Travelling to new places is something I have always enjoyed…
Its, according to me a therapy , maybe you could call it ‘travelopathy’.
‘Immense pleasure’ is what I get, when I even think of going
for a vacation.
29th August 2014 was a holiday it was ganesh
chaturthi and the day after ganesh chaturthi we started with our journey to coorg.
A lot of people travel solo ,for the the love of travelling
, but I love to travel with people. People I know , people who love holidaying
& travelling with me J
Thankfully my family enjoys travelling too ...
For more than a year now I was hoping to go to coorg .Either
with family or friends or collegues or even solo…Yes I thought if nobody is
coming I would go alone….
I had heard a lot
about Coorg, seen a lot of beautiful photos & read quite a few articles
online. It was not very far from Goa (the place I stay). Just a journey to the
neighboring state. But still no plans were working out.
Finally I had managed to convince my parents for a holiday
during Ganesh Chaturthi weekend & it had to be Coorg this time.
Packing was all done, tickets all confirmed & our stay
in Coorg booked.
The total distance from Goa to Coorg is approximately 500 km.
Coorg has no rail connectivity & the only way to Coorg is via road.
There are precisely 3 ways to reach Coorg: via – Mangalore,via – Bangalore or via – Mysore.
Mangalore being the closest to us, we opted
for it & decided on a 4-day trip (Sat-Tuesday) from Goa-to-Mangalore-to-Coorg-to-Mangalore-to-Goa.
Our Journey started from Margao Railway Station. Me, My
younger sis & my parents. Everybody with a zest to travel .There are a lot
of trains to Mangalore but we took the morning train (9am)…we reached the
station at around 7. A little too early.. But the station was buzzing with
people.. all kinds of people. The announcements about the trains were
continuously being played like music to the ears for the passengers waiting to
board their trains to their respective destinations. Everything was so delightful
that long two hour wait for our train disappeared in the midst of the
excitement of “Finally travelling Coorg”.
Train journeys are always fun, you meet so many different
kinds of people, see beautiful sceneries, the long tunnels, the waterfalls,
fields, factories. But preferably when it is just for a day or two.
Like this one…we reached at around 3.00 at Mangalore junction.
We had decided to spend the night in Mangalore and leave for Coorg early
morning…The station is in the outskirts of the city. You could either take a
cab /auto to reach the main city. But we decided on the local transport –the
bus. Bus from the station took us to the Mangalore bus depot.
It had been a long day journey and we had to find a place to
stay .The buses from Mangalore to Coorg start as early as 6 in the morning and
you have a bus in every half an hour which will drop u to Coorg .These are
usually the state owned buses. There are deluxe/Volvo buses but they start very
late… so we started our search for hotels…there are not many good hotels in and
around the depot , besides due to some
entrance exam most of them were already full. We luckily found a nice
budget hotel just opposite to Manipal College.
Pretty decent and comfortable .Checked in and got refreshed
.Now it was around 5.30 …Instead of just sitting in the hotel and resting we
decided to go to the mall.(city mall). I love shopping be it malls or be it
street shopping or small shops. The city mall is not as big as the ones in the
metros …but pretty nice…lot of Manglorian crowd was out for a good weekend
treat. Found a lot of people there who spoke Konkani (Konkani is my mother
tongue too. But the Manglorian Konkani is little different). We did our
shopping and were back to the hotel around 9.00 .Had our dinner (awesome
Chinese which we had packed at the food court in the mall...) and tried to get
some good sleep before the journey next day.
The bus depot was at walking distance from our hotel. We had
enquired about the bus number & spot the previous day. So we reached just
in time for the 6.30 bus. Thanks to the morning time, the bus wasn’t crowded,
we occupied the front seats just behind the driver’s seat so as to get an
unhindered view of the roads. The bus wasn’t luxurious but it was comfortable.
Had read online that the bus journey to Coorg from Mangalore is very tiring
& exhaustive. I was hoping that it wouldn’t be the case with ours.
And to our good luck the journey went pretty smooth .The bus
took us through quite a few small & big villages. Each village had a
handful of houses, each house with almost the same architectural style. After
approx 2 hours the bus stopped at a depo for breakfast. And dunno if it was the
hunger or what but the ‘medu wada’s’ at that small restaurant at the depot were
just amazing …
After a sumptuous south Indian breakfast our journey had
resumed back. Now the villages & houses dint seem interesting and we were
hoping we would somehow reach faster.
A co-passenger (regular to this route) pointed out at a sign
board outside. It read ‘welcome to Kodagu district’. All our excitement was
back and it seemed like suddenly some dash of freshness was added within us J
