read more about it here.

- Another 'have to' for history and ancient architecture buffs is the Hoysala Temples in Halebidu and the Chennakeshava Temples in Belur. These are beautiful complexes and rich with history. One thing we missed seeing is the Museum in the Halebidu Complex. Unfortunately it is closed on Fridays. I sincerely urge you to read this article explaining more about it before you decide to visit so you are aware of what you are seeing, because if you go there clueless about what each building is and their respective background stories, you will end up paying INR 200 at each of the complexes for a guide.