The Road Not Taken – An exciting journey to Coorg!

Life had been the same for the past six months – same job, same project and same salary. I desperately needed a break. I wanted to relax. It has been more than a year; I had gone for a trip outside Bangalore. I was asking my roommates for an outing since then. It took so long for us to decide as one week or the other, one or the other person was held up somewhere or the other. Finally, it became a reality last week. Even then we had to go with one absentee, Raja. We had planned to spend one weekend in Coorg district. Many said that, the time we had planned to go is when the monsoon is at its peak. Even I felt the same. But on the other side, I was thinking, why should we worry about this? Can’t we manage this? Are we taking our family, to worry about the weather? Even the newspapers showed the photographs of the flooded areas of the Coorg district. Yet, we never backed off our plan. We didn’t want this trip to be called off because we knew that it would be difficult again to gather people. I had invited my ex-room mates also for the trip and few of them have tentatively agreed for the trip.

One of my room mate – Karthik had arranged for our stay in a lonely cottage which is inside a coffee estate. As usual we did some googling about the place, saw some photographs, made some analysis…the usual techie thing. It will be my first experience staying in a coffee estate. Everybody was excited as it’s our first visit to the Scotland of India as Coorg District is otherwise referred as. I packed my bag with one jean, a short shirt and two Ts, along with a jerkin and umbrella. I thought I would bring in my speakers, so that we can hear to some songs from my mobile in the cottage.

July 18^th Saturday 00:05 am, the Qualis, we had booked had arrived. We loaded the Qualis with all the snacks stuff, our luggages, speakers and finally ourselves. The vehicle started to move towards Maruti Nagar to pick my ex-roommates. I was accompanied by Arun and Karthik. In another 20 minutes, we were in front of my friend’s house. Karmegam and Magesh were the other guys, who will join us. My other ex-room mate, Vasanth, whom had already told his non availability for the trip, was standing in the terrace waving hands to us. I just asked him, one more time if he could join us in the trip. In 10 minutes, he came down with his luggage. So finally, six of us were ready for the excitment and fun. It was 1 am when we reached the Mysore road. The route was Bangalore – Mandya – Mysore – Kushal Nagar – Madikeri and the distance is around 300 kms. The Bangalore – Mysore 4 lane high way was just awesome to ride. I could see some bike riders as well on this cold rainy night. For the first hour, we chatted and slowly the voices dropped off as the time rolled.

I was half awake, seated beside the driver, trying to give him company. We stopped twice before we reached Mysore for a tea break. The weather was chill till we reached Srirangapatna. After that it rained through out. I thought, if it rained continuously like this, we should just stay in our cottage and not go out anywhere. We reached Kushal Nagar around 5 am in the morning, it was raining. The estate name is Beta – Cad Estate. Our driver spoke to the estate-in-charge to know the exact routes. The road was really bad here with too many ups and downs and water clogged here and there. Some 10 kms after Kushal Nagar, at the right side, the driver could manage to see a small sign board stating “Beta Cad Estate”. We were in the estate around 5.45 am.

I just saw my scribbling till now, and it had come to three paragraphs. I think I should stop till this post the remaining in parts. The rest of the journey would follow soon.