“Infosys couldn’t have chosen a better place for training, especially for those who prefer spending the weekends trying to explore different places rather than warm their beds the entire day. Make the most out of your stay in Infosys, Mysore. Good luck!”. All the 5 months I was stationed in Mysore, this piece of advice by Baba – an equally enthusiast traveller – kept on persisting in my mind. And am I my father’s son!
The geographically-inclined, after a quick look at the Map of India will realize that Mysore is a kind of centre-of-the-circle in South India with the places-you-want-to-visit-over-the-weekend lying on the circumference: Bangalore, Ooty, Coorg, Udupi, Wayanad, etc. In addition, Mysore has some of its own tourist places to boast off: The Palace of Tipu Sultan at Srirangapatnam, The Mysore Palace, The Mysore Zoo, etc.
Though I’d be the first to admit that Infosys hardly gave us the peaceful weekends we’d have liked (what with the tests every Monday), we still managed to cover all the places listed above when we got a chance to do so. Here’s a travelogue which covers brief details of the places we visited and our outings, starting from –
- Udupi- Mangalore-Coorg, Karnataka (x 2)
UDUPI
Anybody even with a slightest liking of the Idli-Dosa wouldn’t have missed this name – Udupi. An overnight journey from Mysore, we started on a Friday night and were in Udupi at dawn the next day. Apart from a horrible stretch of road which ruined our much-wanted sleep, the journey to Udupi was enjoyable, with a lot of Andhra-ites to accompany me the first time and then another group of batch mates the second time… YES, went there twice!
Udupi, for any Maharashtrian who has been to Konkan region, will feel he’s back home – huge coconut trees, backyard laden with all kinds of spices and your cottage nestled amongst them with the sounds of rustling of dry branches and the Arabian Sea to give you company! The beach there, even without slightest exaggeration, is the most beautiful and cleanest I have seen so far!
After an obvious breakfast of Idli-Dosa-Sambar-Chatni, we started for our first place on the agenda. Although the spots to go to in Udupi are very limited, the ferry-boat ride of about 20 mins to an island called St. Mary’s Island is worthwhile. Here you get to know the real meaning of the term ‘an island being marooned’! “Kala kutra pan nasta tithe”, goes a famous Marathi phrase and this island lives up to that saying. Who cares?! We had a private island of our own, what if only for a few hours!
On the darker-side, the problem with nothing around was that we needed to carry food supplies & water enough to last for at least 5-6 hours for each one of us; because the next ferry to take us back to ‘life’ would have been after a good 4 hours!
In addition to this beach is a Krishna Temple touted as one of the oldest, some 1500 years old! From whatever I learnt about this temple, women weren’t allowed into this temple till as late as the 90’s, when Padma Lakshmi (wife of Salman Rushdie) requested special permission to gain entry and became the first woman to do this (don't ask why Padma Lakshmi of all).Another unique thing about this temple is that the back of Krishna faces the entrance of the temple, in contrary to the rest of the temples of other lords.
Evening time - and we indulged in a Motor-scooter ride on the beach. The thrill of cutting the waves at a high-speed and then throwing yourselves into the middle of the Sea abandoning the motor-scooter was high-octane stuff! (of course we’d our life-jackets on)
One of the two things which didn’t go quite well with me was the smell of dry-fish all over the city – ever other lane greeted you with fish spread over at the side in heaps and the smell – that stings! Also, the excess usage of coconut oil is every food item really turns my palate off :-(
MANGALORE
Mangalore is just about 20-25 kms from Udupi and we stopped there for the main attraction – FISH! Mangalore, home to a couple of my friends - Yathiraj Shetty, Saniya Azad and Ryan Desly Miranda is not much activity (in contrary to its similar sounding city – Bangalore) Though we didn’t roam around the city as I would have liked to, we did have some of the finest fish there. Also, having Yathi the local boy with us helped a lot in knowing that Tulu is the local language spoken in Mangalore which has a lot of Shettys and Catholics (remember Shilpa Shetty, Sunil Shetty and yes… Aishwariya Rai)
COORG
About a 2.5-hour drive from Mysore, you reach Coorg – which is the name of the region having places like Madikeri, Kushalnagar to name a few (similar to Vidarbha in Maharashtra where you have Nagpur, Akola). So, in short it turns out to be the approximate mid-point between Mysore and Udupi.
Once in Coorg, people have to specifically tell you about it being a hill-station, unlike other hill-stations in India where the weather there itself speaks!
The first place you come across in Madikeri is a Buddhist monastery. Stunning are the statues of Buddha inside the monastery with brilliant colours. The monks have a huge colony of their own right there. The monastery has a calming and soothing effect once you are inside the premises, where you come across monks of varied age-groups constantly reciting something against the background of a drum beating.
Further from the monastery, you come across a place called Nisargdham where you have bamboos in numbers - grouped and spread across a wide area. People for some reason throng this place where the only little attraction I could find was an Elephant ride and a hanging bridge over the river Kaveri! For me, the best of this place was a stall where they were selling cut-cucumber with masala shimmered over it.
As the intro to Coorg suggests, it hardly gives you the feel of a hill-station and when you have the Noon sun beaming down your neck, you can’t think of anything but ‘rafting’ in the rivers of Kaveri (actually a rivulet). From what I’d heard first-hand this river is full of water in the rainy-season and perfect for a rafting simulation wherein you can go up to 12 Kms down the current. Much to our chagrin, it hadn’t rained at the time we went and were left with nothing but to row the raft using the oars. Adding spice to this was left to us which we did by racing two rafts against each other and then diving into the rivulet midway! After swimming to our heart’s content, we managed to get ourselves out of the cooling water and head to the bus.
The need of the hour was a sumptuous lunch which we’d of a thali. After gobbling down every morsel of food the stomach could make space for, the bus started heading back to Mysore, exhaustion but with a smile showing on everybody’s face :-)
NEXT: Wayanad, Kerala
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