My First Blog - Coorg Trip

Hey, this is the first time I'm blogging......... just to see what all the hoopla is about.

We had a long weekend for the new year assuming that you take the 31st off, which was a working day. So some of my friends had come down from their respective cities. The New year also gave everyone a reason to meet. Although a lot of my friends live in Bangalore ,most of us rarely meet owing to office on weekdays and laziness in the weekends. So, what we decided was to go to Coorg on the Weekend, i.e on 29th and 30th. Paras had come down from Chennai, so had Nishant from Delhi and Tyson was right here in Bangalore(although he lives very far off from my place). Even my brother who is in the IMA had his vacations. So I had him fly down to Bangalore too. So, finally we were 6 people, the 4 people I mentioned, me (of course) and Puneet (my roommate).

The journey was loooooooooonnnnggggggg. It took us about 7 hours to reach Madikeri - The Capital of Coorg. By the time we reached , it was already 5.30 p.m.When we reached the hotel, we learnt that the online booking we had made was no good and the hotel offered no home stay as we expected. So instead they offered to refund half our money in exchange for a stay at a hotel room. We agreed. So, then we set out on foot to explore the city.
There wasn't much to see in the city , so we took our dinner and spent the night playing '29'.

The next morning we set out to see the tourist spots of Coorg. It included a temple(i am forgetting the name). Next we went to Raja's seat (a viewing point) where we took a ride on a toy train and took some snaps as all tourists do.Now next on our list was the Madikeri Fort which was more of an office rather than a fort. It had a temple and a functioning prison. All these three spots we covered in about an hour's time as there was nothing really to see. Next we were awaiting eagerly for Abbey falls. But that too turned out to be a disappointment as we were not allowed to go near the water. Instead we had to watch the waterfall from a bridge there. So, by 11.30 we were done with the tourist spots in Coorg. We asked our driver to take us to Harangi Dam. He insisted on going to a Raj-Rajeshwari temple. So, we agreed and that temple was down in a valley 6 kms away. While me Paras and Nishant went inside the temple, Puneet started exploring and found a minuscule waterfall on the backside of the temple. So, all of us trekked a bit(I trekked barefoot as I took off my shoes for the temple) and came to that spot. It was really the best part of the trip up to that time.

Our next stop was Harangi dam some 35 kms away.It took us about an hour to reach there. When we reached, we were told that the dam itself was closed for tourists an year back. But the view of the river Cauvery was magnificent. So, we started walking along the banks. We, found a fisherman who was patiently waiting for his catch of the day. We noticed a crab near the bank in the water. We pointed it out to him and he caught it with his bare hands. All of us were excited at this as it was a new sight for all of us. We took the pics and then left for Brindavan Garens near Mysore. Our driver was driving outrageously at 120-140 kmph on a road not more than 4 lane in width. We , finally reached the place at about 5.30 pm and immediately we went to the top of the Krishnarajasagar Dam because it is closed as light fades away in the evening. Then we rested for sometime in the gardens. But little did we know that the most exciting part of our trip was yet to begin.

When we got out of the place and went to the parking area (at about 7 pm), our vehicle and the driver were nowhere to be found. Since the parking area was huge, we split up and started searching for the vehicle. The driver wasn't even picking up the phone. After about three quarters of an hour, the driver picked up his phone and said ,"Sir, the vehicle has met with an accident and I'm coming in some other vehicle to pick you up in 10 minutes". It didn't come as a total surprise to us that the vehicle had met with an accident. The driver arrived in another 20 minutes with the same damaged vehicle. It was a sight - the bumper damaged completely from the right side , the headlight smashed and the front glass pane having a few cracks. There was another person with the driver inside the vehicle. We didn't bother to ask about him as we were very tired and desperate to get back to Bangalore. As we got inside the vehicle, the driver stopped nearby twice for a couple of minutes to get something fixed. We didn't mind that either. At the second stop the second person got down. That was barely 2-3 kms from Brindavan Gardens. Then when he started driving again , the vehicle started swaying towards the right end of the road. We were pretty lucky that no vehicles were coming from the opposite direction at that moment. We made him stop and asked him to wash his face as we thought that he was feeling sleepy. Then we started again , and the vehicle started swaying towards the left end now. We shouted and made him stop again. Then we felt that there was something wrong. We asked him to step out of the vehicle. He was barely able to stand on his feet , he was so drunk. Luckily there was a petrol pump just 50m from where we were. So, we took the keys from him and parked the vehicle there. Then, somehow we put the driver to sleep. We called up the owner of the travel agency and told him the case. The big moron that he was, he wanted to talk to the driver. We tried to explain to him the difficulty with which we put him to sleep but he was adamant and we had to wake him up. We were also trying to make some arrangement for the travel back to Bangalore. But the driver now wanted us to travel with him to Bangalore as he feared that he would lose his job. It was his job or our lives - so we chose our life. Somehow Nishant managed to get some contact of a travel agent in Mysore and we got a Sumo which reached that place in an hour. As soon as the Sumo arrived, the driver started to ask for his payment of the trip. We were in no mood to do so as he had not completed the journey which he was supposed to do and furthermore endangered our lives. So, as we were starting to move, he started abusing us in his native tongue. So,just to cover for the fuel charges ,we gave him some money and gave him the keys for the vehicle back requesting him not to drive till the morning.

We reached back at 4 in the morning and went to sleep straightaway. It was a memorable trip not because Coorg was an awesome place to visit but because of the incident right at the end of the trip.
Its not the things that go according to plan that you remember but the things that go terribly wrong.