Coorg - The Scotland of India

My friend walking amidst the tall coconut trees of the resort.

                Weekends, as a universal truth, one knows are only 52 in a year and one would definitely not like to waste it lazily at home unless one doesn't really have anything to do. And in those 52 are such weekends called as long weekends, the blessed ones, where the adjacent weekday say a Friday or Monday or both are a holiday. One can now imagine the endless scope of ideas to explore over such long weekends. Well, we picked one of those weekends and did the last minute planning for camping, trekking and road trip to Coorg, a very famous hill station in Karnataka. 

                 I must say, unplanned trips or last minute trips are the best ones and so was this one. One of our friend hired a Innova and another friend booked the resort for camping and trekking. It was some 240 km drive from Bangalore and a very calm, safe journey to the resort. We reached just around the trekking time which was scheduled at 11 am. Now, disclaimer, the trek (3hrs) takes place only once a day for all the groups staying in the resorts/camps as the guide can take all of them only once. Luckily one of the group hadn't arrived in time and we had all the time in the world till the other group arrived so we selected our tents, did rifle shooting, had lunch and relaxed for quiet a while. After an hour or so the other group arrived and some of us were thrilled that now we would finally start our trek while some of us wanted to relax and take a short nap. We didn't allow anyone to chill though and started our trek at around 3 pm in the afternoon.

Our camping tents..

The Trek-

All set for the trek..

                 The guide, a young man under his 30s, was going to take us all the way to the top of a hill wearing normal slippers! Only an experienced person can do that! Well we all folks, some 12 of them started walking along the route he was taking us.I assumed it would be a normal, straight walk with lots of zigzag turns till the top but I was totally wrong.

The first uphill climb which was not even 10% of the total trek itself turned out to be very exhausting and few of our friends started giving up. They wanted to go back and wait for us at the base. The guide told us that this was nothing and there is more to go, somehow all got convinced and started walking ahead. It was beautiful, I was enjoying as we were climbing though panting and stopping with short breaks I was loving it. The view around was simply getting wonderful. The dense forest, the tall trees, the beautiful sunny weather and we all together. 

                  As we further climbed uphill we experienced the physical and emotional limits of our body to simply stop at a point and go back or as the guide kept going we followed the suit.. That was the magic.. we could go on..Push your limits.. you know you can do it. 9/10 kms was the target!

After the first stop..

                We climbed and climbed enjoying mother nature and breathing fresh air happily when suddenly there came a point where we had an adrenaline jump! Leeches! Haa.. leeches attacking our ankles, legs, shoes at an alarming rate in the form of a battalion.. never seen before such an army! All climbing on us and sucking blood thus getting larger in size and scarier at sight.. All of us were just scraping the leeches attached to skins as if it were part of us with salt.

Blood, Leeches and Fear all came at once! Will we survive?

And we survived!

           I had carried salt bottle along with me. From past experience with leeches in a trek at Chikmagalur I learnt the great use of Salt thus carrying for this trek turned out to be a boon in disguise for all.. 
          After the horrendous battle against leeches sacrificing our blood and time, we were back on track! Nothing could deter us now that we had won and conquered so much.. the destiny was not far. The blood pumping at 190 BPM had started to calm down as we ascended slowly while the mist and cold breezes blowing across our sweaty faces were soothing us. We found some different species of ants, harmless even though huge in size and blue in color on the way up. Happy!
         The moment we reached the top we were all smiles and click, click, click, all went ga ga with the sight of fog all around and nothing to disturb us. No phone calls, no city traffic and no tension.

At the top

This was it. 

Bliss! 

This was what we came for.

View from the top

Calm, peaceful, serene, green, beauty of mother nature embracing us even though we keep harming her in various ways. 

View while coming down

            People travel to such places to be away from the hustle bustle of city life, taking a break and indulge themselves in nature as much as one can. It was one of the best experience of life forever etched in our memory.

On the way down to the base

          

Huge path dug up at the top

            We also saw huge path dug up on the hill from top to bottom and reason was elephants (Pic on right). Elephants should not cross from one side of the hill to the other and damage trees or create havoc. This is sad, tampering with natural resources and disturbing the environment of surrounding inhabitants. This would create even more havoc. Trees should be protected and natural habitats around it. Imagine if such beautiful places also vanish over a period of time where would we go in future for a break? Love our very own mother nature, we owe so much to her and we ought to keep taking care of her.

The Coorg trip was amazing at the end of the day and we reached home safely with lots of memories the next day. We couldn't visit other places in and around Coorg to experience more of Scotland of India but we surely would return for it later. Till then we all were looking forward to our Sunday to laze, relax and prepare for the Monday blues.

Resort/camping Location: Coorg Kotekaad Dreams, Nangala Village, Bittngala Post, South Coorg

Booking: Booked via Thrillophilia

Cost per head of camping: 1800 INR including breakfast+lunch+dinner, bonfire, rifle shooting, boating, trek.

Distance: - Around 255 kms. Starting point: Indiranagar, Bangalore

Transport:- Hired Innova from Savari.com and total cost was around 5000 INR (to and fro Bangalore - Coorg)