My-Chick-Chick
Oh yes... My Chick Chick... hehehe... Thats what moi has been up to. No. Don't get wierd ideas... The past six weeks have been Mysore, Chikmagalur and Chikmagalur for me... and unintentionally I am back to the alternate weekends out of Bangalore routine!! hip hip hurrah
Week of 17th December - Mysore
Nothing new to add from Mysore. The Highways is still under construction. Perhaps 80% complete. The coffee at the Coffee Day sucks big time. The Ice cream at the MTR joint next to it sucks bigger time. The Maddur wada's good though. And the Ford Ikon 1.3l is a little under powered. And check out the outter ring road from Sidharthanagar... Mysore anyday vis-a-vis Bangalore and everyday!!!
New years eve and New years day - Kemmangundi, Belur and Shravanabelagola
Kemmangundi
It was a mine once upon a time. It means, quite literally, red mud pit in Kannada. It is rich in iron ore, littered all over the place, in fact almost any pebble you pick up contains iron in some form. The mining activity is non-existant these days. What is in vouge are the coffee plantations. Plenty of them in these parts of the world. Chikamaglur and Coffee are synonymous, although Coorg is more famous. Chikmagalur offers a lot of places for camping and treking.
Hebbe falls.
A pal of V, from Motorola, had arranged this trip. And very well aranged to. There were 12 people , including me, in a Tata 407 planning on celebrating new year at Hebbe. Hebbe is around 300kms from Bangalore. The road upto Chikmagalur is good, but from there it gets a little tricky in the ghat section. It took us a good 10 hours to get here. 6 upto Chikmagalur and four from there to Hebbe. To reach Hebbe falls we need to trek down around 4 kms. Yes, there is a trail and you could take a jeep too. However, treking is recomended.
You have to be careful while treking, since the trail is mostly gravel, especially the shortcuts! as we found by misfortune!
The falls is beautiful. I am yet to see an ugly falls :))
damn... gimp decides to give up now :( this photo tomorrow....
This falls is in the middle of the Kodays coffee estate. There is no accomodation available here. Nor any food. Best bet would be to put up at Chikmagalur town and carry some food. If you are a camper, then there are plenty of places. Gets really really cold at night though!
Then there was this bitch, which kept following V, actually dogs all over the place were attracted to V... I wonder why hmmmm..... GOD had a theory... hehehe...
Good bye 2005 at sunset point...
Hello 2006 somewhere near Belur...
Belur is a town with history... a lot of it. It was the place where Vhishnuvardhan, of the Hoysala dynasty, built a temple... I suspect in memory of his beautiful wife Shantala, also know as natya rani. Read about Shantala if you have the time. A remarkable story!
The Vishnu temple is quite breathtaking. If you don't want to stare at yet another beautiful temple then take the services of a guide. All I can say about the place is, "inspiring". Those people in the 11th century had to be inspired by divinty to erect a monument like the Belur temple. My photograpy does not do justice to it :(
Shravanabelagola
A town/village know for the Bahubali monolith. It is pligrimage center for the Digambar Jains. It is long climb to the top of the hillock. It is around 130 kms from Bangalore.
Weekend of 14th January - Chikamagalur
And so I came back to Chicks again. But, this time the agenda was to visit my relatives. I was the offical driver for my grand-mother, mother, aunty and uncle. Learnt how to change tires on my aunty's Ikon. Spent a night at my cousin's tota saw a golf course in the middle of now where, which was wierd. Heard later, that they plan to introduce Hang-gliding... Now that is what I'll be looking forward to!
Food on the highway? Then, Kamats (near Hasan) or Mayura (near Yediur) are recomended joints...
