[GeneralJazz]

Introduction
Its been a while since I left Cochin and moved to Coimbatore. A lot had changed over the past few months. New job, new team, new friends, a change in the..errr... relationship status . In the midst of all these, my Baleno was starting to get a little frustrated. There hadn't been any trips for a few months and she was getting antsy! She needed a long trip to relieve some stress. A nice long drive through winding roads, hairpin bends, forests, highways, beautiful scenery. Finally I relented. A trip was needed and needed soon!

So the gang assembled and we had a nice little debate about the possible locations. After driving Google Maps crazy, we chose Madikeri. It ticked most of our boxes. Nice roads, hairpins, forests and plenty of places to see. Madikeri was about 7 hours from Coimbatore, with the added bonus being that we had to cross Mysore on the way. Big shout out to Vignesh, Alex, Surya, Sooraj, Venkat, Reddy and Sunil for being such wonderful travel companions!

Destination being fixed, we booked a hotel via OYO Rooms near Kushal Nagar. Now the steeds. Obviously my Baleno was in. I would never hear the end of it if I didn't take her! The second car was an i10, driven by fellow travel enthusiast Alex. I feel the need to mention here that Alex was the only married guy in the group! Sorry dude, had to say it! Also, thanks to Vignesh, Venkat, Sunil, Venky, Surya, and Suraj for making this a fun and memorable trip!

So our plan was to start friday afternoon, spend the next two nights there, and return sunday evening. Both the Baleno and the i10 were serviced recently and were ready to go. The total journey is estimated to be around 600 kms. Yum!

The route was planned as Coimbatore > Sathyamangalam > Mysore > Madikeri

The route:



The Trip

Day 1
We started friday afternoon around 2 PM. We planned to stop at Sathyamangalam for tea/snacks and proceed from there. We went together till Annur, from where our respective Google maps decided it would be fun to split us up. Ours took us through Bhavanisagar, while the others headed to Sathyamangalam. Needless to say, we had the better deal! The route was beautiful and took you close to the Bhavanisagar Dam.

Some pics along the way:

Beautiful roads winding into the hills



Beautiful place for a photo op!





There she is, rearing to go!





We finally meet near the Bannari Mariamman temple.



We stop there for tea/snacks. The hairpin bends start soon.



There are 26 (or 28, I forget) hairpin bends along this route. This takes you through the Dhimbham forest to reach the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border. The roads are reasonably good.

Some pics along the hairpin bends:




Experienced lorry drivers taking a wide turn to make it in a single try.



You can see the roads below. We wanted to spends some more time there but since we wanted to cross the forest stretch with daylight, we moved on. Little did we know that we would be spending a lot of time in this section soon!





Spotted plenty of these critters along this section. Seemed pretty tame, maybe even slightly aggressive.





The whole gang!



There she is! Whenever I park and get down, I cant help turning back to look at her!

[GeneralJazz]

Finally we cross the Karnataka Border!



We saw some elephants far away! Decided not to stop!



We reached Mysore around 7:30 PM, and had dinner at Oyster Bay Hotel.



Food was simply excellent!





Day 1 ends with us reaching our rooms around 11:30 PM.



DAY 2

Woke up early the next day. Had breakfast at the hotel. It was pretty cold in the morning. There was a pool, but we could see mist rising from the water. No one was brave enough to step in that day! It was cool till around 9:30, with a nice fog and all, but then started to get real hot real fast!

Our steeds, all rested up!



First stop was the Namdroling Monastery. It was very close to where we stayed.



At the entrance. There is ample vehicle parking nearby, with plenty of souvenir shops.



Some pics from the inside





At the courtyard inside.



There was a nice cafe inside, all manned by monks! We had some tea there. Note to self, and a warning to all future visitors: their lemon tea is not for the weak of heart, or the stomach for that matter.







In front of their prayer hall



There was a prayer ceremony going on, so the hall was not open to visitors. We could take a look from the outside. The prayer ceremony was mesmerizing.



We stood watching it for a while!

https://youtu.be/akIlbEpBjM4

[GeneralJazz]

Abbey Falls

After spending quite some time at the monastery, we decide to head towards Abbey Falls. We were told that the area was badly affected during the monsoon floods last year, but we decided to press on anyway.

The route:


Now heres a problem. When we initially set the location in our Google Maps, this is the route we were shown:



The problem is that the route shown is a dead end and there is no way to get to the falls from there. After some time, we realized this and manually set the location in our map. The second car, wasn't so lucky. The went on with the route shown and hit the dead end. We had planned on location sharing using WhatsApp, but due to poor network coverage, we lost touch with them. We had lunch while waiting for them.

After a while, we got a call from them with some bad news. They had to stop due to brakes overheating. Alex was not used to driving on ghat roads and so was not used to engine braking on downhill turns. So as wisely said by Jeremy Clarkson "As you know, we’re not the US marines; we leave a man behind.", we decided to abandon them and head to the falls.

The roads to the falls are narrow and broken. Maybe they were damaged in the recent floods. Be careful while driving there. Plenty of over excited morons on the roads who barely know how to drive.

There is ample parking space near the entrance to the falls. Plenty of shops for refreshments.


From the entrance area, you have to get climb down a long way to get to the falls. Well built steps helps a lot. Thankfully the path is nearly entirely in the shade of trees. There are some benches at the halfway point if a quick break is needed.


The falls. There is very little water. Moreover, the water at the bottom of the falls was very dirty. There is an elevated structure which you can get in and take pics. There were a couple of police/security personnel in the area. Funny thing; there was a guy in torn clothes holding a broom who claims to be the sweeper. These police guys were actively chasing every visitor to give him some money, to the point it almost became harassment!


We asked a friendly couple to take a pic.


Evidence of a huge landslide that happened during the floods! Looks like a sizeable chunk of the forest was washed away.


Those of you who visited the falls before, or atleast checked it out in Google would remember a bridge connecting to the other side. When the falls are full, walking on the bridge would be quite fun, feeling the water spray. Unfortunately, this is what the bridge looks like now!


A few people had jumped the barrier and gone down to the water. Since the water was dirty/stagnant, we decided to pass


After spending close to half an hour there, we started the long climb back to the top. It was blisteringly hot at that time. Coorg is actually only a few hours away from my native place and so we had been there plenty of times, however I dont remember it being this hot! We were glad to get back to our car and turn on the AC at full blast! We head back to town and linked up with the second car, who had made it back by then.

[GeneralJazz]

Mandalpatti Peak
After regrouping at Madikeri town with some tea & snacks, we decided to head to Mandalpatti peak. I was told that the best time to visit is early morning or at sunset, when the peak will be covered by fog. It was around 3.30 PM by the time we started from Madikeri. We took around 40 minutes to reach the base of the peak. From there on, it is not possible to proceed further in regular sedans, let alone a ground hugging one like my Baleno. There is an area from where we can hire 4WDs to take us to the top. They were mostly Mahindra Majors along with Boleros. I was excited to find a couple of Armadas too! The drivers there were, lets say not too polite. They were charging anywhere between 1800 and 2500 to take us to the peak and back. We were told that there is another small group of drivers a few kms ahead and decided to approach them for a more reasonable rate. But this gang weren't too keen to let us go ahead and a couple of them even tried to block our way. We moved on nonetheless. The road became increasingly bad with every kilometer. Finally we found the second camp and one of the driver agreed to take all 8 of us in one vehicle for 1.5k! We hired him.

It was a tight squeeze!


There is literally no more road till the top. I had some thoughts about trying to reach the top with my Baleno, but those thoughts evaporated very quickly! Even so called SUVs like Brezza and Creta would not have made it, maybe unless the driver had some mad skills! After a few boke jarring kms, we hit a road block. These was some working going on, presumably building a proper road. We suffered a few mini heart attacks as the driver made a U turn in that narrow path!



The driver found an alternate path and we started again. The path was extremely dusty. Soon I had to remove my glasses as they were completely covered in dust. By the time we reached the top, Surya's black jeans had turned completely brown! There was a Bolero in front of us and we had to ask the driver to stop for a couple of minutes to allow the dust to settle before we started again.


We tried to take a few pictures and video during the ride. This proved tough as we could barely hold the phone straight as we were being thrown around inside the vehicle. Both hands were needed to hold onto anything possible to stay inside!

https://youtu.be/vUlGCUflB-I

Some pics on the way to the top. The photos were too blurry and we had to use high speed/sports mode to get any viable pic.





Plenty of traffic along this route. Every time a vehicle would cross us, we would be engulfed in dust for some time. I have no idea how the drivers here do this on a daily basis without destroying their lungs!





Finally we reach a sort of base camp, a place for the vehicles to park. We had to trek from there on, to reach the peak. These are the only vehicles who could make it here:



I was extremely surprised to find a Duster here! I am truly impressed! When we started from the bottom, there was a couple in a Thar behind us. We didn't see them at the top, or on our way down. Maybe the route was too tough for the guy.



The path to the peak has a fenced entrance with some forest (?) officer cabin. No entrance fees, but we have to enter our name and other details in a log book.



A short but steep trek to the top. Plenty of school kids who were recklessly jumping all over the place!



You can see that the area is fenced off. No idea why!



View of the route that took us here. There is an arch on the way which can be seen in the picture. There were plenty of what looked like vehicle trails all over the place. This does seem like an excellent place for off road enthusiasts to have some fun!



The hills were starting to get covered by mist as sunset approaches.





Alex, our self proclaimed yoga master!



There is a rather shabbily maintained watch tower at the top of the peak. Great view from up there!



The whole area is quite rocky. Plenty of spots for pics!



A pic from the top of the tower. As sunset approached, the whole area was starting to get covered in mist and it was starting to get cold. We are allowed at the top only till around 630 PM or so, maybe because the route down the hill could get risky in the dark. Our driver called us down and we left after taking some more pics. The 'jeep' trek was easily the best part of the trip!

[GeneralJazz]

Day 3

The hotel we stayed had a nice swimming pool. The timings were restricted, so we had planned to have some fun in the morning. We woke up late the previous day so we couldn't spend time in the pool. So on the final day, we all woke up very early with big plans to chill in the pool! Unfortunately, it was chillier than we expected! It was quite cold in the morning and there was mist rising from the surface of the water! Still some of us bravely went in. Unfortunately, my bravery leaked away as soon as I dipped my hand into the water!

Had some fun chillin'



There were plenty more places to see in Coorg, but we decided to head towards Mysore in the morning itself to visit the palace. It's a 2 hour drive to Mysore and we started soon after breakfast. We did make a not-so-quick stop at the monastery for some last minute souvenir shopping, and finally we were off!

The drive to Mysore was uneventful. It was quite hot all the way. The roads were decent and traffic was smooth, except for the occasional moron in an Alto who thinks he's driving a Ferrari. We reach the palace just before noon. We took plenty of pics from the palace, but not posting many here, as I'm sure 90% of the BHPians must have already visited it at least once.













We spent a couple of hours at the palace. Even though I have been here n number of times, I'm still awestruck at the architectural beauty! After some more time shopping and walking around, hunger made us look for a hotel. Some one suggested Gufha Restaurant, located near the bus stand and we headed there.

Its a wonderful cave-themed place. Bit darker than I'd have liked though. Food was excellent! We gave our tummies some serious exercise!







Once we had our fill, we spend some more time there before starting the long drive back home. We hoped to cross the forest section before dark, as it is a known elephant crossing area.

The Mysore-Sathyamagalam stretch was not fun! The roads are horrible after Nanjanagudu. Long stretches are dug up, awaiting repairs. A few kms didn't even have any tarred sections at all! Finally we cross the border.



Good heavens! This guy was standing just by the road! A few suicidally moronic buffoons had stopped by the road to take pics! Thankfully he was busy feeding.



We crossed the forest section without incident! Phew..! It was a smooth drive till we hit the hairpin section of the route. We had grand plans to reach Coimbatore before 8 PM and have dinner there. Boy, were we in for a nasty surprise! The hairpin section was clogged all the way to the bottom! Me covered the first hairpin bend, barely faster than a snail. And then complete stop! I had expected some sunday traffic here, being a regular commuter on the numerous ghat sections in Kerala. I expected to move ahead slowly, but no! We watched the sunset there, our hopes of reaching home on time going down with the sun.

Plenty of morons were trying to overtake and go ahead, trying to squeeze in ahead somewhere. And we saw most of the said morons reversing all the way to the back, chased by some visibly angry truckers. These idiots have no idea how difficult it for the truckers to drive in the ghat section, especially uphill. The newer AMC, Navistar and similar trucks have sufficient grunt to pull away, but the older Leylands and Tatas are another story. Every time they stopped, the cleaner had to jump out and place rocks/planks behind the wheels. Obviously one stopped truck would lead to a chain reaction of stopped trucks, exponentially increasing the block. Thankfully as we were going downhill, we didn't have to burn our clutch.



We got out and tried to kill time on the road. It was cool and thankfully, no mosquitoes. With our phones running out of juice, we needed some form of entertainment to keep us sane! Every guy we met on the road had some theory about the block, from accidents to landslides to robbery to elephant stampede!



The guy in front of us decided to jump the queue and went ahead. We left the space there and called Alex and the guys in the second cars, who were a few hundred meters behind us. They came ahead and entered the line in front of us. A few morons had decided to follow them and now were stuck in no mans land! One went ahead, while the others reversed. We were stuck in this place for nearly 2 hours. We locked our cars and walked a few hundred meters ahead. We found a bunch of college guys in a tempo with loud music and bright flashing lights! We spent some time there and walked back slowly.



Slowly the line moved ahead, stopping after a few meters. The lorries cannot take the hairpin bend at one go, and they need to enter the wrong side to complete the turn. We adjusted accordingly. Some nincompoops, who have no idea how ghat sections work, took this opportunity to overtake and create more block further ahead. Needless to say there was plenty of yelling and cussing going around.



We were stuck at this stretch for nearly 4 hours. Still didn't beat my personal record of being stuck for 5 hours at the Thamarassery ghat section! The source of the block was some road work going on. Actually the workers had left long ago and left their equipment, a bulldozer included, by the side of the road, blocking one entire lane! Once we crossed that section, the roads were free and we were able to zoom ahead. We stopped for the second car to catch up at the Mariamman Bammari temple where we had some much needed coffee. It was around 10PM and we needed to reach Sathyamangalam soon if we were to have any dinner. We did reach Sathyamangalam in around 10 minutes but couldn't find any restaurants open along the road side. We went further ahead and found one just before Annur. Had dinner from there and started after some chit chat. We rearranged the occupant distribution among the cars based on the routes we take after reaching Coimbatore. I would head to Thudiyalur side while Alex was heading towards Ukkadam.

It took a further 50 minutes to reach Coimbatore. The roads were fantastic! Properly surfaced, plenty of curves and completely deserted! Dropped off the folks one by one and finally reached my room for some much needed shuteye.



Total distance driven : 676 km. It was a nice and memorable trip, with plenty of unexpected twists! Really thankful to the gang for being such wonderful travel companions! Coorg is a well explored destination, unofficially known as the fake LTD sticker capital of India! You would need atleast 4 days to explore the place completely. The town has bounced back well after the monsoon floods. However it has become too crowded with tourists. The climate has changed too. It has become warmer (we used to visit the place in my childhood and I remember us packing sweaters for the trip). Still its worth a visit.

Anyway, thats all from me for now. The Coimbatore section of my travel diaries have officially opened with this trip. Hoping for many many more! Until next time!

[aah78]

Thread moved to the Travelogues section. Thanks for sharing!

[mallumowgli]

Well written log GenerallJazz. Seems you had good fun including the block

[venkatt1800]

Another group stuck in the Dhimbham ghats. Boy haven't we heard that before. 4 hours is nothing at this place. I have heard many vehicles stuck up the whole night, usually due to some truck overturning. nice travelogue, Generaljazz.

[IndianAutoEnthu]

676 km is really a long drive. Congrats on what you've got after the long travel and what a beautiful Coorg. It deserves the name "Scotland of India".