Coorg -> Mysore -> Bangalore

This may turn out to be a long post yet I'll try to make it as short as it can be and mention the main points!! Hope you enjoy anyway :D

1st of May was off for everyone. As it was a Thursday, I took Friday off as well and had one long weekend!! But it was for a very good reason.

Me, Eduardo, and two girls from Mumbai (Slavka & Marika) all planned a trip to 3 places. Coorg, Mysore and Bangalore sight seeing. The plan was to travel to Coorg on Thursday and stay there for 2 nights. Then on Saturday we would go to Mysore for sight seeing and go back to Bangalore on the same day. Sunday was dedicated for Bangalore sight seeing.

There was this whole story of trying to find a way to go on this tour. There were two options. Either we go by transportation or rent a car for 3 days. Of course we went with a rented car. We ended up renting a Tata Indica with a driver. If I told you to guess the drivers name, what would you say? Most probably you are right. The driver's name was Ahmed ;)

We started our journey at around 9 am heading to Coorg through Mysore. I must mention that the roads between the cities were quite nice!! It was a smooth road and with an amazing amount of greenery on the both sides of it. We stopped for lunch in Mysore.

Then we agreed on visiting some Tibetan settlement on the way to Coorg. This settlement contains the biggest population of Tibetans outside the Tibet. The main attraction there is the Golden Temple. It is located in a monastery where young Tibetans go for education mainly. From inside it has 3 golden statues of Buddha idols. It's an amazing temple from inside and the amount of detail and color is overwhelming.

After finishing with that we decided we should head to our hotel in Coorg. It's actually called a "Home Stay" not hotel. It's name was Honey Valley. It's a personal recommendation for anyone who visits Coorg. Great people, great food, good rooms, and amaaaazing scenery. Maybe the only hotel that you can find in the latest edition of Lonely Planet talking about Coorg.

Anywho, the driver took the directions from the hotel guy and we were off. That's where our road got a little longer than it should be!! The driver was stopping every 5 to 10 mins asking for directions. He was going on the right way, yet I guess he was making sure. They said it's only 75 Kms to the hotel. It felt like 200 Kms to me. At some point of time in the road the driver asked for the directions from a stoned guy who was smoking some s**t. That's when I started to feel a little bit worried!

We stopped at a small village called Kakabe to call the hotel again to "make sure" of the road, duuuuuhh!! We didn't have any mobile network coverage so we had to use a payed phone. I'm mentioning this for one simple reason. I had some hard time calling the hotel. There were a lot of people from the village standing there and one of them approached me and asked me where I'm from. When I told him I was from Egypt the guy had a big smile on his face!! It turns out that he traveled to some gulf countries for work before and he actually speaks Arabic, yet with a more Gulf ascent. So he helped me out with calling the home stay and everything was settled.

So we finally reached at the meeting point at around 9:30 pm where the home stay people agreed on. They were waiting for us in a Jeep. That was because the home stay is actually up hill and the way to it is very rocky. Only a Jeep can make it up there. It was about 3.5 Km up hill. Having such a ride in a night time added a loooot to the excitement of it :D We arrived, went to our rooms to place our bags and had ourselves a nice veg dinner. Almost directly we went to bed aiming for an interesting day ahead.

We woke up in the morning on the sound of some Indian children, mainly girls. We discovered later on that there was a summer camp!! Anyway, we walk up to an amazing surrounding of the home stay. It was all mountains covered with green forests.

Being in such a place the main thing you can do is tracking!! So we asked the hotel for where to go and they gave us this booklet with all the routs we can take to see the surroundings. The main point was to go to this junction which from there you start taking the path you want. All was mentioned on the map in the booklet. There were 3 types of paths. (1) Short, which take around 30 - 45 mins round trip (2) Medium, which takes 4 - 5 hours (3) Long, which basically takes all day long. We decided to take a Medium one, come back for lunch, then go for a short one.

Here's where the action starts :D We chose a path that leads to the top of one of the waterfalls there. We were trying to follow the instructions stated in the booklet as much as we can. I think at some point of time we took the wrong turn ;) That wasn't the twist though. We just decided to go on. Then we reached this forest a somewhat moist ground. There the girls started noticing that there are some "worms" climbing on their shoes. They were a little bit freaked out. Then one of those "worms" managed to sneak up Slavka's leg and she started to feel that something is itching. It turned to be that those "worms" bite and actually suck your blood. This the point where they got really freaked out and all started searching our shoes and socks for those creatures. I found like 5 or 6 of them. They decided not to go on with this path and just head back to the home stay.

We went for lunch and decided to go for the short path after that. The short path was to bottom of the waterfall! So as we were walking by, one of the girls saw one of those "worms". They directly decided to head back. I personally didn't want such a creature to spoil my vacation. So me and Eduardo decided to go on. We reached to the bottom of the waterfalls. Ok, it wasn't that impressive but we actually reached somewhere :D

On our way back I noticed there were a couple of "worms" on my shoe so I removed them and went along. I felt something itching in my leg but I didn't bother. By chance I was looking up my pants and found one of those on my leg and sucking on my blood. I removed it and went on. The bleeding didn't really stop so I cleaned the wound and put a bandage on it.

When we went back to the home stay I asked the owner what are those creatures. He said they were called Leeches. When they bite they pose no threat in terms of transmitting any diseases or anything but they have an anti-clotting enzyme which leads to continuous bleeding which stops after a while.

Freaky, huh?! :D It was a great experience tracking though. I'll defiantly go back to that place one day but with proper tracking gear!!

I guess this post is too long already so let me make the rest as short as possible!!

When we went to Mysore we saw:
- St. Philomena's Church: we actually witnessed a wedding there
- Mysore Palace: a greeeeat palace with a lot of amazing things inside yet it wasn't allowed to take pictures :(

We arrived Saturday night at around 9 pm. Next day we took a Bangalore city tour and we saw:
- Vidhana Soudha: a great building that houses the State Legislature and of course wasn't allowed to go in.
- ISKON Temple: it's a Hindus temple for the devotees of the Hindus god Krishna. We attended some sort of mass they were doing in the temple. It's newly designed so there's no real historical significance for the temple. One thing I found rather strange. They were collecting donations for feeding and educating homeless children. I personally will donate to something like that no matter where I am. To my surprise there was a minimum to the donation! It was about $30 which is more than 1000 Rs. How can anyone put a minimum for donations?! Of course I didn't have that kind of money on me and even if I did I wasn't prepared to pay that much.
- Bull Temple
- Lal Bagh Park: a very nice garden to walk in, very spacious and couples and families can enjoy their time very peacefully.
- The Only Place: I'm sure you know about that by now :D

That was my last weekend ladies and gentlemen. I know I said too much. I'm very thankful if you reached this far in the post :D

Me3o over and out!!