A trip to God's own country, Kerala

Kerala is a heaven if you love natural beauty. The entire state is so lush green that it simply amazes you. It's got some of the most beautiful landscapes that you will ever see.

Our trip to Kerala was born out of the Club Mahindra membership. Soon after we bought our Club Mahindra membership, we booked our first vacation at thier flagship property in Munnar. Our plan was to spend 4 days in Munnar, a hill station and 3 days in Poovar an island resort near Trivendrum.

We were two families with 5 kids and 4 adults. We set out from Bangalore at 8:30 am on an Air Deccan flight to Coimbatore that kept the schedule. We were joined on the flight by our Neighbour whose son studies with Anirudh. We were excited to go eat at Annapoorna (From our past experience in 80's) but this time around the breakfast turned out to be an OK affair. I think several small restaureants in Bangalore will beat this place hands down.

We had rented a Toyota Qualis from Coimbatore that took us to Munnar. The driver was very good at what he did. We reached Club Mahindra resort, a beautiful resort overlooking the "AnaiIrankal" lake.
The resort is top notch and we were lucky to get 2 cottages situated in a prime location facing the lakes. The rooms were very well kept. This resort is one of RCI's gold crown property and lived upto that standards.







That evening we just relaxed with some wine that I had carried from Bangalore. Next morning when we stepped out of the cottage our jaws dropped to the ground looking at this marvellous fog covered Munnar with its vast sprawling Tea plantation. The scenes were simply undescribable. After breakfast we went around seeing the waterfalls which are dime a dozen here and went for a boat ride on lake Methupatty.


We were lucky to run into 4-5 wild elephants (see in the pic on the left) that had come down to the watering hole and everyone had a blast. The lake is vast and simply beautiful, the words that you will keep ringing from me again and again.

The next day it was a trip to Kolukamalai , a treacherous drive up to the highest point in Munnar where is situated a Tea factory. We rented a 4x4 jeep and like in any town, one had to haggle with the taxi driver but it turned out that we were not able to extract much concessions from him. This is partly due to the unionised nature of this profession in communist Kerala. The scenic beauty as you go up this drive will blow your mind away.


The jaggedy peaks and little hamlets at the foot of this tall mountains will probably make a swiss feel right at home. The Tea factory is very tourist friendly and lets you be part of the whole process and kids simply loved it. You could taste and smell the freshness in the the Tea that they served.




Coming back from Kolukamalai we went to "AnaiIrankal", the lake which our cottage overlooked.











Club Mahindra has lot of activity for kids onsite and we decided to spend the next day in the resort with kids taking part in some of these activities. Anisha and Anirudh went for Rappeling and Jummaring and some painting classes.
















It was fun watching them enjoy themselves. The food at Club Mahindra is very reasonable (Rs 400 for 3 meals) and they do have a good spread and a courteous staff. The resort also has a small grocery store for you to purchase ingradients and cook on your own since they do provide a decent kitchen in each cottage. We cooked our food twice in the cottage and rest of the time ate out.


From Munnar, we left to Poovar, an island resort near Trivendrum. The journey took about 10-11 hrs by road since our driver drove through Tamilnadu instead of Kerala because of permit problems. I ended up seeing a lot of Tamilnadu countryside than I care to since it isn't as beautiful as Kerala.

The Floating Palms resort at Poovar is a classy resort with a fantastic location. It is sorrounded by backwaters but not far from the ocean. The resort has floating cottages which is what we got and it was fun living in those. They do float on the water and move occassionally by about 1ft - 2ft but do not drift away.




At Poovar the resort had a really nice swimming pool with swim up bar which we enjoyed thoroughly. We went to visit the Raja Ravi Verma palaces in Thiruvanthpuram. The amount of wood used and the carving will amaze you. Definitely worth visiting. We were disappointed with the behavior and attitude of priests at the AnanthPadmanabha temple. Covalam beach was a disappointment and may be because of the taxi driver who took us to the wrong end of the beach.

We took a day trip to Kanyakumari to see the famed Vivekananda rock. This place is really tranquil and especially the meditation room. Next to Vivekananda rock is another place where they have now erected the statue of Thiruvallavur, the famed Tamil poet. Souvenier shopping in Kanyakumari is fun since things are really low priced.

We flew back to Bangalore from Trivandrum (Thiruvananthpuram). The Thiruvananthpuram airport is definitely nice, nicer than Bangalore airport.

Journey of the Tea from plantation to your home

On our trip to Munnar which is home to a huge tea plantation, we learnt the whole process of how tea gets made and because it was very educational I have decided to share that experience and knowledge here. The tea factory we visited is situated at Kolukamalai at a heigh of 8000+ ft above sea level. The journey to the factory was very treacherous with only a Jeep being able to make it. The breath taking view from the top compensated more than enough for the hardship of the journey. The Tea factory made our whole journey really worthwhile experience

The Tea plant is allowed to grow to a height of about 2 ft from the ground. Once it reaches that height, the new leaves get picked and because of which the plant always stays about that high.

Mostly women pick these leaves by a simple instrument that looks like a pair of shears with which when brought together will form a box that collects all the leaves as they are cut. The leaves are then transferred over to the bag that they carry on their backs.






The next step is sorting of the leaves and putting them in nylon bags.









These leaves are then brought to the factory where they are first put on a huge belt and hot air is pumped from beneath. This reduces the moisture content by 50%.








The leaves then are dropped from a chute and go into a grinder which chops up the leaves. This process is called crushing.








From here they go on to a sieve where the finer chopped leaves are separated from the coarser ones. The coarser ones go back into the grinding machine.

The finer part is now spread out on the floor and allowed to oxidise for about 3 hrs.





The next step is another machine which dries the oxidised tea. Again at this step some waste matter is removed or sent back to the previous step.








After drying, it goes into a machine which consists of several cylinders and each of them makes it little finer and send the good tea to the next step cylinder while the not so good part gets collected on the side. This not so good part is bagged and sold at a very cheap price.






By now the tea is nearly ready for consumption. The next step is quality control which separates the tea by its size using a series of seives. Each of them is bagged separately and sent to the stores for final consumption.

The interesting part of this education was that this was something that I had no clue about and the whole process seems extremely simple and can be done without any machinary if need be.

A memorable trip to Kabini Jungle Lodge

Little did I realize that I had not posted anything new in the last 6 months to my weblog. The memorable trip to the kabini jungle lodge inspired me to start writing again.

Karnataka government runs several wildlife tourist lodges called Jungle Lodges. I had heard quite a bit about these but this was my first experience with them. We picked the Jungle lodge at Kabini since this was rated as one of the top ten wildlife resorts in the world by a British travel magazine. If there was one thing true about this resort, this is a real top notch resort with excellent facilities, location and most of all service. It blows your mind off knowing that this is something run by a government entity. The one time I felt proud of govt work in India.

We set off on Aug 12, Friday at around 8:30 pm after dinner from Bangalore and reached Mysore around midnight. We rested in Mysore for the night and next day after breakfast at around 10:00 am headed out from Mysore towards Kabini Lodge which is in Nagarhole forest also know as Rajiv Gandhi National Park. Surprisingly the road was excellent but for the last 10-15 km. We reached the lodge by 11:30 am. There are 3 kinds of accomdations in the lodge, New Cottages (6 of them) right on the banks of Kabini, other cottages not as cool and tents. Because we had reserved well in advance, we were able to get the one of the new cottages right on the banks of Kabini. Kabini is a tributary of Cauvery river . Bandipur National Park (famous for Tigers) and Nagarhole National Park (famous for Elephants) are on the either side of Kabini.


The cottage had one large room with 3 beds and a nice big bathroom. The room and its furnishings was comparable to a 4 star hotel. All throught the stay the staff was very courteous and very attentive. After we checked in we went around the place admiring the natural beauty and came to Gol Ghar a meeting place for lunch/dinner.
Right near Gol Ghar were couple of tree houses overlooking the Kabini.


The kids got very excited and started going up the rope ladder hanging down from the tree. Over the next 24 hours they went back to the tree house at every opportunity they got. After a while it actually got addictive to even the adults. They had a rope net tied under the tree on which kids could roll down from the top of the tree and so all in all it was a blast. There were lot of guests with kids in the same age range of 6-12 and there was lot of bonding happening.

They served us lunch around 1:30 (very good vegeterian lunch. They had non-veg too). After lunch Bhavani and I relaxed while kids stayed busy with their new found friends at the tree house. At around 3:30 we gathered for Tea at Gol Ghar again. After Tea they had us split into groups with some going for boat rides and some going for safari. We got to go on a safari with another family also from Bangalore. The safari was great. We spotted Chital (spotted deer), Sambar, Macau (black faced monkey which is really adept at long jumps from one tree to another), Snake Eagle, Peacock, KingFisher, Bison, herds of wild elephants. A big male bison was so huge it almost was the size of a small pickup truck.



We had an interesting incident which scared living daylights of everyone in the jeep except of that of the driver. A herd of elephants wanted to cross the road to get to the watering hole when we spotted them and stopped our jeep in the tracks. The elephants decided to wait us out. Because we wanted to see the whole herd pass infront of us, our driver backed the jeep for about 100 feet and stopped. After 2 min waiting we decided to move on since the elephants were showing more patience than us. As our jeep started moving slowly again, the leader of the herd came charging at us to get us to move fast. Seeing a big animal charging at you in the Jungle is not pretty and everyone screamed at the driver to hit the pedal but the driver knowing the behavior took it easy and the elephant stopped in its track. That was something we will recollect for sometime. We then stopped at a village deep inside the Jungle where there were several tamed elephants. We got to ride one of those in the jungle and it was not exactly a pleasant experience knowing how elephants walk.

We came back to the lodge and kids were absolutely thrilled with their experience by now. In the evening they had a video showing the wildlife in the Nagarhole park. While kids watched that, I had couple of shots of Vodka and some good munchies. We them had some really good dinner and retired for the night. Next morning they woke us up at 6 am and served Tea/Coffee in the room. At 6:30 - 6:45 am we set out on a boat ride. This was to catch glimpses of animals which come to the watering hole either early morning or late in the afternoon. We could only spot a herd of Sambar deer. We came back to the lodge at around 9:30, had breakfast and checked out leaving completely satisfied with our stay at this wonderful place.

Disappointing Mysore Dasara

We wanted our kids to enjoy the world famous Dasara and we ended up achieving just the opposite. Schools in India are closed for about 10 days during Dasara and as soon the schools closed the kids left for Mysore with their grand parents. The grand parents took them over to see the palace at night and they definitely enjoyed it. The following is the story of the other famous events associated with Dasara in Mysore



Dasara Exhibition: The grand parents take the kids to the exhibition on the very first day it opened for public. They were let in without having to purchase any tickets the reason for which became clear pretty soon. Inside the fence there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. No exaggeration but all that was there was an empty piece of land. God knows what did the chief guest helped open that morning. Apparently they initially charged people to go in and see this NOTHING but when the crowd got irate (for all the good reasons) they may be refunded the money and let the people who came later for nothing to see this big nothing. What a joke!



Bhavani and I decided to go join the kids and because of the vast crowd ended up riding in the infamous Red colored bus from KSRTC from Bangalore to Mysore. This Bus has no shock absorbers of any kind and I swear I will do anything to avoid getting onto that one. This was almost a precursor to the things to come in the next couple of days.



Dasara Procession: We decided to provide the best viewing of the Dasar procession and hence bought these Rs 200 tickets. For Rs 200 you get to sit on the chair near the road by which the procession goes by. We reached there by 11:30 and found that the road was so well blocked that we could not get t o the entrance through which we had to go to grab our chairs. After some real gymanstics of climbing over fence and gates, we finally managed. Once we went in and sat down we thought we had made a sound choice in buying these tickets. But just when the procession was about to start (around 1:30) you had this sudden gush of people from the road from all different directions and soon they were all sitting next to you without having paid anything. Some even joked about the foolishness of people who pay for these things and there I was sitting and listening to this not knowing how to react.



I also saw that there were huge posters of the Chief Minister and deputy chief minister of Karnataka right in the center of the big KR circle and I couldn't figure out what they had to do with the Dasara until there was this mad rush of police running behind 2 fat guys who happened to these honable ministers. Apparently they were the chief guests and had decided to turn it into their personal dasara. The procession was a long drawn out (over 2 hours) of mind numbing, total bull shit parade of villagers dressed in everything from cave men to your normal towel on the shoulder and beating drums of different sizes. Later I learnt that all the drum beaters come from the same community as the deputy chief minister and he thought it was so cool he decided to waste 2 hrs of everyones time on that. We left the procession totally dejected.



Torch Light Parade: That same evening there was this torch light parade (supposed to be very cool) in BanniMantap. We had purchased the highest denomination ticket for that one too just to get a good look. The problem was the roads were so badly blocked we had to get off the Autorickshaw and walk. There was commotion all around with vehicles running on the sidewalk because the roads were like parking lots. It was unsafe everywhere with fights breaking out and we still decided to walk to this place without realizing how far it was. It turned out to be 3 km and like idiots we still kept going. I didn't even realize until later that I had lost my mobile by then. When we finally reached the venue there were police all over and none of them were helpful. There was this mad crowd near all entrance gates and making your way through them was next to impossible. Couple of times we were in the middle of this crowd when police started swinging their sticks and the kids by now had totally freaked out and I was begining to feel unsafe. Bhavani would not give up and we finally enter the stadium to realize that the stadium was filled to twice the capacity already and we did not have space to put both the fee on the ground. Since people kept coming in, I was NO JOKES on one feet. Forget your seats that you paid for since all of them had been occupied by everyone but people who paid for those. After 10 min, I couldn't take it anymore and with great struggle got everyone out safely. Bhavani went to complain about the situation to a Police officer and he questioned her wisdom in coming there with the kids. Go figure!! I swore that was the end of Dasara for me



Adventure Sports: For the first time the organizers decided to provide adventure sport opportunities for the tourists. They had organized Parasailing, Water scooters, Bungee jumping , hot air ballon rides and each one of them turned to be an interesting story.

• Water scooter: This turned to be such a low horsepower scooter where there is a guy who sits behind you and holds the handle like you would when you are teaching a two wheeler to your kid. He will not let go and so imagine yourself being hugged from behind by this guy with whom you wouldn't share a table if you had your choice. Added to the fun was the scooter hardly moved. I have no idea what was the adventure part of that.
• Bungee Jumping: This one was particulary good and you could clearly see both the watchers and people who were jumping of this platform hoisted from a crane were really enjoying it. However they had sold so many tickets (Rs 500 each) that after waiting for 4 hrs, I realized that I would have to wait for 2 - 3 hrs more before I could jump at which time I gave up and took the refund
• Para sailing: This was another popular one. You would strap on a parachute and be tied with a long rope to a Jeep. As the vehicle start moving you will get a lift and will hover about 100 up in the air. Looked like fun but same problem. Went on 2 consecutive days, waited for several hrs and did not get the turn.
• Hot air balloon: This was a joke since all you got to do for your Rs 1000 ticket was you would go up 100 ft up in the air, while the balloon continues to be tied to the earth with ropes. Did not even touch this with a 100 ft pole.

The only enjoyable part of this whole trip was (no jokes) the return journey from Mysore to Bangalore in a comfortable A/C coach, which truly captured it all (the best thing you could do was to get out of the town ;-)

Trip to Hogenekal Falls

Pictures of the trip:http://thejoshifamily.com/Travel/Hogenekal2004.asp

Our trip to Hogenekal was really memorable and here is the recount of it. Hogenekal falls is att the border of Karnataka and Tamil nadu. Hogenekal in kannada means smoking rocks because of the mist that kicks up around rocks as a result of the falls. Hogenekal is about 185 km from Bangalore. We set out at about 8:30 am after filling up the Scorpio (our SUV) and the customary morning coffee. The first half of the journey (About 90 km) is on the NH-7 also called Hosur road. This is a divided 4 lane highway and so the drive was very enjoyable. At around Dharamgiri you have to break off from the Highway and head east. The road isn't bad but not great either. You drive about 90 km on this road to come to Hogenekal. Hogenekal is mostly fisherman's village which is immediately evident as soon as you enter the village. Fisherman here use what's called "Teppa" in kannada or Coracle. It is very crudely built boat that looks like a saucer.

We were eight of us and so rented 2 of these coracles agreeing to pay Rs 500 (about $11) per boat. You walk down this dirty stretch of the road to the water with local ladies selling fishes on either side of the road.



Once you get into the boat you sit down in a squatting position. The boatman steers the boat with a single oar with such deftness that you will be amazed. Especially evident is their skill in maneuvaring around the currents and riding upstream. He rowed the boat for about 20 min and asked us to get off the boat and walk to the falls.

The walk to the falls took another 20 min with several times having to walk through the river and over rocks. Once you reach the falls the view is breathtaking. You will be standing at the edge of the falls and viewing down. The falls is wide and not a whole lot high (like Niagara). It is a great feeling to stand overlooking the falls and cool down with the water splashing against your face.

After that we spent about 2 hours playing in the shallow water next to the falls. Kids especially had a great time. We finished eating our lunch and headed back in the boat. This time around the boat takes a different route and goes through some rapids. You will really appreciate your boatman's skill. The next stop was at the tower from where you can overlook the entire falls and it is a great view point. It is a great view point because that is when you will realize that what you saw earlier was only half the falls.

We left Hogenekal at 4:30 and reached Bangalore around 8:30 with a pit stop on the way. One of the things I did not try but seemed to be very popular there was getting a oil massage from the local folks and then taking a dip in the cauvery river. May be next time

Trip to Jog

Pictures of the trip:http://thejoshifamily.com/Travel/jog2004.asp

We recently went on a trip to Jog Falls, the highest waterfall in India (may be Asia too) at 900 ft and have nothing but good memories of the trip. Jog Falls is situated in Central Karnataka in Shimoga District in the midst of western ghats. We went there by govt owned KSRTC bus which by the way are pretty good now. They have A/C coaches but unfortunately for us, there was no a/c coach to Jog falls. We had to settle for the next best Ultra deluxe (called Rajhamsa). These days KSRTC has made their reservation system accessible to lot of private travel agents because of which you can get it done locally wherever you are. Luckily for me a travel agent close by my house had the access and so reserving our trip both ways was a very quick process. The bus took off promptly at the scheduled time and reached at the scheduled time.

We had called and made a reservation in PWD guest house, which is situated on a hilltop and commands a good view of the western ghats. We had reached there at 6:30 am but the housekeeper did not show up until 8 am (when he is actually expected to be spending the night there). With some murmurs and complaints he agreed to give us the room although it was reserved for Rs 500. He turned away some other guests. The room was more like a suite with a separate living area and 3 double beds enough for the 4 of us. The only problem with that room was the walls were damp (not enough curing during construction process) and bathrooms not really upto the standard. These turned to be minor nuisances compared to what we actually got out of the trip.

Jog falls has no good tourist accomdations and the facilities run by Karnatak Tourism (KSTDC) are best in ruins. There is a KPC (Karnataka Power Corp) guest house that is smack infront of the falls and is well maintained. If you ever visit Jog and want some good food, go talk to the chef at the KPC guest house and he will fix something up (very clean, homely cooked food) for a very reasonable price. There are some restaurents nearby but having tried both, I would go with KPC guest house.

Once you are there, people will come and approach you for taxi service for nearby sightseeing. We hired a local guy with a SUV (didn't want to mess with Maruti cars in Western Ghat) and had him drive us around for 1.5 days. He took personal interest in showing us all the area around Jog. My suggestion to folks who go to Jog would be to drive to nearby villages and as you are driving you will see the beauty of western ghats. Since we went near the end of monsoon season, not only the rivers and falls were overflowing but the whole area was lush green with plenty of wild life to see. A long snake crossed our path once and a bunch of monkeys had blocked our van by occupying the entire road. We drove from Jog to Murdeshwar(coastline city) and really enjoyed every bit of it including the drive since the roads were pretty well paved. There is a huge statue of Shiva built on the beaches of Murdeshwar and is a sight to behold. This being India, religion has to make its presence felt everywhere including beaches. Murdeshwar has several good lodging and boarding facilities on the beach all owned by the same guy (R N Shetty).


Here is an observation, if you want to meet people innocent and honest, go to country side. People will help you with no expectation in return and that is very hard to find in cities.