Honey Valley - Virajpet !!

It has been a while that the forest has beckoned us and showered us with its beauty. From the starting of March, the sparsely allocated Indian Holiday Calendar for 2015 has been tempting us to drive out and take a break. 

This was a quick plan, spoke to the standard group and added a couple of new members who are equally eager to head out. Everyone is looking for peace and disconnect from the mobile network. We settled for Honey Valley Estates. A place located about 4520 Ft. above sea level from the beautiful and picturesque Madikeri.

As always, we left early in the morning of 21^st March 2015 and met at the Tumkur Road exit of Yashwantpur Railway Station. A holiday and Ugadi festival marked as New Year to natives of Karnataka, the traffic was extremely heavy. Everyone was traveling away from the madness of Bangalore to their respective homes. We slowly made our way out through the Nelmangala exit and decided to change our route. Since Mysore Road will be definitely high on traffic and humps to add on to, we decided to take the longer Hassan Way.

It was already 8 AM when we got a breather and empty road. We stopped at a Kamath Upachar for Breakfast.  We took a good half an hour break with steaming idli, dosa and great coffee. We picked up bottle water and started again. From Tumkur, we followed the road to Kunigal. A stretch of 20kms is under construction, hence a lot of loose gravels and dusts around. Post Kunigal, the road again gets better till Chanarayapatna. Here, we cross the town and open up into the highway again. I must say that the availability of food is very less in this route. It could be because the Highway is comparatively new or less traffic, we surprisingly found the pockets of CCD or Kamat Upachar for refreshment. From Chanrayapatna, we took a right and kept going straight. We reached Shanivarsante and then into Kushalnagar. Kushalnagar was a short halt for refreshment and then at around 12:30PM we entered Madikeri.

Medikeri is the food paradise every time we travel that route. We drove straight into East End Hotel and parked there. East End Hotel has been serving travelers for years now. Its delicacy being Keema Dosa and meat balls, both are served in the evening. For lunch we had mutton pulao, chicken curry, rice and dal fry. The food was as usual amazingly delicious. They served freshly cooked, hot and tasty with the typical Coorg specialty to taste.

Post lunch, we left towards Coorg. We took the left from the Madikeri where the road goes down towards Virajpet. Honey Valley is 23kms from Virajpet. We travelled into the Madikeri-Murnud road for about 4 kms till Kadanur. At the arriving junction there is a single way bridge over a river or a stream, we took a left after the bridge and continued to travel till Kabbinakkad. At Kabbinakkad junction in the right, we saw a board that says Tamaara Coorg 16kms. This has been our landmark. We followed the board till we reached 4kms and stopped in front of a tea stall call call friends.
The jeep fromn Honey Valley was already there to pick us up. We followed the jeep and started climbing. On the first landing, we parked our car and got into the open Mahindra Monster. Then started the final part of our travel.

The road was as narrow as 4feet wide and steep enough to challenge a 4 WD car. It was as if the mountain range has been razor-ed to create a road. One side was thick forest and the other was steep valley dark into nothingness. Scary yet fun.

It was a 1.5kms drive that tool us 35-40mins up. Finally we reached The Honey Valley. This is a huge estate flanked by greenery and small cottages here and there. At the entrance, there is the dining and kitchen, then about 30 steps down is one of the guest accommodation followed by another further 30 odd steps down. That is where we were put overlooking the valley. Quiet, serene and green fulfilling every moment with the chirping of the birds with known and unknown calls.
We sat around, enjoyed the nature for sometimes when the care taker came to take the order for the dinner. Dinner had the standard vegetarian buffet of rice, roti, dal, 2 currys and curd. To add to that, there were chicken and Pork as an option. Dinner was strictly from 8:00PM to 9:30 PM. For snacks we ordered a few dishes however, the options offered were french fries and onion rings and timings were between 5PM and 6:30PM. Since it was already 3PM by the time we reached the place, we planned to take an hours rest before we hit out for some bird watching. At 4PM, we went around the estate, spotted some birds to photograph and came back by 5:30PM. At the rim of sunset, we sat on the benches of onlooking the valley and had our evening coffee and the snacks.
This completely felt like bliss after a longtime. We inquired about the bon fire and within no time everything was set up and were offered a time limit of 7PM to 9PM. The bonfire was fun..... we sat around and spoke on politics, fun things, little things in life that could have been or should have been and our personal agendas on different topics. We hung around till almost 10PM when we were called to finish the dinner. Dinner was good, typical South Indian homemade everyday food. The Pepper Pork and the Chicken curry was very well cooked. We enjoyed our dinner and went back to the still burning fire. After sitting for an hour, we retired to sleep around 11PM.

Though the feeling of honey valley puts us more back into the hostel days where everything is too tired and restricted to have a relaxed vacation, the silence and the greenery definitely puts one at peace.
Next morning, we were up by 6AM for bird watching however, we found more colorful and big butterflies than birds around. We went back to the snack benches by the valley for the morning tea and spend sometime gazing into the greenery. Post breakfast, we started walking and looking around the estate.It was a beautiful walk through the plantation and we were back only by 12 PM. We freshened up, packed and left from there by 1PM and with a hault in Kushalnagar for lunch and Fishland for dinner, we hit back to Bangalore by 1AM.

Though a short and tiring one, this was a fun trip with a small glimpse of hostel days.

Coastal Maharashtra-Bangalore to Pune !!

The most awaited road trip of the year came around after wrapping up work to to double the hours and triple to energy. Finally, it was closing of 24th evening and I was ready to start packing. Camera checked, sun-glasses checked, cash checked, car pre-travel check-up done and dump the travel bag with minimum clothes. A jacket to save the cold nights. We have a list of places to visit, no direction and no booking. As always this makes a trip to look forward to.

We start From Bangalore at 3AM 25th December. Merry Christmas Everyone. We put the GPS on action and hit the highways. We took the Neelmangala exit and headed through Tumkur, Sira and Hiriyur. On the way, tea stalls and a quick stop at a Kamat Upachar and started right onto the most loved Chitradurga food at the Green House Motel. It comes of the left side on the highway after the stream of Windmills on the National Highway.We always make it a point to stop for food there for the amazing Puri-Saagu and Idli and awesome tea. It has the amazingly clean loo.

The road remained awesome and deviating from a 2,4,6 lanes till Haveri and Hubli-Dharwaar.

From Dharwaar we took a left down road towards the Malvan Beaches via Belgaum and Sawantwadi.

Sawantwadi is a small town for an afternoon laze. We had some small food and loitered around till late evening by the lake to sip some tea and coffee. Around 7pm, tired as we were, we left for Tarkarli. We were in Tarkarli by 8pm with a total travel time.

In the next part of the blog, I will just put the high notes of must do and must eat and cut down of the long blabbering of mine.

Trip Details:
24th December 2014 - Bangalore to Chitradurga
24th December 2014 - Malvan Evening by the Jetty with Seafood and fishing town hangout
25th December 2014 - Tarkarli, Devbaug and night drive to Ratnagiri
                                     These beaches are not for visitors in a way and being so close to Goa, it is very different. Devbaug is a fishing town lined with resorts and boating arrangements. Local food in the small shops provide lip smacking lunch and dinner. We took a round in the beach, had food and moved out. Roads are extremely narrow and buses drive bad.
26th December 2014 - Ratnagiri, Ganapathipule, Are-Ware Beach and Sight the dolphin experience on the way to Ganapatipule.
27th December 2014 - Mahabaleshwar, an experience of beautiful weather, amazing strawberry field and the beautiful Pratapgarh Fort

28th December 2014 -  Panchgani, Wai, Drive to Karla, Panchgani remained a drive from Mahabaleshwar, a small flowery town on the hills. Beautiful and picturesque. Wai completely broke my heart as I had very high hope on the beautiful architecture of the Temple on the River. It was dirty and the town was stinking. There are no place to stay and no body even consider staying there, such is the environment.

29th December 2014 - Karla Cave, The drive to Karla caves was wonderful throughout the night. The mountains and the rocks are so beautiful that one must visit to understand how underrated India is when it comes to beauty of nature. It puts the Yellow stone National park to shame. We reached Karla very late and stayed in the Youth Hostel there. Karla Caves are another wonderful architecture that is ill maintained and not taken care of by the tourism department. The beautiful cave is destroyed due to errosion and unaware tourists who litter and dirty the facilities.

30th December 2014 - Lonavala, Khandala,Pune. From Karla, we drove to Lonavla and found it just an overhyped rainy town with nothing to do much other than the weather and a few view points. From there, we drove fown to Pune. The roads were good, the drive was a great experience and the tunnels were amazing.We reached Pune to stay with a friend and her loving family at the Gymkhana Club vicinity. We had a great family time on the 2nd last day of the year.

31st December 2014 - Pune has been the hangout for 31st December. We went to Malaka Spices and had our beer and brunch. What a start of the day. After the lazy lunch, we headed to shop and see the Osho Meditation Centre and a few shopping places followed by Parties to bring about the new year at a friend's farm house.

1st January 2015 - It was Pune visit to meet friends and family in Pune. We called everyone to the infamous German Bakery and had a wonderful evening.
2nd January 2015 - Left  Pune in the midnight and drove back to Bangalore.

We covered a total distance of 2790 kms.

Sohni's Foot-Print !!: Why Do I Travel ???

Sohni's Foot-Print !!: Why Do I Travel ???: Travel is a far Cry out of the comfort zone called home. It is a stress buster leaving every burden of the daily life back home and moving...

Why Do I Travel ???

Travel is a far Cry out of the comfort zone called home. It is a stress buster leaving every burden of the daily life back home and moving out among the unprotected zone with as less luggage as possible.

People who travel light are said to be easygoing, when they come back to the regular days, they learn to live light, leave the burden and yet deal with difficulties. They are independent and well managed. They are more immune to nature, cuts, bruises, strain and better fighter in the survival for the fittest.

The basic rules of travel eventually teach us the basic rules of life.

For a lot of us it takes a great effort to move out of our homes, to take a break, to gather the strength and to take out some finance from the regular expenditures. For a lot of us, it is how others will be effected while they move out and take a break. Again, it takes a lot of courage to spread out our wings and meet new people, different weather and different food. The thought of health is always a questions.

However, once we are able to successfully fight with the one standing in the mirror right in front of us, we are all good to go. No bound is a bound indeed. When we take that first step, we all tend to take a step back. If the dilemma is overcome to take the one forward, we have the entire universe out there, waiting for us. Once we go out there, we see thousands of them who think alike, feel alike, go through the same bindings over and over again till the point that they took that one first step.

We are same in all different ways and then we start meeting each other again and again in the similar path to share our dreams to share our vision and to walk the path.

Some of us travel because their jobs lets them to, some of us travel to see the world, to meet different people or to taste different cuisines. There are the ones who travel to find something or someone and then there are others who travel to find themselves. Some travel to escape from bindings and some travel to get lost in bindings. We all are one of them or most of them at the same time. We have different paths yet the same first step that takes us through the journey.

I have gone through a phase where I thought money is not important if I want to travel, time is, so I quit my job with my good amount of saving and started traveling. List water flowing out of a pot, I came to realize that time isn’t that all important thing here. Money is also a big factor. SO, I joined back. Managing both time and money is the best way out to continue to travel. So plan well, chalk what you want. Some of us want the luxury of home even when they travel while others do without the luxury to visit and attain the maximum out of their trips. Either way, plan well and plan in advance, be precise, be well researched. Talk to people, communicate with forums and use the maximum of what we call the social media.

Last but not the least, remain focused and healthy. In order to mentally drive one to be an independent traveler where you have to walk miles, eat all kind of food, stay wherever required and fight weather calamities, good health is a must. Again, to carry on with the confidence and to have the strength to participate in the entire plan wholeheartedly, physical strength is a must.

Let us be a smart traveler, let us reach those new heights.

Sakleshpur - Trekking Trail !!

Sakleshpur is a small town, nestled in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. In its mountain terrain’s are the vast spreads of coffee estates apart from paddy fields, cardamom & betel-nut plantations. Sakleshpur is also known for thick forests, flowing streams, waterfalls and beautiful meadows stretching for miles.

I chalked out a 570kms from Bangalore. My train left on 4th July Thursday – 7:30AM to 11:40PM – Train No: 17311 (MAS VASCO EXP). 

The distance of the Trek: Castle Rock to Dudhsagar falls is14 kms and the time taken is about 6 Hours or more.

This is the beauty of the trek, the route is full of tunnels. and has the famous second largest tunnel enroute. Be prepared for muddy trek with a lot of leeches during monsoon seasons while the beauty of the trek lies in the monsoon. We had carried our gear and camps and good stock of food. Stay is not available there, camping is the only mean of night stay. During the weekends, there crowd is high and there is place next to the Dudhsagar water where everyone camps.

Food is also not available, so we had carried the stock. Later on, there were mobile vendors selling food items and logs for born fire in a higher price. There is no charge for the camping as long as everyone is self -sustained. Be well prepared for cold rainy night.
There is no washroom facilities available so be blessed in the arm of nature.

The night is an experience to remember and cherish. next day early mornings are cold and misty. The rainy nights make the railway track slippery. We had carried torches,battery, sleeping bag and tent. In the morning we packed up and into the lighter backpacks and started the walk.

As the day rolled by and the trek got sweaty and greener and more beautiful, being engrossed in the beauty of nature is a bliss. It continued to rain and the number of photograph was definitely negated out for this trek.
The tiredness, the nature, the fresh air, the hooting trains everything mesmerized us.


My Camera and me have waited so long for Monsoon to hit Karnataka….and my weekend journey started so rainy that the camera hardly got a chance to pop out!!

Misty Nandi Hills Drive

Kolkata - Home Calling in the cold Winters

Rendezvous - Sri Lanka

15th November 2013 – 20th November 2013

When the air ticket from Chennai, India to Colombo touched almost ground zero, I could not but wait to buy my holiday. The tickets were booked immediately and the travel plan was yet to be made. This is going to be an absolute back packing trip for 5 days.

Time being less, I sat with my usual research of where to stay the economy best through tripadvisor.com and lonelyplanet India guide. I found the places to must see regionally. Being a small tropical island covering up the entire region looked possible, it was only when I reached there, I knew the impossibilities. The beauty of the place keeps the feet tied to stay in one place and enjoy it endlessly, A tight travel plan is definitely not going to serve the hunger to travel the beautiful Sri Lanka.

We landed the Colombo Airport with our minimal pre-planned details in hand at 2:20 am. Visa-on-arrival is easy and hassle free. Once done, we walked out to the lobby to find pre-paid mobile phone simcard stores inside the airport along with money exchanges. they are all in abundant and totally economical. We picked up an Airtel SIM card and exchanged a $100. Outside the departure gate, there were long queue of the budget Taxis of Tata Nano, followed by auto rickshaws called tuk-tuk and luxurious imported vehicles of all kinds. This city never sleeps so traveling is not an issue at all.

As we had pre-booked through Sri Lanka Hostels, we had got our destination planned for the first few hours sleep.We got a tuk-tuk to Negombo, about 16 kms from the Colombo airport. The headed to the Beach Monkey Hostel. It was almost 3:30 am by the time we said goodbye to our friendly and helpful Tuk-Tuk guy – Sumit. A quick coffee offered by the sleepy yet friendly host. We crashed in our clean room with a beautiful attached and spacious bathroom. We woke up early as 9am and sat to interact with our host. the sound of the sea waves in a view-able distance from the hostel made our breakfast amazing. With the help of our host, we chalked out an approximate plan of our visit. Once done, we walked down the beach to see the azure blue waves lashing the beach. We spent some time in Negombo beach and then walked down the market. We had a quick lunch of continental sea food by the beach and walked back to pack up for our journey. there is not much to see in Negombo, but a perfect place to rest and rejuvenate. So we planned to proceed without spending more time there. We exchanged INR with LKR from the nearest moonstone seller as guided by our host. Beach monkey is a simple yet awesome place to be at a price as low as $12/per night including breakfast. The landmark for the hostel is the Lanza Wine Shop at the basement of the establishment.

From Negombo, we took the local bus to the main bus stop. There we hailed the AC bus that took us to our nest destination Kandy. We left Negombo post lunch around 1 pm and were in Kandy by 6pm. As the stay in the Kandy hostel was again done with the help of our host in Negombo. The Kandy Hostel worker picked us from the bus station and took us to the beautiful and luxurious house which has been transformed into a hostel. A feel of a typical Sri Lankan family life experience. We were greeted by the host with coffee, juice and biscuits. A great dinner followed by a good sleep for the day. In the mean while, we had decided our next day plan.

We left at 8 am in the hostel Tuk-Tuk for LKR 2300 for the whole day. We went through Lankan towns, hills, valleys and reached the ancient ruins of Sigiriya in 4 hours. We bought our tickets at LKR1200 for SAARC countries while it is LKR 3600 per person for foreigners. We climbed the top for about 2-3 hours up by more than 2000 steps and saw the ancient kingdom dating back to 6th century AD. The water garden and the beautiful landscaping , the history of one of the most technical irrigation system on globe all are preserved to be viewed by the tourist. After Sigiriya, we headed back to Dambulla, a 25 kms travel. Dambulla is a Buddhist monastery. Huge, beautiful,serene and peaceful. We stayed there for an hour and headed back to Kandy through the rainy mountains. While riding back fro Sigiriya, we stopped by at the famous Batik factory and showroom. Extremely beautiful but very expensive. We stopped for lunch in a small thatched roof buffet place. We had the authentic Sri Lankan vegetarian lunch. At Dambulla, we saw the huge statue of Lord Buddha meditating and 108 statue of Buddhist monks walking there way to the statue of lord Buddha. Once done, We headed back to Kandy.

We reached Kandy at about 4:30 pm and headed directly to the Tooth Relic Temple. This is considered as the most holy shrine in Sri Lanka. The temple is beautiful and the tooth as engraved in writing , says that it exists in the ornate casket. The temple is open from early morning to late evening and the fees is LKR 1000 for foreigners. AT 5 pm sharp starts the Kandy Dance program in the Temple cultural gathering hall. This is a performance not to be missed at any cost and is known as photographer’s delight. Though it has deep history of being originated to drive black magic from the kings, now it has become a famous tourist attraction. At around 7 pm, we walked down the white and spotless town of Kandy. We settled for a dinner at “Bakehouse” on the main street. the balcony view with the aroma of the local food. It was a day well spent and an evening well enjoyed.

We retired for the day and started early to visit Anuradhapura, the next morning. We had planned to buy a cultural triangle ticket for $50 USD to visit all the sites of Anuradhapura. Our Tuk-Tuk driver took us through without the ticket. It is a better idea to take a Tuk-Tuk from Kandy. On the entrance of Anuradhapura, we saw the 2000 years old Bodhi tree. It is the oldest tree on the face of earth so far. It is said that Lord Buddha attained enlightenment there. We saw the stupa of Ruwanwelisaya in a walking distance from the Maha Bodhi Tree. It is a huge white stupa and is restored by the Archaeological department. We also saw the Jetavana from outside, another huge stupa.

We went to the Archaeology Museum and the Folk Museum to see the beautiful artifacts and preserved jewelry, potteries and remains of the past. Once done by late afternoon, we went to the old town of Anuradhapura. Across Sri Lanka we got good local food, well cooked, great aroma and fresh. We were back to Kandy by 8 pm. We had our dinner of fresh fruit and quick packs. From Kandy we boarded the overnight bus to Colombo. It is a 8 hours travel in a local bus. Unplanned we boarded a almost filled bus where passengers were standing their way through till Colombo.

A notable thing about buses in this beautiful country. The first seat of 3 people is reserves for Clergy and the 2nd row is for pregnant women. However crowded the bus is, the people get up for these two categories of people. When the driver saw that we were tourist, he had the 3rd seat vacated for us. We interacted with the people, Sinhalese are extremely friendly and helpful people.

We reached Colombo at about 2 AM, a splash and clean city awake all night, busy with traffic. We decided to skip Colombo post discussion with the fellow passengers. We decided to go till Hikkaduwa. The road from Colombo to Hikkaduwa runs south through the shore. Surprisingly we saw, the train track running parallel between the shore and the road. We reached there at 5 AM. Walked down the road to find lines of hotels, diving schools and resorts. We had done our bit of research here as well. We settled for the Poseidon Diving Station.

The stay is luxurious at a $ 25 USD per day inclusive of breakfast. We crashed for a few hours to wake up to the beautiful blue sea of Hikkaduwa. We woke up by afternoon and went for lunch to the nearest Rotti shop, for our authentic Rotti of Sri Lanka. The place is opposite to a huge resort hidden by a jackfruit tree. The honey banana roti turned out to me my favorite there. Once done, we caught hold of a travel and tour person whose contact we still have. We went down till Bentota, enjoyed our moonstone mine trip and dined an early one in Bentota. We were back to Hikkaduwa by 10 PM.

Next day was early as we had plans for deep sea diving but the sea being not so friendly, had to stay back. We had our snorkeling and swim time there and settled for lunch in Mambo’s towards the end of Gale Road. The food here was awesome. A Sri Lankan Fish/Chicken meal was 700 LKR and we enjoyed the sea with our Lion Beer. In the evening, it was the graduation day for batch 2013 in the Poseidon Diving Station and we were invited to the party. We drank Local Arrack and danced to the local folk music on the beach.

Next day morning since the sea was not good enough to go diving, we called our tour driver and visited the Turtle Hatchery, tsunami Temple,Tsunami Memorial and drove towards Unawatuna. We had our lunch in Unawatuna, by the sea. Post lunch we drove towards Gale. We visited the Gale harbour, Gale cricket stadium, Gale Market.

Towards Sunset, we drove further south to Koggala. We were late or was it the rough sea for the last two days, we missed to see the fishermen perched up on the long bamboo sticks to catch the fish. Once done, we came se the Gale fort. Beautiful and huge is the best defined. There is a town that exists by itself inside the fort, looks colonial and was full of music and merry making. The roads had eateries, shops, bakeries, church, bank and residents. We grabbed a quick bite in the Peddler’s inn and headed back to Hikkaduwa.

Our awesome trip finally came to an end when we reached Poseidon Diving Station, said goodbye to the amazing group of Diving instructors, especially Praveen and headed back to the Colombo Airport with our Tour guy.

I promised to come back since a lot is yet to be explored in this beautiful island of Sri Lanka.

Tanjore - Kumbokonam

The quick plan worked out well to Kumbakonam as My closest friend and I chalked an overview of places to see in the temple town. Among the hundreds of temples and places we marked up good 10-15 places to cover in 2 days. This is going to be an on toe travel. Train number – 16232 Mailaduturai Exp. The train reaches Bangalore Cant at 7:15pm and we settled with our railway coffee and the notepad to do the final chalk down. No time to relax while we are there. Once done, we settled in our respective bunks to get the most required sleep. We reached the flowery little station of Kumbakonam at 5:45am.

Here we are and the weather is still at a good 22-23 degrees. We quickly made our way out and took a rickshaw to our destination, the YHAI Hostel of Kumbakonam. As mentioned in the website, the hostel is centrally located just opposite to the prime temple and lake. It is said that from any corner of the town, one can view a kumbham (the pot kept right on top of a gopuram) of a temple. Hence the name of the town is Kumbakonam. Once we dumped our bags and freshened up, we caught hold of our camera bags and started for our tour.

We had the list handy already and to start with, we clicked the early morning reflection of the tank of Kumbeswarar Temple. One done, we went out to look around the prime temple of Kumbakonam, The Kumbeswarar Temple, with the prime deity as Adhikumbeswarar swamy. It is a form of Lord Shiva and the temple is beautiful and colorful.

Once done, we moved to the nearby Someswarar Temple, once again similarly beautiful work of colorful deities sculptured on the rocks and adorn the history of the temple. We took to have breakfast at a small air-conditioned outlet opposite the Someswarar Temple. The food was amazing and hospitality needs to be mentioned. As it was getting hotter with time, we hopped into an auto-rickshaw and bargained to Rs.500 for going around the Kumbakonam town and showing us the listed temples and historic monuments.

We went around and saw Nageswarar Temple of the Lord Shiva. The main deity is a Shiva Lingam and this temple is located centrally located in the town. The Kasi Vishwanathar Temple that we visited next is the temple of the 9 river deities of Ganga, Yamuna, Narmada, Saraswati, Kaveri, Godavari, Tungabhatra, Krishna and Sarayu.

  

We then visited the Veeravathirar Temple about 2kms from the Kumbakonam Bus stop and adjacent to the Mahamagam tank. The Ramaswamy Temple is one of the most beautiful temples. It has 219 painting of Ramayana adorned on the walls and the prime deity here is Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Anjaneyaa. This temple again is within 2 kms from the town center.

Finally we visited the Sarangapani Temple, one of the 3 major shrines of Lord Vishnu back inside the Kumbakonam town.
It was late evening by the time we finished our day temple tour. We gathered advice from our friendly auto driver about a good place to eat and he took us to the authentic Pandhiyan Hotel amidst the busy market area of the town. It is an old place with long tables and benches like the government schools, very high ceilings and old fans. The place was painted and very clean with one wall completely adorned with photographs in black n white and colors, may be of the members who hav been associated with the place. We ate amazing South Tamil Nadu dinner both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. The food tasted great but more than the food the hospitality was as if we have been invited to dine in Tamil Nadu, this place feels invited.
Post dinner, we called off an early day as an exciting day starts ahead with the sunrise.

Kovalam ~ Paradise Lost

Our close to 1875kms long Kerala trip is still continuing as we have moved from Mysore to Sultan Bathery to Wayanad to Alleppey to Varkala. Now After Cochin, we move to the calendar beach of India, Kovalam.

We reached during the late evening and I vow to say that the roads leading into Kovalam are not the ones to be praised. There are a few great looking IT Hubs and residential community as we approached Kovalam. Once into the town, the place barely looked like a seaside.Trolling with huge number of north Indian eateries, it looked like one of those busy tourist locations.
We straight headed to the beach and the first one we saw was Samudra Beach, then the Hawa beach or the Eves Beach and last was the lighthouse beach.

Samudra beach is famous for the resorts bordering the bay like Leela Kovalam. It is a beautiful picturesque with the unbearable odor of fishing net and sewage around. We decided to grab an exotic coffee and get the feel to be at Leela’s Kovalam. A beautiful fairyland it is and a definite feeling of a seven star hospitality. We enjoyed the hour we had spent there.
Once done, reality did bite the cheque we paid and we went for our budget stay hunting. Just a 2 mins walk up road from the light house beach is a beautiful Kerala style Mansion called Vijaya Varma Beach Resort, in about 3 minutes walk from the light house beach. The hotel is beautiful, a huge Kerala style mansion with room heavily wood crafted and bathrooms as beautiful as the bedrooms. Every room has a private balcony looking on to the sea. The restaurant remains closed since we went during the off seasons. But, anytime of the year, they offer you a great pocket friendly price in comparison to the pricey tourist places in kovalam which are not worth the price.

Kovalam has nothing much other than enjoying the sea from dawn to dusk. The food outlets by the decorated and paved lighthouse beach are great hang out. The German Bakery, Rock café, Malabar café all serve good seafood and look onto the sea.
Tired, as we were, we finished our first day dinner in one of the outlets on the beach. Expensive in comparison to the quality and quantity of the food served.
We retired early post a small in-house beer drinking party in the hotel balcony which we enjoyed the most. Next day was early. We aimed to see the sunrise on the light house beach. The weather being gloomy, the plan was done for. We walked down the beach, had a quick grab on appam from a street food cart and that tasted amazing. I would have given away any five-star breakfast for the fresh appam and stew.
Our excitement of getting into the water was discouraged by the dirty beach that we saw in both Samudra and Light house beach. With advice from the food cart man, we drove down to a place called Poovar, 17 kms from Kovalam. We drove through the green to find the beautiful beach of Poovar. Poovar has few of the secluded yet the best resorts of Kovalam. The beach is comparatively less crowded and cleaner. Though the pollution in the sea definitely disheartened us, this place was better to enjoy the beach.

Water was extremely oily and heavy. The current was huge and the waves brought with it fishes, dead and black in color. We also spotted huge jelly fish, weighing close to 2-3 kg being thrown onto the shore by the waves. While the state of the sea animals looked sad, it was scary enough for us. We decided not to get into the water at all. We spent some time around and came back to Kovalam.

On our way back, we asked for local Kerala meal and was guided by the locals to a small place just beside the Kovalam police station. They served us Authentic Kerala meal for Rs. 60/- each and we topped it up with more fish fry and fish curry. This was the best meal we had in our entire Kerala trip for the last 7 days. Not only did the food taste out of the world but it was as inexpensive as cannot be imagined. Anyone who visits Kovalam must and must definitely visit this outlet beside the Kovalam Police Station for authentic, clean, tasty, pocket friendly and out of the world experience.

After our sumptuous lunch, we decided to retire for a good 2-3 hours and finally hit the road for our home calling.

Varkala – Paradise in God’s Own Country

We left Alleppey around 10 am after our breakfast in Alleppey and headed through the potholed roads, southwards. The roads are extremely bad and the monsoon performed its part. During traffic hours, it gets worse. The 104 kms stretch approximately took us 4 hours to reach, because of the road condition. Finally, with a number of tea/coffee breaks, we reached varkala at 3pm. The moment we reached, the view and the sound of the wild sea  from the cliff brought back all our energies. We walked past the cliff lined with all the cafe, eateries and stay places.

   

Varkala is very similar to any other seabeach in India, the shops with dokra, cheap clothes, small artifacts and traditional Indian shops. There are huge number of Kerala Ayurvedic Massage centres which offers a good range of massages in a very good price. The places to stay on the cliff overlooking the sea are expensive one, but as we take the by lane, there are a large number of places to stay, comfortable and affordable.

As I always go by the Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet, I kept looking at the ones that are recommended. in one of the by lanes, we found Mummy’s Bamboo House, a small yet sparkling clean place. We got our rooms in the ground floor at a price as low as Rs.400/- per day. The room is spacious and a big washroom. The building looks as good as new. The Best part are the hammocks outside the rooms. When I spoke to the host, Rani, she said that it was 9 years old. Wow!! What a beautifully maintained place. Rani had been by far, the best host we have come across. Warm and smiling. She gave us amazing tea/coffee and great Kerala lunch and coconut pancake in the later day. The surprisingly best part of Varkala is that every place is Wi-fi enabled.

Once we got the place to stay, we headed out for lunch. The Little Tibet caught our sight among all the Casa Del Sol, German Bakery, Buddha Cafe and the others. We ordered Thupka, Mutton Momo, pancake and Sizzlers. The food tastes amazing here. The prices are relatively low. The a little time the took to serve us was because the food is fresh and steaming.We hanged around in cliff that day for sometimes and went back to our den. We rested the early evening in the hammocks and finally decided to retire fast that day after our dinner in another hangout called Caffe Italiano. A good looking attractive place that looks like a library and is filled with artificially woven cobwebs. The ambiance is beautiful. The Food was not upto the mark. The cocktails served were good, but the pasta was sauce less and dry, food had no taste at all and the seafood was extremely expensive for a sea side.

The next day was the day to look around the varkala town after our English breakfast and pancake time at Casa Del Mar, We visited a Vishnu temple, a Sivagiri Maath and the Kappil Beach outlined with the backwaters. The Kappil Beach is the flat beach with a tremendously rough sea and beautiful backwaters. Its and experience. We spent about 2-3 hours there and got back to Cliff. After freshening up for the evening, we spent time, shopping and walking by the cliff. Post that, we went for the most recommended Kerala Ayurveda Massage. A good 60 minutes relaxation was really good.

We had our dinner in a place called Sky Lounge. The food was great there and extremely inexpensive. The pepper chicken, Thukpa and the Pancake was amazing and the cocktails again were the best. We also ordered steak in pepper sauce and that too tasted great.

 

The next day was our day to depart from Varkala. We limited our breakfast to our B&B menu of appam and curry from a place round the corner from Mummy’s Bamboo house. Our Lunch was the definitely no to miss Kerala meal and coconut Pancake.

As we packed up, we saw the Anchuthengu Fort,the Varkala Lighthouse and the Varkala Tunnel.