People have the fascination of comparing Indian tourist spots with foreign ones by giving names like “X of India”. I remember long back when I visited Uttaranchal, our guide mentioned Kausani as “Switzerland of India”.This time I was searching for a destination around Bangalore to spend the weekend and discovered “Scotland of India”, Coorg. It is just 5 hours drive from Bangalore. The best place to stay is at Madikeri, a nice hill station and the capital of Coorg district.
One nice morning we (my parents, sister and uncle's family) set out for Coorg from Bangalore by a hired car. Early morning, thin traffic and in no time we reached Bangalore-Mysore highway, the beautiful four (six in some place) laned road connecting the two most famous cities of Karnataka. In general I appreciate the beauty of the nature and hate to see it getting spoiled by ever exapnding claw of the civilization. But I was clean bowled. If I had a car, I surely would have fell in love with this road. The speedometer rarely touched the sub-eighty region, as we adored the smoothness of the journey. In less than two hours we were at the door of Mysore, the capital of Tipu Sultan. From here we took a right turn and headed straight towards Madikeri, around 130 Kms away. Unfortunately the love with the road was lost and at places it turned out to be really hostile. After some bumpy ride we reached
Kushalnagar , 30 Kms away from Madikeri and it was time to take lunch break. We were informed that it is a stupidity to go to Madikeri in the weekend (that too extended by Dasara holiday) without advanced booking. So we decided to halt at Kushalnagar and visit the places around and next morning move to Madikeri. That means, we do not have the opportunity to stay at Madikeri. Well, next morning I rued the decision. Why we did not prefer to take some risk (after all no risk no gain)? Picturesque Madikeri was class apart form dingy Kushalnagar. Anyway, let's leave aside the disappointing part and focus on the achievements. There are a few places worth visiting near Kushalnagar. First we went to
Cauvery Nisargadhama. It is nothing but a family picnic spot and I found the place quite uninteresting. The only interesting thing, namely elephant ride was not
available, because all the elephants moved to Mysore for Dasara celebration. No luck in
Dubare elephant training centre too. Maharaja of Mysore used to train elephants here for Dasara festival and the tradition continues till date.
To continue .........
