To commemorate our last New Year’s ride to Hogenekkal falls, the thoughts were about doing another ride for this year as well. Since we had a full weekend this time, the plan was to ride to a remote place from the city and celebrate the New Year there. After so much of ground work, we narrowed the destination to be Coorg. Read thru a lot of impressive blogs and travelogues and collected handful of information to proceed with the trip, which gave us the thought not to restrict the ride within the weekend and planned to start mid day of Friday and come back by Sunday night to Bangalore. As only 5 of us were there, we didn’t opt for any resort/ home stay in Madikeri, took the help of a colleague who is a native coorgi and managed to book the accommodation in a lodge in Kushal nagar.
Day 1- 12/30/2011:
Started from house at around 3 PM, the first stop was at Outer ring road, Vrindhavan tech village to pick my roommate from his office and continued to ride on. The starting stretch was a little buggy till we cross all the heavy traffics of the city and enter the nice road from Bannerghatta road. Beyond that was a little peaceful ride all along the Mysore road, SH17. Took a little tea break before Ramnagara for sync up of all the 3 bikes and proceeded further. The next stop was near the Srirangapatna to check the routes. It was really handy to have a GPS in mobileJ, used the technology and found the route and followed the GPS completely till we reached the Hensur road via Ring road in Mysore. By the time we reached there, hunger started striking us. Had a quick dinner in a dhaba in Mysore and headed on. The route till this point was a well known one for all of us, but we don’t have any idea how it’s going to be further. Adding to that, this is the first time that we all ride thru in late evenings and night. It was kind of exciting to ride thru a new route in a new wayJ. All were completely dependent on the GPS this time. Luckily the road till Hensur was really good. It was a neat 4 lane road which eased our ride and could proceed in a faster way than expected. Post that it was a two lane road till Kushal nagar. Fortunately there was less traffic that we could zip thru to reach Kushal nagar at around 10 PM. Got into a Café Coffee day and munched something before reaching the lodge. Had a chit chat for a while and slept off with high dreams of site seeing the next day.
Day 2- 12/31/2011:
As with every trip, this time also there was a delay in the morning to start from our rooms, finished the breakfast at around 9:30AM and rode forward to abbey falls. The first disappointment started here for us.
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| Abbey Falls |
The expectations from our end were too much, that we didn’t even spend half an hour in the falls after seeing it. It was a big let down to start with the trip!! The next destination was to get into Madikeri town. One convincing fact was that, the road from Kushal nagar to Madikeri town was really good to ride. Reached madikeri town at around 11:45 AM and went to the fort and government museum.
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| Commisioner Office, Madikeri |
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Again the fort was not that great as we thought of, yet managed to click a few snaps out there and had the lunch at east end hotel. The food was not that expensive and good as well. Next destination was Talacauvery, which is about 45kms from Madikeri town, en route is the Bhagamandala temple and Triveni sangama. The next in the package to disappoint us was the Sangama. To all our surprises, the Triveni sangama doesn’t seem to be neat and tidy also. Don’t know if that’s cos of our choice of season. We expected to see a big merger of 3 rivers (Cauvery, Kannika and forgot the other one), but it was just a small pond kind of a place which was the so called holy sangama!! K. All were completely disappointed at this time, as nothing turned out to be good in our way so far. Still proceeded with a little hope that the Talacauvery would be a worth visit, or rather left with no option as we are just 8KM away from there. Continued to ride in the bumpy road and reached talacauvery. That was much better than the rest. It was a serene and a calm place.
Spent close to an hour there, clicked a lot of photos of the place and the people and resumed with our return journey. We wanted to reach back madikeri at any cost before dark, as the route we came till here was really horrible, it was a complete 38km bumpy road, hardly a few meters of stretch had a good road. Managed to reach back Madikeri per plans at around 6PM, and continued to head back to Kushal nagar.
The ride from Madikeri to Kushal Nagar was not as smooth as it was in the morning. First it was pretty dark to ride thru the ghat sections, and secondly it started raining as well. We somehow managed - as we had a lot of troubles with the visibility- to reach back the lodge by 7:30 PM. Had dinner in a nearby hotel and had a big discussion about the flop plans of the day and slept off J. It was indeed very tiring and unsatisfactory the end of day, two reasons one the roads being pathetic and the other even after crossing all the hurdles, the spots weren’t any impressive. This made us all fall asleep before the New Year starts J
Day 3- 01/01/2012:
Started pretty much early the next morning at around 8:30AM and directly headed to Dubare elephant camp, which is around 16 KM from kushal nagar. One has to cross the river Cauvery via boat to reach the other bank of the river, where the elephant camp is. The boating charge is Rs.20/- (to and fro) and after reaching there, Rs.20/- has to be paid as an entry fee. This is the place, where we are allowed to interact with the elephants you can touch it, help it in taking bath, feed them and take good snaps posing with themJ. The river was in its pure form and that was very inviting for a bath. So all jumped into the river, took a bath in holy Cauvery. This is the only time when we enjoyed much in the tripJ and were satisfied that the purpose of the trip is met.
Had breakfast in a hotel there in that place itself and headed back to lodge. Vacated the rooms and started back to Bangalore. The most important thing which we missed was the Golden temple in Kushal nagar, and other thing listed in many blogs was Cauvery Nisargadharma. Keeping in mind the traffic on our way back to Bangalore, we took the decision to skip these two and headed back to Bangalore. With a few breaks in between for lunch at Mandya, then at Maddur for the famous maddur vada, we reached back home by 7:30PM
To conclude, the trip rating was good only for the ride we enjoyed all the three days. From my personal opinion, Coorg doesn’t have any good places as we read thru in blogs, the weather was not that cold either. They completely mislead us and created so much hype and expectations that we came back with disappointment. May be a home stay in Madikeri with a large group of friends could give a different experience.
Trip in a nutshell
Number of days: Two and half
Bikes in the ride: CBR250R, R15, CBZX
Route taken: Bangalore -> Srirangapatna -> Ring road Mysore -> Hensur -> Kushal nagar -> Madikeri
Distance covered: 685 KM (Round trip including the all places visited)
Places Visited: Abbey falls, Fort in Madikeri town, Govt. Museum, Bhagamandala temple, Triveni sangam, Talacauvery, Dubare elephant camp.
Places Not visited: Golden temple, Nisargadhama.
Accommodation: Hotel Iceberg (Rs.5000/- for 5 people for 2 days)
