Coorg Trip - January 2012

In January 2012, I started planning for a trip some where near by bangalore for couple of days. This trip is primarily to take my newly married brother & his wife out. Initially decided to go to Yercaud as it is possible two day destination trip. After confirming with my brother, booked two rooms in one of the resort in Yercaud. While casually browsing through the internet, got to know about Coorg district in Karnataka. Coorg has been in my list for quite a while. So, decided to dig more on the travel details for Coorg. Coorg seems to be possible destination for us and hence started finalizing the home stays. I got a big list of home stays and finally decided on "Victorian Veranadaz" near Kadagadal in Madikeri.

Mode of Travel : Road, My car i20.
No of people - 4 adults + 1 kid.
No of days - 3 days

Se started the journey at 6 AM from Bangalore. I took the Nice room to reach Mysore road. Mysore road as usual is full of traffic and could not do much of speed. We had our breakfast near Maddur and continued our journey. We have not taken the right at Srirangapatna to reach Hunsur road and continued till the Mysore ring road junction. Took a right turn in the junction and continued to reach the hunsur-mysore road junction. Took a right again to travel towards Madikeri.

On the way towards Madikeri, we visited few tourist spots.
1. Tibetian Settlement - Small detour from the Hunsur - Kushal nagar road (one km before Kushal Nagar) will take to Tibetian settlement. We spent about an hour in the temple area and in the nearby shopping complex.
2. Kaveri Nisargadhama - A small island created by Kaveri river. It is about couple of kms after Kushal Nagar while travelling to Madikeri. Good place to spend time. It is covered by high bamboo woods and there is a deer park, rabbit park and elephant ride inside. Reaching the island is through a hanging bridge. It is a nice place and we spend more than an hour in this place.

After visiting all these places, we reached the home stay by 4 PM. This home stay is little inside and it took about 30 mins to reach the homestay. Host, Thimmiah has given all the necessary directions to reach his place easily. After refreshing ourself quickly, we started towards Madikeri town. We got little late and could not catch the sunset in Raja's seat. We spend about an hour there. We had a joy ride in the toy train as well. After dinner, travelled back to the home stay.

After a good sleep, we had a excellent Coorg style break fast in the homestay. Our second day started with a trip inside the estate. Our host, Thimmah has taken us into the estate. He showed the different type of plantations, water holes and other things inside the estate. It was an interesting trip. We started towards Abhey falls and reached their in an hour. Road condition is very bad till Abhey falls. After a tiring walk down slope, reached the falls. Good amount of water is there in the falls. We can only see the falls and there is no way to take bath here.

It is difficult getting lunch in Madikeri as all the restaurants are filled with crowd. Finally managed to get lunch in a restaurant after waiting for more than an hour. We purchased some Coorg honey and coffee powders before getting back to the home stay. We had a good dinner in the home stay and went to sleep early.

We woke up little early on the third day and started our walk through the estate in the early morning hours. It was pleasant walking inside the plantation in the early morning with a good cloud cover. After the breakfast, started our journey back towards Bangalore.

On our return journey, took the other road towards Dubare to reach Kushal Nagar. We were late to Dubare and hence we could not catch the elephant bath & feeding activities. We have seen few elephants from the shore. We reached Kushal Nagar from Dubare and started to travel towards KRS (Brindavan Gardens). We had our lunch near KRS and reached KRS by 4 PM. We spend about an hour and half near the fountains and started our travel back to Bangalore by 6 PM.

It was a good, refreshing trip. We enjoyed our first ever home stay experience.

Food :

We had two breakfast & one dinner at Home stay is good. We enjoyed Coorgi style food. We felt that a little more varieties in the food would have been good but nothing to complaint about.

We had a dinner and lunch at "Rain Tree" restaurant near town hall in Madikeri. We had nice dinner the previous day. But lunch on Sunday in Madikeri seems to be a difficult one. Every restaurant is full and we have to wait long to get a table. We spend more than two and half hours for our lunch in Rain Tree. Waiting time is annoying and the food quality & quantity is also bad for the lunch.

Home Stay :

Victorian Verandaz is the name of the home stay we stayed in. Rooms are comfortable and neat. Bathrooms are maintained well. We booked both the rooms in the home stay. There is a big Veranda in front of the rooms and we spent most of our time there. Thimmiah and his wife, Diana are excellent hosts. We were overwhelmed by their hospitality.

Road Condition :

Road condition is pretty good through out except for the Mysore ring road.