“Are you a
hill girl or a beach girl”, my friend asked me. I briefly considered, comparing
my vacation in Goa to Bhutan. I am definitely a hill girl! Aside from a
bothersome sun allergy and a tiresome shellfish allergy, beaches just don’t seem
to – talk to me.
I had coaxed
my friends into this trip to Chikmaglur, a rushed plan interspersed with
liberal amounts of emotional blackmail. Until Thursday, when my chief local
tour guide informed me about the leeches to be found in abundance in the area, I
gracefully told them to go ahead without me. After quite a few hours of
entertainment at my expense, all parties realized I was seriously terrified of
these blood-sucking monsters and assured me that there wouldn’t be any inside
the house. To calm my hysteria I was
also helpfully informed that they were smaller than the ones ‘up-north’, that
the ‘little fellows fell off on their own once they were done’ and how a cigarette
burn or some salt will cut short their feast. Chikmaglur is called the
coffee-land of Karnataka, situated at about 3,500 m oops, ft above sea-level, it is
still relatively undiscovered and rumored to be an idyllic weekend getaway. Trip
back on, I packed a few things and jumped into bed at 9.30 pm on Friday.
I woke up at
4 am on Saturday, slightly out of order as I hadn’t slept very well. At 4.30 I was
picked up, I tricked my extremely hung-over friend out of the front seat (“you
can’t sleep if you sit in the front”) and we made our way to Yashwantpura, to
meet up with the others. There were 2 cars, 8 of us in a diverse group. After an
impatient wait, a shiny black Lancer and a silver Swift with a tricky bumper finally
set out at 6 am towards NH 75.
I have travelled
alone, and though I enjoy this too, I really know how much good company
contributes to the fun of a journey. My friend at the wheel is quite a
Delhi-ite (though he vehemently denies it). He speaks in rapid Hindi, despite being
well versed in very St.Columbus & Stephenian English. His jokes are quite
sexually loaded and offensive to women, but he is a gentleman and I think he
mostly cracks them to provoke me. While he talks about bringing Russian women
on the trip and visiting Amsterdam, the music system plays a CD of ‘soulful’ (yawn)
songs from Dev Anand movies. The other 2 are silent and on their i-pods or asleep,
at intervals.
We soon
leave Bengaluru behind. Once on the highway, it’s green everywhere the eye
reaches, broken only by tiny rocky hills or very large boulders. We joke about
our love interests and interested lovers. We compare the view to the Western Ghats
in Maharashtra. Palm trees and coconut groves line the road, paddy fields
stretch till they meet the blue sky. We talk of Shimla, Nainital, Hrishikesh
and Kashmir. The landscape now looks like the easel of an extremely skilled
artist. The clouds are grey and a persistent sun peeps through them, so the dark
tropical forests shine with a florescent glow.
For the
morning cup of coffee or tea, we stop at a little place along the highway and
are soon on our way. The tour leader cum guide cum driver of the Lancer assures
us that we can buy batteries for my camera and breakfast at a town called
Hassan. By this time my very ‘non- north Indian’ friend is tired of driving at
the tour guide’s set safe speed and decides to take matters into his own hands.
Or feet. We speed off (don’t ask me how fast, my mom will be reading this) and
leave the other car behind. He honks in rapid succession at 2 wheeler guys and
curses cars with ‘L’ pasted on them. He slows down to almost standstill if he
spots village kids playing miles away. The landscape gets more and more
mesmerizing and the conversation flags as we are both lost in our thoughts. We keep
going until we receive a phone call saying we had overshot a turn and must go
back. So we get a replay as we drive back about 15km.
We were all
starving as we had whizzed past Hassan, and we polished off the left-over Eid
Biryani TT had got us. The tour guide’s friend who rented us the place met us
at Bellur to escort us to the coffee estate we were to stay at.
Disaster
seemed to strike as soon as we entered the driveway. We were greeted by dogs of
various sizes and breeds. I’m quite uncomfortable around strange canines so I hurried
on my way into the house, willfully avoiding eye contact and dutifully ‘not
letting them sense my fear’. I heard a sudden growl and scream behind me, and
by the time I gathered some courage and went back out, the entire company was
silent except for the soft sobbing of TT’s wife, who had been bitten. Everyone was
worried and slightly low, the hospital was an hour away and I felt really
guilty as I was charmed by the quaint yet swanky décor of the house. I tried to
cheer her up by showing her the stunning view from the ledge-like balcony on
the first floor, but she was in too much pain. It was really a bummer, and she
and her husband had to spend the morning getting a precautionary shot for her. The
rest of us settled down on the Veranda to wait; for them and lunch.
A girl about
my own age told us that her grandfather had built the house, and how they had
recently redone it, while maintaining the structure. She brought us some lovely
homemade wine, and I made my peace with the other VERY friendly Daschands that
kept trying to sniff me in awkward places and climb on my back and a Pug that
went up on it’s 2 front legs to pee. They were quite put off by the ‘Namaste
sir’ my scared friend from the capital greeted them with, so they left him to
his own devices thereafter.
At about
2.30 we finally sat down to lunch. I was hungry enough to roast the Pug over
the fire. Luckily the hosts had a nicer menu for us. I loaded my plate with
fluffly white idiappams and chicken stew, an angry-looking spicy chicken curry,
ghee rice and little button idlis. It was all traditional Chikmaglurean food I was
told between morsels. I ate my fill, and then had 2 more helpings, vowing each
time that it was my last. Then they brought out the desert. It was the best
fruit salad I’d had, so I accepted the fact that I was a little pig, and kept eating.
After lunch,
almost everyone was too tired or overstuffed to do anything but sleep, so we
cancelled our plan to visit the nearby peak Betta. I took my ipod up to the ledge
and sat there for a few hours, lost in my thoughts but thinking of nothing. I was
joined a few hours later by a few others, when we had a lively debate about
whether jumping off the ledge would kill us or only break our leg/legs. We walked
down to the plantation, stomping our feet to keep off the imaginary leeches. I was
knowledgably shown the ‘drying yard’ by my friend, who explained that it was SO
vast because the ‘royal family’ who lived there probably had many clothes to
dry. When it finally struck me that it was for drying coffee, not royal
garments we laughed uncontrollably as we ran back to the house to escape the
sudden downpour.
We warmed
ourselves by the fireplace, sprawled unceremoniously on antique sofas and
sipped on the richest coffee I’d had in a long time.
Coffee and
conversation apart, I waited for the drinking to start. I’ve recently decided
that I wasn’t doing fair damage to the whiskey- partial bar at home, so I’ve
started trying to ‘develop the taste’ for it. Also need a break from Old Monk
induced tummy upsets. Since I was still on wobbly ground when it came to
whiskey, I curbed my natural tendency to drink too fast. I didn’t like the taste
of Imperial Blue at all, but I’m on a health kick and determined to start
liking the taste, so as to ‘qualify’ a swipe at the single malt back home, so I
insisted on drinking it with soda. The result was that I watched as everyone
got drunk, and make hilarious errors in the drinking games we played by the
bonfire, while I stayed sober as a stick. It’s not as much fun as I imagined it
would be. I drank loads of water to avoid the promised hangover brought on by
cheap alcohol, so I spent a great deal of time going back and forth from the
loo, missing chunks of the game and coming back to a new rule in King’s.
I set up
some music as we munched kebabs and threw the bones to the eager dogs. Dinner
was some more chicken gravy, Biryani and some veg stuff that I avoided. A few people
went off to bed until only 7 of us remained.
The 3 hosts
were telling us a story of how they ‘levitated’ a 140 kg friend (this fact was
repeated numerous times to drive home the point), to a height of about 7 feet,
with only their index and middle fingers for support. We guests challenged them
to show us this, and I volunteered to be the 4th ‘levitator’. We
began by shifting the party inside and choosing a scapegoat volunteer to be lifted. The first step itself proved to
be difficult, it involved 30 seconds of absolute silence and concentration, but
nobody could explain this to the Pug who kept falling asleep and snoring,
making everyone burst into laughter. On the 4th attempt we managed
to get through this with a straight face, we rubbed our hands and placed them
over the head of our very nervous friend. Some more energy transmission later,
we took our position and failed miserably to move him even an inch. On the 3rd
attempt, we lifted my amazed friend to shoulder height, while the 2 observers
tried to maintain their look of skeptical disbelief.
Sunday
morning, I had 3 final cups of that lovely coffee, had a hot shower and lovely
breakfast of ‘Kesarbhat’ or ghee soaked kesar flavoured Shira , Upma and pineapple
pudding and packed up. A photo session cut short by the demise of the batteries
and a few goodbyes later, we were on our way. The other car went to visit
Medigeri as we headed straight to Namma Bengaluru, stopping only to ask for directions
(“Kannada gothilla… Bangalore righta? Lefta? OK! ) Torrential rain slowed us
down but we labored on, and made it to NICE road in about 4 ½ hours. I was ‘nangepair’
as I’d mucked up my shoes terribly when I tried to find a ‘secluded spot off
the highway’ to relive the tortured bladder. Rangashankara was just around the
corner from where I’d been dropped off; a tuna sandwich, akki roti and chicken
masala later, I found myself exhausted but rejuvenated, back in my bed at 9.30.
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