The magic of Coorg

I had a very relaxed long weekend (Sept 30th to Oct 2nd 2007). Went to Coorg, again (no, I can never tire of it!). The first day we were at my native village near Kushanalgar (read about that here). Once we left the village, we headed towards Somwarpet, another town. The drive was great! Long winding curves, surronding mountains and forests, just the sounds of water and chirping birds. Hardly any vehicles on the road! We stopped quite frequently to drink in the sights around. A long way from the awfully polluted cityscape, eh?  We even found an unused golf course on a hillock that had some fantastic views all around!! From Somwarpet (after dumping our luggage in a hotel), we went to the first unexplored waterfall in a village called Malhalli. Since the last 2 kms of the road had literally gotten swept away during the heavy monsoon this year, we had to park the car right there and trek up the remaining distance. As you are trekking up and almost reach the edge, you can hear roars of the Kumaradhara river and get a brilliant glimpse of the waterfall. It was not very clear due to the mist covering it. After waiting for a while, the mist cleared and we could see how glorious the waterfall was! We just couldn’t get enough of it. We trekked down a bit to catch a better look. We didn’t go all the way down upto the waterfall bed ‘coz it was too steep. The surrounding hills added to the whole effect. This is the river that flows right through the Bisle ghat after here and finally flows into one of the important holy places in Karnataka, Subramanya. It was so worth it, coming here. More so because there was no one else apart from us there (Except for a cowherd). So you thankfully don’t see the usual tell-tale signs of too many tourists (like paper cups, plastic covers, eatables etc).

From Malhalli, we headed back to Somwarpet. After a much needed hot dinner at a small officers’ ‘mess’, we crashed at the hotel for the night. The next day we went to the village of Doddamalte. This village is famous for it’s lake called Honnammana Kere. The lake is very very peaceful and the surroundings even more so. A small temple has been constructed right at the edge of the lake. The story goes that, in the olden days, this village was facing drought. As it was during that age, an astrologer (or soothsayer) gave the solution to the village people that the only way to beat the drought was, if a married woman gave herself up to the lake. So there was this woman ‘Honnamma’ who thinking this through decided to sacrifice herself so that the village did not have to face the drought anymore. She chose a time when her husband wasn’t at home and jumped into the lake. After her sacrifice, the village’s water problem was solved. Hence, in her memory, they named the lake after her and also constructed a temple for her. (In the grief of his wife’s death, her husband also committed suicide by trying to cross over from one hill to another on his horse). Well, this is how the legend goes! Adjacent to the lake, there were a couple of huge hill-type boulders that had some caves. So we climbed a couple of them…the view from the summit was, needless to say, wonderful!

From there, we headed towards the village Hegdemane. But we couldn’t reach there ‘coz of a couple of landslides. So we parked the car and walked up the remaining distance. An ancient temple amidst the cool green atmosphere. There was also the biggest ‘sampige‘ flower tree we’d ever seen. Really really huge! From there we went to another village called Garwale (not to be confused with Uttarakhand’s Garhwal area). My uncle had heard about a waterfall here called Napanda (which, more than likely was the river’s name, but I’m not sure). So we went looking for it, and after a lot of effort, finally we could hear the sound of water and lo and behold, we spotted a long, frothy river tumbling down the rocks. A perfect place to dive in and have a good time. Which is exactly what we did! Literally had to drag ourselves out of the water after more than an hour! Again, this place had absolutely no one else but us. Not only people, there were hardly any other vehicles that were using that road (this waterfall is right by the road). It’s such a joy (especially here in India) to find places that are not overly inhabited by people and where people haven’t carelessly spoilt the environment around. We were so happy to be listening to only the birds, the water, and of course our own voices! It felt like we were in another world altogether

That’s the magic of Coorg, it has so many tiny picture-perfect villages, waterfalls, forests and mountains, it’s very easy to plan multiple vacations there. Just keep driving around and don’t think of the usual touristy places. You’re bound to find some pristine sights like what we found! One of the main highlights of the trip has to be the scenic drive. I don’t think we drove anywhere at a stretch beyond, say, 20 mins. Had to stop, look around and gush about what a place we came to!!

Well, being back in Bangalore now, I miss the roads, the greenery, the mountains and the water. But anyway, it was one awesome weekend. Here’s to my uncle who made it all happen (he has an amazing talent of finding these kind of unexplored places, in fact he was the one who took us to Samse last year) and to hubby darling who tireless took to the wheel and made sure we had an enjoyable drive. Muaaaaaah!