Mundane Musings

Every time in the past when I have suggested visiting Madikeri, it was vetoed down by my well travelled husband who thought there wasn't much to explore in the largely coffee growing area. But on our 10th wedding anniversary he decided to indulge me and we plotted a trip to Coorg/ Kodagu District.  We weren't planning on doing much there but simply rest and relax - two commodities that have been in short supply since Ana's birth. This was our first trip since the second wave of Corona and Karnataka which had a lower count seemed to be a safe bet. This was our second trip to of Karnataka, apart from the zillion trips made to the one and only Bangalore.  We also decided to do a road trip as our Kia Seltos had not been challenged since our trip to Wayanad last year and we were eager for our trip to Madikeri (Club Mahindra Resort) to begin! A reflective break  Travel route:  Chennai to Madikeri is a good 600+ kms and we planned to break our journey in Bangalore before co...

I know my first post of the new year has been 24 days into the month, but I am just back from one of my first trips (of hopefully many) in 2019. A dear friend had got us booked in a forest guest house at Nagarhole National Park or Rajiv Gandhi Tiger Reserve and we friends just grabbed the opportunity without a moment's thought. The road leading from Hunsur through the forest I love going to such off beat places as the experiences are different and the crowd is less. My Kotagiri blog post is one of the most read posts here, and Nagarhole is as wild and beautiful perhaps even more than Kotagiri. We are talking about a real forest here. It is the real deal. And like all good things, it is kind of hard to experience. The dark, misty forest Nagarhole National Park is home to one of the most vulnerable species of animals in the world right now - the magnificent Tiger. Statistics show that there are very few tigers in the world. You may be sure that a good number of those...

It did feel a bit odd to be planning a family trip to Yercaud in November, bang in the midst of torrential rains. But one of the brothers was landing only then and the rest of my family thought of swinging it and face the consequences. The consequences, I am happy to report, were of the joyous kind; it is Yercaud we are talking about after all. The very Yercaud which had pulled my heart and locked it somewhere in its lush, green wild mountains when I had first visited it about 7 -8 years ago. I didn’t realise how much I would miss the sound of silence, which when punctuated by the chirping or tweeting of birds only seemed to augment the immense, humbling, wholeness of that silence. I fell in love with this small town nestled in the Shevaroyan hill range with its tiny roads that surprisingly could accommodate a good car and which had myriad trekking trails. This time I felt like I was coming home. Any doubts I had of it having changed in the interim were firmed up as we made ou...