Kerala in Monsoon (August 15th 2008)

Schedule:
Start time (From Bangalore):12:30 PM August 15th
End time (Reached Bangalore) : 5:30 PM August 18th

Effort: Close to 28 hours of driving

Defects:
Took wrong route to enter Mysore: Lost 10 minutes
Took wrong decision to drive through Iritty – Virajpet (Coorg) – Mysore (Reversed back at Iritty) - Lost 2 hours
Took wrong decision to drive through Kabini - HD Kote - Mysore (Reversed the decision after looking at the road before Kabini) – Lost 4 hours

Distance and Height:
Total number of KMs traveled: 1056 KMs
Maximum height reached: 700 meters from sea level (Lakkidi)

Roads:
Number of Ghat roads: 2 (Lakkidi to Calicut and Kannur to Kalpetta)
Best Road: Kalpetta to Ooty (to reach waterfalls)
Worst road: From Karnataka boarder to reach Kabini – HD Kote – Mysore (reversed back after traveling for 3 kms in forest)

Energy:
Petrol consumed: 65 Liters
Lowest petrol price: 47 Rs/ liter at Mahe belongs to Pondicherry (between Calicut and Kannur)
Highest Petrol price: Rs. 62/liter (Power, at Kalpetta)

Books:
52 weekends from Bangalore (outlook)
Eicher all India road map
India (lonely planet)

Main Places:
Tea plantation, waterfalls and valley in Waynad
Kappad Beach in Calicut (Vasoc da Gama landed here in 1498)
St. Angelo’s fort at Kannur
Talacherry fort
Scenic views from ghat road

Electronic gadgets:
Delphi GPS V1.2 (from map my India)
IPod
Laptop (electronic data of map and hotels)
Two cameras (DSLR and Normal)
Of course mobiles (Airtel and Hutch to have wide coverage)

Story Starts here....

Once again it is Kerala. We went to Waynad last year (2007) June. But this time we planned to extend to Calicut – Talacherry – Kannur and back to Bangalore. I did not decide till 15th August morning. We decided at 10:30am and packed the luggage in one hour. Swapna (Usha’s sister) and Shekhar (Swapna’s husband) joined with us. We started from home at around 12:00 noon. Reached Bangalore outskirts by 1:15 pm. We skipped Kamath for lunch as there is heavy rush. At around 2:45 pm stopped at Amaravathi (After Mandya) restaurant. After lunch started again at 3:40 pm. Sailed through Mysore with ease as there is less traffic. Took the root of Nanjungud – Gundlupet. We did not stop anywhere just to make sure that we will cross Bandipur (Karnataka) - Muthunga (Kerala) forest before it becomes dark. Spotted deers on the way. Could not see elephants this time. We reached Sulthan Bathery at around 6:10 pm. After Tea at Isac’s Regency we reached Kalpetta at around 7:15 pm. Without much difficulty we booked hotel (Woodlands) at Kalpetta. Had dinner at the same place. Service is not up to the mark but food is good.

On August 16th morning we started to Calicut after breakfast at Woodlands. Breakfast (buffet) is not so great. It’s Idly, Dosa and breads. On the way to Calicut, a board towards waterfalls engaged our eyes. Took a left turn from there and drove through tea plantation. Reached Kanthanpara waterfalls through a very narrow road (right turn from NH212). Drive from here is little difficult as the road is narrow and bumpy. From main road water falls is 4 kms. Spent 30 minutes at falls. Again from the NH 212 went towards Ooty side. After 9 Kms reached Sun raise vally. The view is breath taking from here. One can witness very narrow water way and small water falls. After this returned back in the same road to go to Calicut. On the touched Vythri, Lakkidi (just read that it is the place which gets second highest rainfall in the world). It was raining the very time we reached Lakkidi. From Lakkidi the ghat road starts to reach Calicut. As soon as we left Lakkidi the scene changed. Clouds almost started touching us and we stopped for tea. Though we could not get tea, adjusted with Omelette. Time in the watch shows around 1:30 pm. The ride down is bit hectic with many curves. Reached Calicut around 2:45 pm and directly went to Malabar Palace (Opposite Railway station). Here service is good but food is not good. After dinner directly went to Kappad beach. This is the place where Vasco Da Gama landed in 1498. The beach hasn’t been quite developed. Art gallery was in the list but good not go because of time factor. From here started directly to Kannur. On the way to Kannur near Payyoli (PT Usha’s place) car lights gave trouble at 7:15 pm. With emergency lights on drove for 5 Kms. First time I was stopped by Police for Alcohol check. After clean chit
thankfully found a car mechanic shop on the way at around 8:00 pm. It took 30 minutes for the repair. On the way to Kannur touched Mahe (Pondicherry) at aaorund 9:00 pm. There are lot of liquor shops. And petrol is cheap by 10 Rs/Liter. Filled the petrol there directly reached Kannur at around 10:00 pm. Here the hotel is Malabar residency. Decent hotel. In the middle of sleep, some how had dinner. Here food is not so good. After breakfast on August 17th went to Arakkal museum and St. Angelo’s fort on the banks of Kannur beach. This fort if built in 15th century and changed many hands. This commands the view of sea and the land. After this we went to Tellicherry fort and Church. Time is around 12:30 pm. Next plan is to reach Bangalore by August 17th night. I planned to take an alternate route through Iriity – Virajpet (Coorg) – Hansur – Mysore – Bangalore. I do not know that I am doing a mistake. Though GPS helped me with the routing, the estimation quite went wrong with the quality of road. After reaching Iritty locals advised us to not to take Virajpet road as it is not motorable for Cars but okay for busses. Then took right turn from there t reach Mananthavady. Again here I did a mistake and took the road that goes through Kabini – HD Kote – Mysore. As soon as we left Kerala and entered Karnataka the road became …… I do not have words to describe. I took a turn back after travelling for 3 KMs again with the advice from locals that the fate of the road continues for another 30 KMs. On top of it tyre half flat (thankfully it's not puncture). It would be scary to have flat tyred car in the middle of jngle in night.

Now we decided to take Mananthvady - Kalpetta - Sultan's Battery - Mysore - Bangalore road. However by the time we reached Kalpetta it is 7:00 pm on Sunday and we decided stay back there in stead of driving in the jungle road in the night time. We stayed at Isac's Regency for that night. Next day morning Breakfast is not so good (Only I had because I felt it is difficult to drive without food). We reached Gundlapet at around 11:00 am and stopped for Break fast. Passed through Mysore and stopped at Kamath's for Lunch at around 2:15 pm. Finally reached Bangalore on Monday evening at 4:45 to Bangalore.

Coorg (May 23rd 2008)

Coorg is there in my list for quite some time. Finally we made it over this weekend (May 23rd). This time it is just our family (Usha, Srujana and I) travelled. Because of project issues, I had to stay back late in the office till 9:30 pm on May 22nd. I had to postpone my original plan of starting early morning at 5:00 am. After breakfast we started at around 9:15 am from home. Nothing write about Bangalore traffic. By the time, we reached outskirts of Bangalore it was 11:30 am. This time we skipped Kamat's Lokaruchi and tried lunch at Indra Dhanush. We did not like the food and I would not recommend to any one. This comes after Ram Nagar on the right hand side (Bangalore to Mysore). After Lunch we started at around 2:00 pm. Luck did not favour us. There was road block by some political party just after Sri Ranga Patnam. We were stranded for 1 hour in in the midst of the traffic. Again started from there around 4:00 pm. Took some time in Mysore to connect to Hunsur road. This is first travel after I bought GPS. GPS also failed to show correct route. I took the help from locals after that it is joy ride. Road from Mysore to Peria Pattanam is great with low traffic. There is a stretch of 2.6 KMs bad road at Peria Pattanam. To cover this it took 20 minutes.
Our initial plan is to stop at Bylekuppe and proceed to Madikere. Because it is becoming late (we reached Bylekuppe at 5:00 pm) we decided to go to resort first. On the way we stopped at Nisargadhama (just after Kushal Nagar) for coffee break. Again bad patches till we reached Madikere. It is 7:30 pm and almost dark and complete opposite to Bangalore crowd. I could not find single person on the road. Capitol Village resort is 5 kms from Madikere. We had scary drive from there on the narrow road without any people in the visibility and no lights. The approach road to resort is more scary. Anyways finally we made to the resort by 7:40 pm. We got ready for dinner by 8:15 pm. Dinner is Rs. 100 buffet and it is good.
Morning as usual I woke up at 5:00 am and looked out side window. The resort is located almost middle of forest kind of environment. It is dark and there are lot of trees. I spent 30 minutes to clean the car and we started at 6:15 am (on 24th May) to reach Raja's seat. The place that looked scary in the night was very pleasant now, after a brief drive, we reached Raja's seat at 6:25. The view is breathtaking.we spent about 20 minutes and from there we left for Thalacauvery,the birth place of river cauvery. We reached Tala cauvery at around 8:30 am. The road is good other than little patches for 4 to 5 kms in the beginning. Someone should drive very carefully because it is ghat road, narrow and there are many curves.

The view of Brahmagiri hills is great from Talacauvery. Though we did not dip into water, there are lot of devotees did holy bath. We reached back resort at 10:15 am. Breakfast got over and we had to satisfy with bread and omelet. Later we attempted forest walk with the help of a local guide, but did not enjoy much because of torching heat. We came to back to resort had lunch and took rest for one hour. I had a nice sleep. While vacating the resort, I asked the manager to reach Kushalnagar. He drew a nice map and also pointed Duberi elephant camp. This time we took Siddapur road and the road is fantastic. However it is narrow with lot of S curves and not advisable to go beyond 50 kmph. We reached Duberi at around 4:15. We need to cross cavery to reach the other side Ferry costed us rs. 20 per head other wise the elephant show is free (from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm). It’s good experience to Srujana.

We started at 5:00 pm from there and reached Kushal Nagar at around 5:30 pm. Bylekuppe is Tibetan settlement and the little google search revealed that they have been there from 60s. I also spoke with them. The person I spoke born and brought up at Bylekuppe it self and never went to Tibet till now. They looked fairly happy and smiling. I also happened to see monks playing cricket and that looked different. Recently I read that Budhist monks are the inventors of marshal arts and when they moved from India, they also took these arts along with them. And now they are playing cricket!!! There are total 5 camps in Bylekuppe. This is nice different place and suddenly you get a feeling you are entering a foreign country without Visa and Flight.

We left Bylekuppe after doing little shopping at around 7:15 pm. Our next destination is Mysore where we had to attend Ranjini’s (Tesco friend) marriage. The journey from Byle kuppe to Mysore is fairly good (I was psychologically ready to face that 2.6 Kms bad stretch). We reached Mysore at around 8:30 pm. Next day morning we attended marriage and reached Bangalore at around 4:45 pm in the evening. Because of election results there was slow traffic. But otherwise the journey was good.

Best Practices:

Finally GPS I bought and used GPS
Pre decided on what to see
Booked the resort before starting (just before starting)
Carried India route map and 52 weekends book

Lessons learnt:
GPS is not so useful. Still I depended on locals for directions
Friday started bit late and that bit late was converted to too much late because of traffic problems
Should carry important medicines and a torch.

Somanathapura

This is memorable travel for bad reasons. The roads are bad, it's painful to travel in mid summer in dusty roads. We started from Bangalore at around 6:15 am. Picked up Harish and Neelima on our way. Swapna and Shekhar also joined with us. This time we took Kanakpura road from Banashankari and joined NICE road to connect to Mysore road. We stopped for Breakfast at Kamakth on the way (Rs. 60 per head). Ofcourse from here we made multiple mistakes.
Mistake #1: In fact we planned to go to Bhimeshwari fishing camp. But Somanathapura is in our pending wish list. So we planned to go there first and on the return we planned to reach Bhimeshwari.
Mysore is good. We took left turn to Malavalli. One interesting thing here is the Sunday cattle market. On a stretch of close to one KM, there are many cows, buffaloes for sale.
Mistake #2 : We did not ask anyone for directions. We travelled 6 Kms extra instead of taking right turn to Somanathpura.
We took an U-turn and came back. The roads are pathetic and they are in such bad shape, I do not recommend any one to go to this place. A stretch of 19 Kms took more than 90 minutes. Finally reached the temple at 12:30.
Without any doubt, temple is great and in the similar (Hoyasala) style of Belur, Halibedu.

Mistake#3: We avoided the road that we took to reach Somanathpura and took one more road, which goes to Talakad assuming that, new road will be better. In fact it is worse than the previous road. After doing many enquiries, finally we reached Talakad (it is not in our list). Spent 30 minutes there. The place is very crowded. We started from Talakad at around 3:15 pm (no lunch).

Mistake#4: We asked for directions to go to Bhimeshwari, some one showed a narrow road (right turn while coming back from Shivana Samudram to Malavalli). But after travelling for 10+ kms we realised that it will not take us to Bhimeshwari.

Again came back to original road. Finally, we took a right turn on to reach Kanakpura and on the way saw a board which says 19 km to Bhimeshwari. By the time we exhausted fully and decided to reach bangalore asap to catch up with Monday blues.

PS: The roads are so bad, after two days Neelima said, she is still feeling like as if she is walking on the clouds. There is always next time and we will do it better with a smile!!!

Yelagiri Hills

After postponing for two times, finally we made to Yelagiri hills. In simple words, Roads are fantastic, journey is great, Place is cool and hotel is poor.

Prasanna and family supposed to join us but they had to change the plan to Nagarhole because of unavoidable reasons. Phani and family joined with us. We started from Bangalore on Sunday morning (6th April, 2008) at around 8:00 am. Bangalore- Chennai highway is great road to drive (finally I stared enjoying driving!!) We stopped for breakfast at Hotel Renaissance Grand just after Hosur. It's Rs. 125 plus taxes per head for Buffet Breakfast (10:00 am). Idly, Dosa, Juice, Fruites, Ommlette, boiled eggs, Aloo Parota etc. are available. Food is good. I felt worth for money. Don't get stopped by this. Read more...there are better options.

Little stumbled to find the diversion road to Yelagiri at Vanyambadi. The right turn to Yelagiri comes just after toll gate at Vanyambadi (below the second bridge). After coming out of NH, still the road (SH) is good. Again we had problem in finding the left turn to Yelagiri on Jolarpet road. We had to take an U turn and travel back for 2 KMs.

Finally reached Yelagiri at around 12:30 pm. It's first time for me drive on Ghat road. And it is good learning experience. There are 14 HPB (Hair Pin Bends) and the road is maintained very well unlike Ooty Ghat road.

We stayed at Hotel Hills. Rs. 2000 per for a super deluxe room, sounded bit costly to me. In a similar place like Horsely Hills (AP Boarder) we can get good accommodation for just Rs. 1000. In fact compared to the service and facilities that the hotel offered 2000 is at very higher end. Probably ideal price could have been around Rs. 800 to 1,200. None of the hotel staff can understand English.

We went for lunch at around 2:00 pm. Service was very poor and it took close to 45 minutes to serve very cold food. At 3:30 we started our sight seeing. I could not recollect the place name but we drove through very narrow roads and villages and spent some time in a well maintained park (has a small lake). After this we went to a village called Mangalam which has National Silk research center. As it is Sunday, it is closed and we could not do much there. I think the star attraction of Yelagiri is lake. We enjoyed the boating and cup of tea after boating. Our kids enjoyed the the Park.

Reached back hotel around 7:30 pm. After dinner at 9:30, planned for what to do tomorrow morning, Next day being Ugadi (7th April), we planned to each back Bangalore before lunch. Early morning on 7th I woke up at 5:00 am and got ready by 5:30 am and went out alone with my camera. It is quite peaceful, calm. But could not capture any photo because it is still dark. I came back at 6:00 am and all of us vacated the hotel at 6:30 am. We started back at 6:45 am. It is pleasure to enjoy misty morning and a great view from the hill. Driving down on Ghat road is good experience. After that the drive is very smooth and we stopped for break fast at Ananda Bhavan. This before reaching Hosur and comes on the right hand side (need to take U turn while coming from Chennai to Bangalore). It is worth for money and food is great!!! Especially Ravva Kesari and Onion Dosa. Total bill for 4 of us is Rs. 250 compared Rs. 650 at Hotel Renaissance. We reached back Bangalore at around 11:00 am. This time at Attibere, we took right turn to Sarjapur and again the road is good.

Thanks to Phani for settling the accounts very quickly in the car it self.

Bangalore to Shivana Samudram

This is smiling travellers debut travel. Shivana Samudram is 150 KMs away from Bangalore (Bangalore- Maddur - Malavalli - Shivana Samudram). There is one more route through Kanakpura. But Some one said that road is not so great.
Soujanya and Mehar came with us (Usha, Srujana and I), Prasanna and family came in other car. We started from my home at 7:10 am. We met Prasanna on the way at RV college. We stopped for break fast at Kamath. Rs. 60 per head break fast is worth for the money. But make sure to ask for one more idly or dosa as the servers looked very conservative. Otherwise it's a great place for Breakfast.
At Maddur take a left turn (there is a board which says Shivana Samudram 44Kms). From here the road is not so great. There are very bad patches occasionally. Do not forget to stop just before Malavalli for a view of Green fields on one side and big lotus pond on the other side of the road.
Reached Shivana Samudram at around 12:10. We had a good view of water falls as the crowd is relatively less. Place looked dangerous with very steep rocks. There are many sign boards which caution curious (Oh!!! no.....this place is not for Tescoites) visitors.
It's magnificent color combination of blue sky, black rocks, Green trees and white water. No artist can beat nature's creativity. It is treat to eyes to see very tiny water ways formed out of water droplets that are created by big water falls.
While coming back, we though of going to Talakad, but after thinking about traffic in Bangalore after 5 pm, dropped that idea. Of course there is always next time for travel.
On the way back while Prasanna went on the usual road, we thought of experimenting with NICE road which showed direction to Hosur road. The road is amazing and we were able to touch the maximum speed that our car can go. But our pleasure abruptly ended along with the road. Very bad patch led us to Bannerghatta road. And it took close to 65 minutes to reach Silk Board junction from there. Finally we had dinner at Golconda Chimney (on airport road). It is nice (thank fully this time it ended more predictably with Coke) food. And we are back home at 9:30 pm.

Best Practices:

• We took India map with us
• Two ipods (continuous music)
• Started before 8 am
• Carried spects and cap

Lessons Learnt:

• Would have done more research on the place.
• Do not depend on local people for directions. They may not know the place. Worst to worse..they would have not visited that place.
• With proper planning, would have covered Talakad.
• Buy GPS or state map before starting for next travel
• Carry food if it is one day journey and if there are no monkeys at that place