COORG: NOT CUT OUT FOR TOURISM

As a tourist or traveller, you learn many lessons over the years. One of them is not to believe in what official websites about places of tourism interest state. Here is an example: “Coorg or Kodagu, as it is officially known now, is an astonishing land in the heart of the southern Indian peninsula. This unspoilt ‘country of million hills’, situated on the slopes of the Western Ghats, is India’s coffee bowl.’ This is what www.coorgtourisminfo.com says. It’s a short description but I have a problem, or rather a couple of issues, with it. First of all, the word astonishing is too far-fetched. It reminds you of poets who are prone to flights of fancy and ultimately cannot write anything that makes sense. Secondly, unspoilt country of million hills is like trying to blow a hot air balloon out of a bubble-gum. Million hills? Unspoilt country? How many lies does it take to make content for a website?

Okay, so now that I have got some of my angst against Coorg off my chest, here’s a blow-by-blow account of the ninth annual trip of the Pilgrim Fathers whose lifelong members, in no particular order, are Col. Gajanan Radkar, Harsha Rao, Vipul Shah, Ganesh Shinde, Dilip Bhandari, Rajesh Bayas, S Vaidyanathan and the writer of this blog, Huned Contractor. If you happen to read my earlier blogs, you may find lyrical descriptions of the places we have visited so far. Sorry to say, I have nothing ‘exceptional’ to say about Coorg. As we hit the road from Bengaluru’s airport to reach Coorg, we realised soon enough that those who say that Coorg is just a mere distance of 3-4 hours are usually born liars and unable to undergo any reformation even after signing up with Liars Anonymous.

Granted that we stopped en route for lunch, tea and other things, yet, it took us 12 hours to reach Club Mahendra where we had booked our rooms. Also, the road to Coorg is not at all scenic – not anywhere close to going to, for example, Darjeeling or Dalhousie or Munnar or any of such hill stations. Anyway, the good part was that Club Mahendra is a comfortable and well-maintained resort and even though slightly exorbitant on the pricing side, offers a well laid out property with tall trees, various activities to keep you entertained and a sumptuous buffet for all meals. It was too late and we were too exhausted to explore what lay outside the resort and so it was an early dinner and to sleep.

With a breakfast fit for royalty and fighting for space in extended bellies, we were now ready to ‘tour’ Coorg. Now here’s a bit of unsolicited but honest advice to anyone who goes to Coorg: first study a map of the place and find out exactly what the distances are between the ‘points’ you want to see. In our case, the lack of any planning set us off on a long road towards Talacauvery – the place where river Cauvery is believed to originate – only to return mid-way because it dawned upon us too late that we would be covering up to 120 km just to see a small temple. So, we decided it would be better to visit the Abbey Waterfall.

The Abbey Waterfall is not recommended for those who have a problem with their knees. You have to descend a long flight of steps (and of course climb up) to see nothing but a tiny stream of water trickling down into a pond from a rocky ledge. You can see better waterfalls when you travel by train or road from Pune to Mumbai during the monsoon. To put it mildly, this can turn out to be such a disappointment that it may even lead to a bout of home sickness and some whiplashing in your mind about why the hell did you choose to come here in the first place. Anyway, our disappointment wasn’t so intense since the objective was to spend three days together and have fun rather than just take in the sights.

Now here comes the biggest ride – the hard jeep safari. Pardon me, but my bones are still rattling and I think my spinal cord has got fused and fractioned in a few places. The hard jeep safari that takes you to the top of Coorg to offer a sight of the ring of mountains and the deep valleys calls for one particular attribute: you should have a well-cushioned backside to absorb the bumps and also a soft head to cushion the blows you will get on your head when the jeep hits the troughs or goes roughshod on boulders. It’s a place where your car won’t take you without damaging its suspension and so a jeep is the best option. It takes about 45 minutes to finally reach the base of a hill from where you have to climb a gradient to reach the ridge and look out at the sprawling scenario of the hills that make Coorg what it is. Were we impressed? Well, not too that extent since we have seen better sights at loftier heights – Vaishnodevi, for instance. Anyway, without cribbing too much, let’s say that the effort wasn’t wasted or else we would have simply twiddled our thumbs at Club Mahendra.

To go by the tourist brochure, one of the places worth visiting is the Dubare Elephant Camp, a forested area where you can swim in a lake or take an elephant ride. We don’t believe in using animals as load-bearers or for pleasure and so Dubare was out of the picture. Finally, it was the time we spent pulling each other’s legs, reminiscing about the school days, discussing about what the future may hold and voicing our concerns about several things that impact life which together made the whole trip exciting and refreshing. Incidentally, negotiating the traffic in Bengaluru is another tragic tale waiting to be written. But let’s keep it for another day.

To end the narrative, here is another paragraph from the Coorg tourism website: ‘Madikeri or Mercara, as it was known when it was once ruled by the British, is the district headquarters and situated at an elevation of 1,140 metres. Dotted with red-tiled bungalows, the town has an old world charm about it. The British who colonized Coorg and set up coffee plantations prior to Independence, compared Coorg to Scotland as both the places had grand and regal highlands with a sturdy mountain-dwelling race.” I would like to know who wrote this. And as I said before, never go by what a tourism brochure or website states. The next time we go somewhere, we are going to devote some time to proper research before we pack our bags.

Huned Contractor

Pune: December 11, 2017