Vacation at last!

Finally I took a 4 day break and went to some place other than Bombay!! :-D Kaushik bhai aka the Big G (hereafter referred to as BG) had come down from Bombay and though he had planned his trip almost 2 months in advance, me being me, finalized our destination only about 24 hours before our journey :-)

So we headed out towards Coorg, a district in Karnataka. We boarded a bus for Madikeri (or Mercera) and reached there at 545 am! The first task was to find a place to stay and we went from 1 lodge to another, each one being more expensive than the previous one by a 100 bucks! Big g even went and tried for home stay with no luck! Eventually, we just took one and went and crashed!

The first destination we decided to cover was the Abbey Falls and time being a constraint, decided to take an auto. This is where BG showed his amazing bargaining skills and convinced the auto dude to take us to and fro for 25 less than what he wanted :-) Again out here, the auto dude asked me "Sir, you know Kannada". Standard reply: "Kannada gotilla!". And his standard response: "Hindi gotilla!!" :-D But unlike the auto dudes in Bangalore, he was a sporting chap and tried to converse with us in whatever little Hindi he must have picked up. We reached the falls, all set to go and splash in the cold water, and to our disappointment going near the falls was not allowed! Not a great start to our vacation! But we anyways decided to go as close as we could ( me encouraged by BG) and taking cue from us, lot of other people followed suit. And guess what? here also we bumped into the typical gujju family on vacation :-D After taking the necessary photographs we scooted from there and returned to base!

And I had one of most amazing thalis i have had ever. The owner of the hotel himself was taking and serving the order and was one of the most polite persons I have seen in this part of the world! We immediately left for Kushalnagar from where we took another auto to go to the Tibetan Monastery. When we reached there, some prayer was going on and there were tonnes of monks sitting there reciting in such sync, it reminded me of kids reciting poems in kindergarten!! But somehow felt good and peaceful out there. I directed BG to some monk and asked him to get some info as to how long the prayer would last and went off to explore the place. I returned about 15 minutes later to find him still chatting with the monk who seemed to have a bored expression on his face by now :-D When I joined them, the monk seemed relieved and quickly disappeared from there!

We roamed around for some more time, bumped into the same gujju family again! BG again began chatting with them while I like always vamoosed from the scene! Before returning, we decided to check out some shops. BG was looking for some particular bell which generates music when you rotate a wooden stick around it's base. There was this huge lady manning the shop who demonstrated how the thing works. Poor dude kept on trying for 5 mins, but the damn bell refused to produce any music! I tried for like 15 seconds and voila! beautiful music a la mozart filled the air !! ok just kidding, but the point is I succeeded :-D There was another female who got fed up with our attempts and gave us a meditation bowl to try with. And I am not exaggerating when I say this, but it took my pal all of 20-25 minutes to get some sound out of the bowl!! i tried a couple of times and didn't succeed, so the lady gave me a heavier bowl and this time it was definitely Mozart! The fat lady was in the meantime, trying in vain to guess my name! We were like...this should be fun! Most people, as I have written earlier, can't get my name even when I tell them, and she was going to try and guess it!!! hahaha! i tried to use this to get some discount on a t-shirt i liked, but soon found they didn't have a single one in my size! By now, BG had succeeded in producing some sound from the bowl and then in vain tried to bargain for it, so we moved on and tried the other shops, which as it turned out didn't have the so called bowls!

Anyways, we were planning to return to base camp when the auto dude suggested we go to Nisargdhama - it has deer park, elephant ride, the cauvery river flows there and also some cottages n trekking thing. We reach there at 6 and come to know that the place closes at 5! So the auto chap talks to the gate keeper(my guess is he told him that u can fleece these buggers!) and for double the entrance fee (10 being the normal rate) allows us to go in :-D we explore the place, find the deer park, see the cauvery and after an hour are out of there! It was 7ish and pitch dark and no auto in sight! We start walking on the highway barely able to see the road trying to stop any bus/auto which passed by without any luck! Finally we find an auto and reach Kushalnagar and back to Madikeri. The hotel where we had lunch had already closed, so we start our hunt for a place to eat and find this udupi joint which is open. Here I got another pleasant surprise when the waiter turned out to be a very nice and polite person. He patiently repeated the entire menu for us twice, when getting water for us ensured that it was clean, and said you are welcome when we said thank you!! I could not believe my ears when he said that!!

Day 1 ended with us timing the route for Raja's seat so that we could plan day 2 accordingly. Next day we reached there around 10ish and I witnessed one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen!! It was nature at it's best!! There was a light drizzle, a thin fog cover, cool wind and of the most breath taking views I have ever seen. You gotta see it yourself! We stayed there for almost an hour and reluctantly dragged ourselves out and on to some shopping where again BG demostrated his bargaining prowess. This time even I joined in and the shop keeper got so fed up of us that he told us to give whatever amount we wanted to :-D We jumped on such a generous offer and ended up buying so much that we had trouble carrying it around :)

Well we had by now decided to head to Mysore (not in our original plan) and took a bus to reach there. By the time we reached, we had just enough time to cover one place there and to my bad luck we decided on Vrindavan Gardens! Had heard a lot about that place and must say I was very disappointed by what I saw! They have not at all maintained the place and it seems to have lost all it's charm and beauty. The only saving grace was the musical fountain and I am glad to say, it compares well with the one at Bellagio, Las Vegas!

On returning to Mysore, our last stop was Hotel DasPrakash, where apparently dosas originated! Getting to that place was like another trek which I undertook grudgingly, but must say it was worth it. The food, especially the plain dosa was amazing! And then I tried out a couple of dessert items and they were yummy!! (neta, this is being written keeping you in mind ;-) ) Finally we took a bus back to "namma bengaluru" and landed here at 130am. And here I got to see the final part of BG's amazing prowess. The way he argued with the auto dudes was a lesson for any one who needs one in the art of bargaining! He managed to get us home for less than 1.5 times the auto fare , that too when they were demanding more than twice the normal :-D

The real adventure happened in the evening when BG's flight first got delayed by 5 mins then an hour, then 2 hours and eventually got cancelled and re-scheduled for the next day! We drove to the airport and he fought and fought and argued with the airline guys till they agreed to put him on a flight early next morning! We reached home and slept at 130 woke up at 530 and were again on our way to the airport by 6. Once again, I created a personal best by dropping him at the airport in 20 mins flat (distance of 15kms) and was home in another 20! BG eventually reached Bombay and I got back to the daily grind here!

-uv.

p.s. link to photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31949654@N00/