Train to Mysore
Meeting my school friends after a few years, we booked a cab and reached Chennai Central railway station. We carried around 5 bags for a 4 days trip. After taking some selfies, I was filled with nostalgia about my final year college trip to Kerala where we started as the same from the central railway station. When the train arrived, we settled in our respective places and started to talk about our profession and lifestyle. We has some fun and meaningful talks and ended our night with a good sleep but not for long.
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| At Chennai central railway station |
A tiring bus to Madikeri, coorg
There is no train to reach Madikeri from Chennai. We had to stop at Banglore and board another train to reach Mysore. One can also book a train to Mysore from Chennai, but trains are not that frequent. It was around 5 am when we are stopped at Banglore and as it was the first time I am in Banglore, I thought of making a visit to Banglore again to explore. After some time we boarded our train to Mysore and in that, we continued our sleep until the sun showed up. I was awakened by the confusing landscape of Karnataka. The train journey is of more curves than another which I had done before. We started to play around with photos, had some fun, and music. I being a lover of train journeys, put up my headset, played my favorite songs, and started to watch the train curves from the doorway happily. When we reached Mysore, we had some breakfast, struggled to find our bus stop, and boarded the bus to Madikeri which was slow and tiring. Since I had a lot of time to spare, I subscribed to Spotify for a 7-day plan and started to download some favorite songs with the bare minimum network coverage.
Reaching our camp
Being a boy from Tamilnadu, I can easily differentiate between mountains and low-lying lands. In Karnataka, it was not the case. The roads we going up and down, there was no steep uphill drive. After a few hours when were about to reach Madikeri, I still couldn't believe that we were in western ghats. Once we reached Madikeri, we had our lunch near the bus stop and started to our camp - Jollyboys camping. I have made a separate blog about this story and if you didn't read that click here
Enjoying our kinder joy
After waiting for some time, a bus finally stopped by and it was dusk when we reached Madikeri. We had already booked a room over there and we settled down there peacefully. The room manager suggested using a food delivery app that is based on the Coorg locality for dinner. After freshening up and some talks it was a late night. We decided to go out and have some snacks since we are not that hungry. We stopped by a tea shop, had some tea and before leaving we asked the shop owner 4 Kinder joy in which he gave to us with a smile. We are kind of embarrassed at the moment and started eating it like a kid. I didn't get to eat it a few years back until then. After that, we saw a Chat shop that was about to close and had some snacks. With the toys got from Kinder joy, my friend started to play with the toy car he got as he really likes to play with small cars.
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| the toy car |
The room we stayed - Click Here
Trying to capture the Milkyway
The sky was so clear that night and I came to know that the Milkyway has appeared in the sky from the android app I have. The light pollution was low which was shown in the light pollution map. I finished my camera and tripod set up and tried to capture the Milkyway and ended up capturing the bright stars. It seems that the light pollution was fair enough to make it difficult for my camera to capture the Milkyway. I and my friend ended up shooting some stars and the moon until our body told us to have some sleep.
On our way to get lost
We had booked 2 two-wheelers to roam and explore Coorg. We woke up in the morning had our breakfast in the restaurant nearby reached our 2 wheeler rent shop to pick up our scooters. The shop is Coorg bike rentals. It has an affordable price and we took 2 scooters for 700 rupees each per day. We planned to go to Mandalpatti peak but it was quite late for us and it is not possible to reach the peak by 2 wheeler. We asked the shop person to suggest to us some good places to visit and he gave us the list of tourist attractions in Coorg. We filtered out and some places and we finally came up with a plan to visit places one by one. Since we had 2 - two-wheelers, we both added the destination in google maps separately and started our trip. From the shop to the main road, there was a one-way road in which both of us got lost in our ways. Since it's a one-way google map started to play around with us giving wrong directions to each of us to meet again. After a lot of confusion and phone calls among us, we finally met at the Madikeri main junction road which we were familiar with before.
A beautiful road to our adventure
We filled fuel in our scooters and started to our next destination, The Dubare elephant camp which was 28 km from Madikeri. The roads were so smooth and the weather was so pleasant. I enjoyed the roads all the way to our destination. When we reached there we expected more elephants and fewer humans, but it was the other way around. There were a lot of adventure activities other than the elephant camp. The place was very well crowded which we decided not to get affected by covid. We spent some time there watching people river rafting and an elephant crossing the river and started to our next destination, a place near the tea shop which we had on our way. Before reaching there we stopped by an ATV adventure ground. We had some fun and adventure over there riding the ATV bike even though it was costed pretty much.
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| dubare elephant camp |
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| Atv adventure |
Almost getting caught in a spiders web
Before
reaching the Dubare adventure camp, we had a tea break and found a beautiful pathway which we decided to visit back later. There was no one around and it was a way for the locals to harvest the coffee plantations. The pathway was like a Green carpet, it was like a fantasy land. The climber plants twisted themselves all over the tall standing trees. Being the one who walked fast into the pathway with almost curiosity, I nearly ended up getting into a situation where I get bitten by a spider or the spider getting all over me making me run all around embarrassingly. It was the biggest spider and the spider web which I have ever seen in my life. Once I figured out the invisible spider web in our pathway my body switched to an adrenaline mode and stopped later. After taking some pictures of the spider and the pathway we started to our next destination, The Golden temple.
The time when covid influenced our plan
We were actually running out of time to complete our whole trip in a day. To visit the Golden temple Monastery we had to skip our lunch. It took a half-hour to reach the monastery. We were excited to visit the monastery since the pictures posted on google maps were so beautiful and there were good reviews about it. I only got confused that whether we were in Nepal or Bhutan by the people over there. The temple gate was closed and we wondered why and asked the locals about the situation. They said that due to COVID the temple remained closed for a long time and no sooner the temple is going to open. I am heavily disappointed and I returned from there with a sad face thinking that we should at least reach the final place of the day. Since we had some time left to spare we had some Fries and Sandwiches for breakfast.
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| Namdroling Nyingmapa Monastery |
Chasing the sunset
It was about 3.30 pm and our next destination was Tala Kaveri, the origin of the river Kaveri. When I added the destination to google maps it showed us that it was around 60 km and we will reach there by 6 pm which is the closing time. We panicked and were in a rush. We have to cross Madikeri to make it to our destination. Our scooters weren't delivering much power and we went as much faster as we can. The roads were not all the same. We had to overtake busses on the way, carefully pass the blind corners and had to do some offroad. When it was around 5.30 pm we were only on the foothill of Tala Kaveri. The two other friends were so behind us, we missed their sight. Our only goal was to reach Tala Kaveri before it gets closed, otherwise, we would be in a valley of disappointment. We rushed up, made our uphill stretch of tight corners, and finally reached our destination. When we parked our scooter, we saw most of the people returning back from the temple. It was 5.55 pm and we ran our way amidst the crowd and reached the Tala Kaveri origin point. I drank the water it was so pure and it was an absolute satisfaction for finally reaching our goal, the destination of the day.
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| view from Tala Kaveri |
Returning from our destination with a great satisfaction
The other two friends made their way and when they were here the security of the temple started to tell visitors to return back as it was closing time. We took some selfies, landscape pictures and returned back slowly. We shared some of the adventures and experiences on the way. While we are about to start the weather started to become cold soon. I saw some clouds slowly making their way in between the mountains. We started slowly descending from the hill. We had some fun and some embarrassing moments on the way and when reached the foothill we stopped by for some tea. Having Tea in that weather and situation felt so pleasant for me. I noticed the tea shop owner speaking Malayalam and asked her whether she is from Kerala. She told that many Malayalees ( people from Kerala) live there as the place was near the border of Kerala and Karnataka.
A night ride of memories
After the tea break, we started to ride to our room stay. The night was so pleasant and cold. It will take around 2 hours to reach Madikeri for us. The road was so dark. There were not many villages near our waypoint. I and my friend started to speak about the pathway and lifestyle. We shared our work stories, tech stuff, love stories, and funny moments. During that time I was hit with the nostalgia of my college memories which I had missed, moments which I wanted to happen again. Memories always bring happiness and this ride to Tala Kaveri and the night ride turned to be a beautiful memory. I have a pictographic memory and seeing a picture takes me back to the whole story. Even though planned decisions give you comfort the unplanned things are those which make you learn and sometimes turn to be a beautiful memory.
Back to Chennai but not too soon
We reached the room stay and packed our stuff as we have a bus to catch that night. We have to catch the train to Banglore from Mysore as soon as possible. We boarded the bus at 9 pm and I slept there peacefully. My friends woke me up and when we're at Mysore it was midnight. We were waiting for the train and in the meantime, we started to take pictures which we thought would be creative. We soon became tired and came to know that the train will be delayed. We slept for some time in the passenger waiting hall and after 2 hours the train reached. We boarded had some sleep and reached Banglore and again boarded the train to Chennai. It was not so comfortable at all. Our seats were preoccupied with the people and we couldn't sleep as we were concerned about our bags being stolen. The journey was long and tiring. In the meantime, I and my friend continued to share our stories until we reached Chennai.
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| A time pass photoshoot |
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