Coorg – The hill Station known for its Coffee Plantation
24 th December 2020 , Christmas and New year was just around the corner. Everyone was waiting for new year with a hope of getting rid of coronavirus pandemic which had already ruined the entire year in all sense.Travel to most of the places was restricted, but it was getting a bit normalized as it came to end of year.
So, by taking minimal risk and to get rid of boredom stuck inside rooms for most part of the year, we planned a small three day trip. The trip was way too impromptu that we hardly planned anything as such and just decided to take a day off and make use of the long weekend. Our parents refused and all being senior it was risky for them to travel, so it was me and my sister again to travel to what is known to be The Scotland of India – Madikeri aka Coorg.
We woke up as early as 7 am in the morning. Got fresh, packed quickly some clothes. Googled few places to roam around coorg and downloaded the songs playlist in Pendrive (which eventually didn’t work due to Pendrive format issue🤦♂️ ).We finally stepped ourselves out of cocoon to travel enroute Coorg with our brand new Maruti Celerio ZXI (Just one month old ).
We left Ponda at 9 am, and maps showed us to be reaching approx. around 7:30 pm. We pretty much knew the road till Mangalore, so without much ado had our mandatory tea and accelerated ourselves to the destination. Morning drives are always good (even though not so early 😜). But with less traffic and not having to switch on AC depicts that it was pleasant. At around 10:30 am we reached Karwar, and since we didn’t have our breakfast in the morning. We entered the city to take a stop. We decided to have heavy breakfast and ordered idli’s, bun and sabji and one masala Dosa along with not to be forgotten TEA.
Tummies were full and happy, but still a lot of drive was left. So, without wasting more time started our forward journey all along the southern coast. As we started moving ahead it was peak time for sun to bless with heat and humidity due to coastal bend. For every beautiful coastal line there’s something you need to get yourself compromised with. Roads were all 4 lanes but after some time it got a bit boring driving through those highways with sun heat increasing, and even AC with full fan just not making it pleasant.
We took our Lunch break just close to 3:30 pm along Udupi Highway at Shardha International. Had Gobi Manchurian and veg fried rice. Food was average. We were still on track to reach destination before 8 pm. But since this trip was without any plans, searched for accommodation near Coorg. Since safety was highest priority booked accommodation at KSTDC ( Karnataka state Tourism Development corporation ) near Talacauvery , which is run by state government.
Setting our map destination to this KSTDC location started moving ahead. After crossing Mangalore , we had to leave the toll road to move towards Coorg (Toll Road goes ahead towards Kerala). Dodging some city traffic we started moving ahead at very slow pace. Only worrying part was had to cover the hilly region road under dark , which was painful.
All was going normal (but with me that’s quite unusual 😊), and there came the twist. All thanks to trust that we have on our Google maps. It made us to take a right turn and just 2 mins through it , it felt to be some outskirt. And the adventure started. It was almost a single lane road through forest. The road was all about zig zag curves. I had to change gear literally every 10-20 seconds. Bored of which I decided to climb through this curvy roads on second gear itself. As moved ahead the conditions of roads also got worsened a bit.
There were no street lights and more weird was no cars were crossing us , and also no one was following us. By now it was sure we had taken the wrong route, as couldn’t see any cars on route to famous tourist destination is impossible, until I was stupid to think that way. Just moving ahead to add more fear, there was board stating, work in progress ahead ( clearing for landslide ). The road was so narrow with valley on one side even taking U-turn was difficult on that road.
Also to add more problems, there was no network ( offcource how can expect in the middle of the jungle , which is house for animals and not social animals like us ). Slowly we started moving ahead and after sometime we were happy to see some street lights and houses. But there came two new things infront of us. One we could see more of Kerala number plates car parked and also we got limited range enough to send us the message stating Welcome to Kerala. From no checkpost/border crossing through jungle we had reached Kerala.
Now we were more concerned , but seeing some cars and people made us a bit relaxed and move ahead. But as we were going slow, it was already around 7:30 pm and now the destination was showing us as we will be reaching around 9 pm.
But as we moved ahead the happiness got over and curvy zig zag climb roads started, with single lane and u-bends/turns every few seconds. We could only see once in a while a few jeeps carrying transport goods. and every time we had to stop to cross as roads were very small and valley on one side with mountain on another. Our destination time started increasing and in no time it showed us to be reaching at 9:45 pm.
Finally we reached the checkpost . It was the Kerala checkpost from where we re-entered Karnataka, not sure how we reached Kerala without any border checks 😜
Once entered Karnataka, we could see more jeeps but roads remained the same. And than all of sudden one traveler jeep having family on-boarded in it told us to wait, They were Mallus and were saying “halli halli“, we didn’t understand. Than they started showing us the action of elephant. and we understood that elephant is ahead. For first second I was like, ‘Yeahhh’ and than for a second thought, its wild unmanned and I am in a celerio. It can easily crush us. I asked them whether its coming or going, so that I can take U-turn.
They said its going, and they calmed us so that we could proceed slowly. We slowly moved ahead and few meters ahead we saw a huge wild elephant all by himself climbing the road. Till that time I used to love elephants, but not that day . I was scared till hell. The elephant had almost covered up the entire road. Just stopped the car and waited it to go. Now it was almost 9 pm and we just stayed feared thinking how elephant can escape from this roads and just hoping it doesn’t turn back and come attack us.
But than came couple of trucks and they shouted halli halli. By now I knew halli is elephant, but I just feared that by the truck head lights hope it doesn’t turn back. We waited for 15 mins and than just slowly moved ahead, we moved almost at 10 km/hr speed for next 15 mins, and than thought , it must have gone towards side and zip lined ourselves from there. Now the open windows of car was closed and now thoughts started generating in mind whether we may encounter more wild animals on our way.
That was one of the crazy drive through jungles I had , that I will remember forever. And through all this we finally reached our destination around 10:30 pm. The restaurant of the accommodation was almost closed and even the hotel main doors were closed. As they told us hey tried to contact us , but we were not reachable , ( Off course we were playing hide and seek with that elephant all that time ).
We just requested them to give whatever food that is available . The staff was kind enough to arrange rice , sambhar and pickle. We quickly got fresh and had our dinner laughing now on all the incidents. We even decided to drop plan to watch elephants the next day 😎. After this crazy day it was time to take some rest.
Next day early morning woke up around 6:30 am. It was cold and pleasant. I quickly got fresh and had my cup of tea. The view outside the hotel was majestic, could see huge mountains and this is the one from where river Kaveri originates.
We got all ready and started exploring Coorg and what more to start from blessings of Tala Cauvery ( where Kaveri river originates ). Driving through hills covered with coffee plantation . My main intent to explore coorg was to see coffee plantation and I was happy to drive along this vast green laid beauty.
We reached the temple parking from where we need to walk a bit.
If not able to walk you can take richshaws as well, but its hardly few meters.
We took blessings and snapped some cool pictures from location , before heading down hill. I was more mesmerized to see the sky and the Sahyadri hills at long range was just awesome start to our coorg site seeing.
On way there were many shops selling home grown cardamom (elaichi ) and coffee powder along with coffee chocolates. We bought some packets of each of them as souvenir and also to give to our guests back home and moved towards the hotel.
But as moving down hill the coffee plantation photo to be taken was always on mind. Also wanted to know how the coffee beans are crushed to make the powder. So waited at one house to-do the same , but due to language barrier couldn’t understand much and just moved ahead from there, with hope that we could see more in our further journey.
After reaching hotel we did our breakfast and another cup of tea. We packed our bags and checked out, but before leaving from hotel at walking distance there was temple , so we decided to just walk all through the market area towards temple. But the scorching heat made us look foolish to walk in the sun. We just saw temple from outside and ran towards our car. With full ac on we continued our journey.
We took a stop to refuel our car and than the journey to explore started .
Our first plan was to just explore any coffee plantation, so we stopped by one site.
As we were taking pictures an old man came to us. He started asking something which I didn’t understand , but with little knowledge of kannada language I explained him that we here to explore the plantation and click some pics.
We learnt that he was the one who owned this property and he was happy that we came to explore his property. He gave us good info about different types of beans and different stages of how coffee powder is made from this beans right from plucking to getting baked and crushed in factories.I made a video which I have with me.
Also he invited us at his home. The people here are very kind. We walked all along to meet his family. All along it was all lush green plantation of pepper spice and coffee beans. At same time we were all communicating in Kannada. I learnt one thing with little knowledge of language you can communicate, it’s all about expressions and emotions that matters the most.
He introduced us to his wife and also told that he will make coffee for us. But since we already had our breakfast we just Thanked him for all this overwhelmed gestures. He gave us tour of his home grown vegetation in the backyard and also gave some beans
We were really lucky to meet this guy , and now by now my Coorg trip was complete and rest exploration was just a bonus.
Thanking him we moved ahead, we could see more coffee plantation, but after some time it wasn’t having any more wow factor😜.
As we moved towards city, the cold weather turned into warm and it was all crowded. Now I thought the night mishap did help us explore the best part of coorg instead of exploring the crowded city of coorg.
It had crossed 1 pm and we wanted to have lunch but it was so crowded that there was hardly any place to park car. So we decided to skip from city and have food somewhere on way. We took the Madikeri Mysore road to see the monastery. The road was awesome. On way we took a break at Naad Kaapi ( Google Map Location ).
We just took that stop as we were hungry not knowing why God had made us stop here at this restaurant ( you will understand as the day will go ahead ) .This was newly opened and the restaurant uncle, aunty were really kind. They used to cook themselves and made us the meal that we want. That was really nice.
They prepared it on the spot and we enjoyed the veg meal here. The old couple that run this restaurant are really friendly and helpful.
After having our tummies full we went ahead to explore the monastery. But as we reached near the destination we could see there was no rush/ crowd. We were surprised and as walked out of car to check, we got to know the monastery was closed for tourist entry due to Covid restrictions. This was the first upset for this trip, but we were like ok and clicked some pictures from outside.
We also did some shopping just outside the monastery where we bought different flavours of coffee. And now we just sat our next destination as Dumbare Elephant camp. As we had that encounter with elephant the earlier night, we were not too excited to visit this place, but since it was just around 3:30 pm and lots of time remaining to wrap up the day, we decided to go ahead.
But as we were moving ahead we saw Cafe Levista. ( We had seen a lot many hoardings and local shops selling the brand Levista coffee). So as we saw this cafe , we decided to try it out.
The cafe was way too luxurious and better than CCD. We ordered cappuccino. The price was also lesser than the other brand cafe. The taste was also good and all around the cafe had TV screens showcasing how the cafe is brewed.
Lazily we moved out of cafe (as we were afraid of elephant which was our next destination 😜). On way we took a break to see hanging bridge. This was the same water body extending from the Dumbare camp where elephants have bath. We enjoyed the scenic beauty and moved ahead to the camp.
As we reached the camp parking , we were back to crowded area. We parked the car and got to know that there was a boat that takes you to the other end of the camp where you can see elephant up close. We stood in queue but missed the boat as timing of last boat closes at 5 pm. We weren’t sad at all. But stood along to see elephants entering the water to have a bath.
So that was the wrap for the day for our sightseeing. As the sun was setting we decided to have a stop for tea/coffee and book our accomodation for that day.
We decided to have a stop at Naad kaapi itself where we had lunch, as it felt like more of home than restaurant. We ordered french fries and coffee ( for first time preferred tea over coffee , that’s what coorg can do to anyone ).
And now when I open Goibibo, I couldn’t find a single accomodation available.I thought we will get accomodation easily but that was not true ( The accommodations were full due to long weekend christmas holiday and people had come out just after covid restrictions ). Now at 6:30 pm in evening I was a bit worried of how to find the accommodation.
But to our help was uncle ( the owner of Naad Kaapi ). He contacted with his friends and helped us find a accomodation and he helped us have it negotiated for a discounted rate. This Kodagu guys are really awesome.
So we thanked uncle and went towards the cottage to get fresh.The blue Bell cottage was in middle of coffee estate. I wondered if I could get a chance to stay in coffee estate , but never thought it will come true. if you are destined to achieve your dream and if you are working hard for it, somewhere with help of someone god will help make you achieve it.
The road from highway towards the cottage was very narrow road. I was a bit nervous as I didnt wanted any scratches on our new car. The cottage was really nice. We quickly got fresh and wandered around the property. ( A funny incident about dog running after me happened while I was doing the payment. I am damn afraid of dogs 😊 )
We came back to Naad Kaapi restaurant to have our dinner. We had our dinner talking with owner and exchanging each other cultures and info. We again said a big thank to uncle and aunty and made ourselves to cottage.
Next day early morning we woke up around 6:30 am. The temperatures were very low all night. The owner of the cottage prepared tea for us , we had our tea and started moving back towards Ponda .
We started at 7 am in the morning and it was 493 km long drive. The drive was going to be smooth , but driving back on same path is always boring, but summarising our trip we started descending from the hills of coorg and catch the NH 66 highway from Mangalore to Goa.
We just took one break at around 10:30 am when we entered the Mangalore city highway for breakfast where we had masala dosa.
Just took a small stop at maravanthe beach on way . The sun was just over our head , but this beach was just next to road, that it made us step down and have a look. We quickly clicked some pics and moved ahead. ( You can google to check the drone photos of this beach, it’s really awesome )
After that we didn’t take any more breaks, except one refuel break and reached home ( Ponda Goa ) at 5:45 pm ( 10 hours continuous drive ).
It was a fun three day vacay and if you read till here please like and follow. Thank you and signing Off untill next destination.
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