Kotagiri - The Tiny Jewel!

After an across-the-board road trip to Rajasthan, we wanted to scale down a bit this time, with less time on the road and more in rest. Two things were clear – mountains and woolies (tea gardens would be a bonus if we get by one on the way). Out of three options thrown at us by the Internet – Munnar, Ooty and Coonoor, we picked none – we rather decided to see coonoor and drive up to Kotagiri, a lesser known hilly town for our two days stay. It was the end of April and Kotagiri looked like the safest bet bar the traffic, tourists, early summer humidity and over-populated resorts. But here we were, never contented with just one place on our itinerary, Mysore and Wayanad were added under the wire. These two places were already on our been-there-done-that list but look, how much we love them – we were certain to explore more!

We took an early morning flight to Bangalore and rented a car. The same day we reached Mysore where we spent a couple of days relaxing, hogging on Mysore Pak, the ultimate sweet of the south and exploring the swarming markets around Maharaja Palace in search of the best nilgiri oil. 

From Mysore we headed off to Kotagiri. As we gradually approached the reserve area, the summer heat became bearable. All thanks to the thick foliage of the Bandipur reserve that we were spiraling through. The deer made its customary appearance every once in a while – the signpost “drive slow - give way to animals” kept us fixated to looking out and looking for more. We entered the Karnataka-Tamilnadu border checkpost just when Bandipur ended and Mudumalai forest reserve roads began - on this side the forest was greener, the road bumpier and the day darker. Happy and hungry both at the same time, we badly needed a pit stop. Finally after a few minutes’ break (only inside the car) munching on dry fruits and managing a handful of shots, we started off. Another hour of swirling right and swirling left through the forested road, we left behind the quaint surroundings and were in to the hill-station zone – overfull Ooty. We thanked our intuition and decision not to stay here – it was more of a Lonavala or a Mahabaleshwar with enormous traffic to combat. Kotagiri was hardly 40 kms from Ooty but it almost took 2 hours to reach there panting, disconcerted and drained – we just crossed 35 hair-pin bends and avoided a fatal accident with an overtaking truck and still breathing.

Our small homestay – Green Nest – was nestled prettily amidst a private tea garden. The day was overcast and absent the glimmering of the sun. I quickly took off my shoes and ran to the deck, and boy! it started sheeting down heavily – rains in a tea garden – I pinched myself, I wasn’t dreaming, it was real, all real. The cold crisp air brushing through my open hair raced against my heartbeat which was faster than usual. Time to take our pullovers out and order tea, I exclaimed in joy!

After two cups of tea each and snacks, we crashed out on the bed instantly and when we woke up, it was dinner time. We wore two layers of woolens as that’s all we had, and still trembling! The dinner spread here was limited but mouthwatering. Our mandatory after-dinner walk was long overdue since Kumbhalgarh. It was full moon and the expansive tea garden with giant trees every few meters away casting a monstrous shadow over the narrow moon-lit trail ahead of us looked surreal, almost eerie – straight out of some Ruskin Bond story. We walked two kilometers approximately down the road through shola forest on one side and cliff on the other with only few meters of torch-light visibility. Following a faint sound of beating of drums, we ended up on a muddy road from where a half-barrel shaped mud homestead was seen with a small number of people, including women (supposedly tribal and almost certainly drunk) who were singing and dancing around a fire. An infant incessantly cried just next to the fire but could not get attention from a single soul. Not sure how long we hid behind the bushes to watch them, but realizing it might be unsafe if they saw us, we dimmed our torchlight and cleared out. 

Later when asked, the homestay manager grimaced and said we saw kota tribe there and they were probably performing some full moon ritual and it seemed we should not have been there so close to their place and watched them performing – good God! Another time and still breathing!

The next morning we had the weather to our side – clear blue sky, lushings of the tea gardens as far as we could see and the sun rising just in front of our eyes over the emerald mountains. We were standing at a height of about 6500 feet - the Kodanad view point, precisely. The mountain town of Kotagiri is surrounded by hauntingly beautiful wilderness, misty meadows and several waterfalls. And you do get to soak it all in just right here. We are never a sightseer in a tourist dictionary. We are dreamers and we love to keep staring at all things beautiful from a distance, knowing the calmness of the nature, finding happiness in the most unassuming spaces, like this one. We took pictures, very few though, we just didn’t want to let go of this strange dreamlike moment, a feeling so simple yet so hypnotic! In city life we don't get lost – neither in thoughts, nor in imagination, we only observe our own species, and our behaviour. Boring! Here we had company of a chameleon for a change and observing it while changing color was so much more interesting. 

It was time again! The invigorating scent of the tea garden was irresistible! We went back to our homestay to have lunch and then take a leisurely stroll through the sprawling tea estate, laced with jacaranda trees in blossom and dewy grass sprinkled with wildflowers - an experience we were going to remember for a long, long time.

These two days at Kotagiri seemed like a lifetime to us – we could not have asked for more. The place, the well-appointed cottage with maple flooring, the tea garden from the french windows and the wooden deck! But all said and done, it would have been rather a fleeting hillstation holiday had there not been the splash of untimely rains getting us both drowned in love and bliss. I adore you Kotagiri, you have been the most spectacular find in our history of travels, stay real like you are!

Kumbhalgarh - Out of the Public Eye

This was our first 3000 kms road-trip in India and no points for guessing how thrilled we really were (like little babies, you know)! The roadmap was simple and mostly focused on tolled high-way for a clean Pune-Surat-Udaipur-Kumbhalgarh-Ranakpur-Baroda-Pune expedition. We had only 5 days in hand - it was the time when I quit my job and he had to exhaust his remaining leaves before it got exhausted. January cold and sunshine pulled the spark plug - our first trip of 2018 and third trip to Rajasthan was about to begin. We travelled super-light this time with only wollens to add up to one extra small bag, besides a suitcase and my handbag thick with on-road snacks, fruits, cookies, moisturiser, and emergency medicines.

Kumbhalgarh was our last-minute detour, we ditched jodhpur for this. The reason was simple: Kumbhalgarh was greener, remoter and less popular.

About 85 kms from Udaipur, Kumbhalgarh is situated on the top of the Aravalli Hills in the middle of a forest turned into a wildlife sanctuary – Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary. We had a day stop-over in Udaipur and started driving to Kumbhalgarh early in the morning. We had booked Kumbhalgarh Forest Retreat on the way for a night. 

The Udaipur-Kumbhalgarh drive was neat. The super smooth highway would have been a champion if not for the last 10 kms of extremely bumpy and terribly dusty towpath. But you just can’t ignore the beauty of these locales, this kind of experiences make for great stories to share and you become more of a traveller than just a tourist, right!

Built by Rana Kumbha to protect Mewar against the Mughal invaders, the Kumbhalgarh Fortress wall extends to the massive length of 36 kilometres later on acknowledged to be “the Great Wall of India”. A fortress embraced by the rocky Aravalli range from all sides, it is also the birthplace of Mewar’s legendary King Maharana Pratap. In 2013, this, being the second largest fortress in Rajasthan after Chittorgarh fort, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And on our day two, we were right in front of it admiring the grandeur. 

It was so enormously high and stocky that we thought a day trip was not enough to explore – we thought we were wrong to have only half-a-day in hand for this massive piece of architecture. Being one of the thousands of vehicles lined up along the narrow road waiting for parking, we finally, after a good 30 minutes of first gear (read: exasperating) drive, found a place. The entrance fee of Rs. 20 per person was unbelievably low with no charges for camera. It certainly kept us wondering why ain’t all the forts and palaces of Rajasthan are this economical - why some have to be like Udaipur City Palace – overhyped and overpriced!

We started climbing up crossing several gates starting with Ram Pol, the main entrance gate. At the top of the fortress was Kumbha Palace. You get a breathtakingly gorgeous aerial view of the entire fortress and its scenic surroundings from here. Something not to miss!

Near Pagda Pol, along the Kumbha Palace, there is another palace known as Jhalia ka Malia. This is the place where Maharana Pratap was born. This is mostly in ruins but is great for taking highly dramatic pictures.

Badal Mahal is at the highest point of the fort. Roof of this palace offers a first-rate view of Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary spreading over the Aravalli Hills. The winter sun painted an auburn horizon in front of us. The cold winter breeze brushed softly against our face – after all that running-around, we sat down to soak in everything about that mighty sundown behind the great wall of India - life’s little joys and us! 

There were about 300 temples strewn across the expanse - Ganesha Temple, Swami Narayan Temple, Neelkanth Mahadeva Temple, Parsvanath Temple etc. Of these, most of them belong to Jain deities and some belong to Hindu Gods and Goddesses as well. Just in case, you have time left in hand (unlike us), do pay a visit to atleast a few and then the magnificent light and sound show in the evening to see your time travel come a full circle, quite literally.

Kumbhalgarh trip is incomplete without a safari in the sanctuary. No, don’t expect a grand Ranthambore experience here as this is more like a fun-ride to explore the wilderness while having the fortress in the background (for a quick couple picture) - you may come across a good variety of birds, sambhar and nilgai, short of anything else more wilder or exquisite.

Kumbhalgarh is for people who appreciate the unknown, the unpopular – the exquisiteness is in the backwoods, the raw wilderness, the leap into the song unsung – some of these you might not even have heard from your friends or seen in the movies and yet when you go back to the grind, you have a tale to tell to everyone you know or you want to know, something that will live forever beyond your selfies and self-love. 

Happy trails to you all !! Keep exploring the unexplored !!

Blackbuck Holiday

“You’ll remember me when the west wind moves ,upon the fields of barley, you’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky, as we walk in fields of gold never made promises lightly, and there have been some that I’ve broken, but I swear in the days still left, we’ll walk in fields of gold.”

You will know what I mean when we enter the forest.

Okay, so I am back to blogging after months (and it really feels like years into the darkness of my cross-country moving and foiling phase) and could I be any gladder to be asked to go on this trip to the one on the top of my Indian bucket list of holidays! The craving for wilderness was bigger this time given to my living in Malaysia for a year and no access to the wildlife and then a period of coming back with bagful of plans and wishes and not being able to do any of them. And at last…and what an incredible time we both had!

On our 4-days long Christmas weekend my husband and I took a flight to Ahmedabad where we stayed that night and in the morning we rented a car and drove almost 150 kms. to Velavedar, the Blackbuck Lodge, precisely. It is however easier to reach Velavadar from Bhavnagar airport which is about 70 kms. The 1-night stay in Ahmedabad was justified with two why’s – one, to visit the famous Thol Bird Sanctuary plus the Sabarmati riverfront and two, to have an authentic gujarati thali at Gordhan (that includes a mouth-watering shrikhand and let me tell you this thali cannot be compared to what we get in Mumbai or any other places).

You take Thol as a pretty lake day-out minus the birding-in-the-sanctuary feel. You heard me right - it’s nowhere close to what sanctuary means or supposed to be. You get to see migratory waders in the lake from a long distance and some hoopoes and cuckoos if you are lucky enough but what you can’t really miss is the large group of people eating, playing badminton, glaring loudspeakers on thr banks and a band of screamers and laughers with little to no interest in giving any sort of peace to the nature or the birds or the handful of bird-lovers strolling around with binoculars and no luck.

Gujarat has some exceptionally gorgeous roads that will enthuse you into driving as long and as far as you can. Velavadar is situated in the Bhal region of Saurashtra in Gujarat and it is where the park is situated. The lovely drive took us into the restricted prime home territories of the Blackbuck National Park before we knew we were there yet. It is a grassland ecosystem and perhaps the only tropical grasslands in India to be deemed a National Park.

The park is similar to African Savannah and those who say that are probably not too far wrong. Flat and grassy, with a dash of acacia trees dotting the park, the knee-high golden grassland looked no less than a ‘field of gold’ which offers easy spotting of the blackbuck (even when they lie down, their antlers poke out of the grass) but anything smaller.  Thanks to our hawkeyed guide driving the open jeep, we saw a jungle cat and an indian fox taking a sunbath in the early morning and eventually crossing our path.

Apart from the endangered Blackbuck antelope population which we saw in hundreds, wolves and stripped hyenas are the main scavengers in the park, although unfortunately we missed them. We also found a pack of wild boar family, a nilgai couple (India's largest antelope) in the park. I highly recommend all birdwatchers to keep an eye for the Brown shrike, White-throated kingfisher, Green bee-eater, Kestrel, Short-toed snake eagle, Yellow wagtail, Sunbird, Pond heron, Egret and a large number of pelicans in the winter. Though Velavadar is one of the largest roosting sites of "Harriers" in the world, we were able to see only one of them this time!

Now, time to refresh! Down the arid and dusty roads of the Park was our habitat for the next three days and yes nothing can beat our stay here. The blackbuck lodge doesn’t want you to just make do, but come back to comfort, recline in luxury, experience the meld of perfect ambience and unspoiled niceties. From the bed and bathroom linen to the fine selection of tea in the room to the exquisite choice of buffets in the stunningly set up eat-out area. They, indeed, have it all! The back door of the cottage led straight onto our very own sundeck with cushioned teak chairs – my favourite corner of all where I could spend hours with my binoculars, waiting for wildlife and birdlife to turn up for a drink to the nearby waterhole! And the wait was truly rewarding after dusk when the juvenile blackbucks came down searching for food and a diamond-eyed jungle cat kept lurking at a distance while we sitting on the edge of the chairs in the dark with bated breath!

The next whole day after safari-ing was spent exploring the humongous property in torch light (while we knew full moon would not disappoint to be the floodlight) and the forest itself as there is no boundary, no fencing! We had the sky in one piece in company lit up with glittering stars! We could smell the bushes, see those countless dots of flickering lights suspended between the forest and sky - they see us (we see you too blackbucks!) and drink the wilderness to our heat's content. Such a luxury for city people.

Are you still looking for a reason, pack your bags, and poof ! VANISH!