Coorg - Land of Spices!

My first weekend away from Mysore and boy, was I excited about it! Nearly 12 of us booked a van and were off in the wee hours of the day to visit the much rumoured Madikeri to see if it really lived up to the hype! And did it do so! With aplomb!
Since Madikeri was too big to be properly visited in a weekend, we focused on South Madikeri. Rushing through the forests of (whose name is eluding me at the moment), to the monasteries of Bylakuppe, to the tea and coffee estates, we reached Abbey waterfalls. Abbey is one of the most popular waterfalls in the midst of coffee plantations with a hanging bridge for observations. It was simply mesmerizing for me who was witnessing such a huge waterfall for the first time in my life! The monasteries of Bylakuppe, like all monasteries was too peaceful for words. We finally reached a booked guest house in the evening where after a lot of drama and action among large groups, we finally fell asleep. We had hardly slept a minute before we had to wake up and visit Tala Kaveri, the origin of the Cauvery river. Well, visit is a small word, we had to climb over 300 steps (who's counting) to reach the top which was too foggy to see a thing. All for fog!
What really struck us were the chocolate and spice stores along the way, every few hundred metres. Warm coffee and chocolate in the cold weather, is really the topping on the ice in this place. I could unfortunately not complete the entire Coorg or Madikeri and vowed to come back a second time to complete it! Madikeri made my day.. weekend!Read more