[abhieagle]

So, I finally got some time off my crazy travel schedule to take the jetta out of town for a short weekend trip.
We just had the Saturday and Sunday for the trip and did not want to do much sightseeing, just driving and lazing! So, we decided to do a short trip to Coorg (of course). Even though I had lived in bangalore for 8 years in my previous stint, I had never been to Coorg.
Since this was pretty much an impulsive trip, we didn't preplan and at the last minute, got a room in a platation stay called Magnolia near Virajpet.
I wanted to get there as early as possible while driving at an easy pace, so we were off by 5:15 AM on saturday.
We reached Kamat Lokaruchi in an hour and helped ourselves to a scrumptios breakfast of delicious, steaming hot vadas, idlis and khara bath. (slurp!) Combined that with some coffee and we were ready to go after a leisurely breakfast
Mysore road was a nice enough drive but is never devoid of traffic. So, didn't push the car too hard.
Soon enough, we hit Srirangapatna and took the right to the KRS road. A short stretch of the road here was in bad shape and had to slow down to a crawl, always worried about scraping the underbelly of the car.
Anyway, we hit Hunsur road without any incident and we were back to great roads.
We crossed Hunsur in no time and took the left to Virajpet a little after crossing the town...Wait! what??? Around 25 km of that road is pretty much non existent.However, we were blissfully unaware and soon enough, the road turned ugly, while the surroundings got prettier. First few kilometers were largely gravel with potholes thrown in to spice it up, but soon the potholes grew in number and size , until there were only potholes where the road should have been. But, with a bit of careful maneuvering, we got through this stretch without scraping the bottom of car as well. Eventually, the roads improved and we reached the estate by 11 am. Drove up the gravel paths of the plantation, but this time, I did manage to scrape the bottom of the car a little bit in one place. No damage done, though.
So, Phase 1 of the trip was done- A little bit of driving. Now for the lazing part. But before that, what did I learn till now?
1- Check out team-bhp before you travel to plan the route properly
2- The Jetta, will deal with fairly bad roads with a little bit of careful driving.

The Route So far:


After checking in, we spent some time walking around the plantation, and while we were at it, the mist started to descend. Within a few minutes, we were in the middle of the clouds! What an awesome experience.

Mist all around


Lunch was served outdoors (at our request) and it was fantastic eating delicious chicken pepper fry (and more) with the mist all around us. The lazing was on. Post a very long lunch, and a siesta at the cottage, it was time to laze around some more. So, more coffee, and some ghost stories, sitting in the long verandahs covered in mist in front of the cottages got us to dinner time. The lazing was going very well indeed!

Coffee and Ghost Stories at the Cottage



By dinner time, a slight drizzle had set in, but the bonfire near the restaurant was still managing to hold it's own against the rain. However, the drizzle forced us to have dinner indoors, but the walk along the dark pathways in the plantation back to the cottage made us forget that disappointment. Dimly lit narrow paths among tall trees, with a light drizzle and mist sure get those shivers running up your spine!

Shadows in the night


The settings inspired me to take this self ghostrait of myself!



Woke up early next morning and went for a walk to the higher parts of the plantation. Even though the fog had lifted from around us, the hills around still had the clouds swirling around them.


Back from the morning walk and I notice the Jetta bathed in dew. I just had to shoot some pictures:














By now, it was breakfast time. More food! Dug into some delicious dosas with a vert tasty sambar for breakfast and decided to carry on with the lazing some more! What better way to laze than to click some photos ans do some fishing at the small lake within the plantation. Spent the next couple of hours blissfully unaware of the time until we realised that our check out time was fast approaching!

Dew Dripped flora


Dragonfly by the lake


Catch of the day


We didn't want to get back to Bangalore too soon, so decided to drive around the hills a bit, stop at Bylakuppe for lunch (Even more food!) and then head for home. And that's what we did.

Here's the route we took while returning:


This drive had great roads all the way unlike our trip back. Lovely scenery with smooth twisty roads and the Jetta was in it's element.
Stopped at camp 1 in Bylakuppe for some shopping and realised that it was time to eat again! Lunch was at a place called the Potala Family Kitchen (I think!). The fantastic juicy chicken momos and yummy pork dishes made me forget the name of the restaurant, I think .
Namdroling Monastary was so crowded that we decided to give it a miss for now and head for home. Anyway, it was late afternoon - around 4 already.
Mysore Road had crazy crazy traffic all along, with lashing rains adding to the mayhem. Not much to write about the trip back home. It was stressful. However, the lazing of the weekend more than made up for it.

[jacs]

abhieagle - Some lovely snaps there. It was more like teasers of a long travelogue; now you may start . Come on man, a weekend drive to Coorg on a Jetta has much more to share to us! Lovely color on your car (my Xylo is a Java Brown too).

[abhieagle]

Thanks Man. The other piece I want to share as part of this trip is a short review of the Garmin 1360 (VW Branded) with Navteq maps which managed to get me a bit lost in Mysore, but, I'll reserve that for another thread.


By the way, yes, the Brown seems to be a relatively new trend in car colors and it looks totally unique! Also, I personally feel yellowish tint of halogens look cooler on brown than white LEDs or xenons etc. So, I will probably not be looking around to upgrade to these on my car and save up some money in the process

[anantu2001]

Hey Abhieagle,

Nice read but it seemed to get over very fast We need more information if possible. Me and my wife are planning to go to coorg next weekend and it would help us if you share more information like the place of stay, expenses involved etc etc..

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Anant