Chikmagalur beckons

Mostly famous for its coffee (for the uninitiated, Cafe Coffee day, the famous and ubiquitous chain of coffee bars all over India is from Chikmagalur) and the Bhadra wildlife reserve, Chikmagalur (260 kms from Bangalore) was our destination for 6,7,8 and 9th of this month. I had heard of  a resort nearby (which we figured later that it was not so nearby afterall) which had a couple of treehouses for its guests. Wow! I’ve always wanted to stay in one. So off we went. Nice long drive with a lot of scenic places on the way. This place is about 50 kms from Chikmagalur and it has bad roads leading to it. So we took a good 1.5 hours from Chikmagalur to reach the destination. But it was quite worth it! The place was in the middle of nowhere…surrounded by the forests (Muthodi and Bhadra). It was actually a coffee estate amidst which they have built a huge resort. Thankfully it’s not very commercial and still retains an old world charm. The best part was when we landed there we were the only guests in the resort! Not that it would have mattered since the tree house was a little away from the cottages and I’d doubt anyone would have even heard us there (and vice versa) had we been screaming for help!!

 The tree house was much better than what we’d seen in pictures or heard from the staff when we’d spoken to them while booking. It was beautiful and right in the midst of trees and coffee plants. And it was open. Entirely. Roof covering and a ground beneath your feet and the sides of the tree house was completely open (except for a low log railing kind of thing). Insects and birds had a field day here! Thankfully the bed had a nice mosquito net and we were fine. It was  aproper house actually. We had a separate dressing room (that had a small cupboard), a bathroom, a balcony area, a hammock in the living area, a dining area at one corner of the living. It was perfect. This tree house is currently the number one place I’ve ever stayed in on a holiday. And it’s something else playing cards with just a lantern for company (and some insects n birds) in the night at the tree house. It just has 2 low watt bulbs and 2 lanterns for lighting. Except in the night (or was it early morning), I suddenly woke up to some loud sounds of rustling plastic. I figured some insect might be caught in one of our laundry covers…but it was scary and it was pitch dark…I could also hear crickets. Of course The Significant Other was fast asleep, and didn’t even hear my frantic calls of ‘where’s the lantern’. I finally found it but was scared to switch it on and find out what was actually inside the tree house. So I kept the lantern back and slept again!!  We woke up rather early due to a crazy number of birdcalls…it was almost as if we were caught in the middle of a cirlce of birds screeching…wonderful.  We spotted racket tailed drongos, sunbirds, asian fairy blue birds and a few more.

Next morning we just lazed around in the tree house and later went for a walk in the estate. Found lots of birds like the flower peckers, red whiskered bulbuls, oriental white eye, sunbirds, green bee eaters, parakeets etc. Though we could photograph only some of them. I’m sure we could have found more had we ventured deeper. The resort staff told us to go to the banks of the Bhadra river which was about 12 kms from there. We made a plan to go there the next day (which sadly did not happen)

We then shifted to a cottage since the tree house was booked for that night already. The cottage was rustic, minimal and on level ground with a great view. But guess what, we found more ‘wild life’ here!! A giant brown ferocious looking spider, snails, and other harmless ones! They had thoughtfully put up benches so that we could sit down there and enjoy the view. The only thing that marred the evening was the arrival of a team of corporate guests, 30 of them!! Obviously they made a lot of noise and left us regretting not being in the tree house. We wouldn’t even have heard them, had we still been there…Anyway the rest of the evening was also spent in lazing around and some games.

 The next day we went to a pond within the estate premises
and hung around there for a while. Our friends who wanted to gate crash our nice, quiet, romantic holiday arrived around 12 pm. Seven of them! Enough to scare all the animals and birds outta there!! Thankfully, the corporate team had left and it was just the 9 of us that day. We went to Muthodi sanctuary around 4 pm in a hired jeep. And came back disappointed and bruised because we didn’t spot anything but  a few deers, a couple of peacocks, and a couple of elephants from a far distance. The jeep drive had left our bodies craving for a soft bed (It was a rough 1 hr 15 mins journey each way from the estate to Muthodi)

 Once we were back at the resort, everyone wanted to rest for a while before the campfire started. Cold night and a warm campfire with some good food and drink and most impotantly good friends! We were sitting out there till about 3 AM…

Obviously due to lack of sleep the previous night, we all woke up quite late the next morning and instead of our initial plan of checking out from the reasort at 10 AM, we left at 1PM. Stopped in Chikmagalur for lunch and then headed back to Bangalore. Since it was quite late, we couldn’t stop over at Belur and Halebid on the way back. All in all a peaceful holiday amidst nature…as always it never fails to rejuvenate the mind, body and soul…