sitting in the clouds-thadiandamol

As always it was only 2 of us on apr 6, 2007, me(kk) and choukar. We had to escape, we had to ecape the scorching stupid coastal mangalore summer. Another boring weekend in tat stupid place and u would see me in a mental asylum. And so everything was planned to go YAANA, but we had to maintain this true travellers spirit of defying all sorts of travelling rules whenever u get a chance and this time we decided to change our destination itself, we headed for coorg instead. We got down in coorg bus station at around 2pm.

Coorg was described by some arbit british officer as "scotland of asia" and he was right in doin so. This place is a heaven for mortals. Imagine this scenario, where in you are walkin or travelling through beautiful coffee estates and all of a sudden you get this scent of vanilla coupled with birds chirping, it all seems to be magical(u feel just the way the fellowship felt when they were passing through the woods of lothlorien, ofcourse lady galadrial is the one missing). Rather than visiting places of normal tourist interest like talakaveri, rajas seat etc etc(they can be seen wen u r old), we moved to this place called kakkabe and from there we trekked until we reached HONEY valley. We came across this very dumb spanish couple named steve and synthia.

We were recieved well by our hosts in honey valley who entertained us with a fresh cup of coffee brewed from their own estate and were sorry that all their accomodation were filled up thanks to rich tourist, both indian and lots of foreigners and sad that we could give them no business. We then went to virajpet and spend the night there instead, to return next day and capture peak thadiandamol.

We woke up early(those early hours where my mom or anyone knowing me is scared enough to wake me up at home or hostel) and head towards kakkabe. We reach the basepoint and trekked to honey valley again and later moved towards the peak itself. The morning was brilliant, fog and mist surrounding you and rays of sunshine managing to tunnel through the mist and vast variety of birds which always kept a birdwatcher's binoculors at his eyes. As always in our treks we loose our path again and did an extra hours hardwork until we found out the right path, ofcourse with the help of locals. Then initially we trekked through lush green tropical evergreen forests(something coorg has more than scotland) for a certain distance and then came to open as we reached higher and higher. We reached the peak by 11.30. No, it wasn't a very difficult trek if u looked for one, infact it is my easiest trek till date, but wat we saw at the top, i've seen no where in all the places i have been.It was pretty sunny wen we reached at the peak, so i get this urge from nowhere to sleep under the tree shade and i slept until choukar wakes me up at 12.00.

I wake up to find myself in one of the most beautiful sights i've ever had(i haven't been to himalayas till now, my gamut is western ghats, so ppl dont be shocked wen i claim this to be the most beautiful sight of mine). We were literally sitting in clouds. Mist all around you, arbit dew droplets settling on your skin every now and then, and birds again(in fact the tree under which we laid down was a home to many birds). Clouds were cascading towards us every now and then and it was brilliant. i mentioned earlier, i would like to mention it again. It was a heaven indeed. I am a megalo-narcissist and i love my life and consider life to be beautiful, but in moments like such i can only ask the almighty to make my life more beautiful. And just before we could collect everything wat the nature threw at us, we were magnanimously rewarded for we were destined to recieve the first monsoon rain of coorg(one of the first in S.India for sure). The rain was brief, but was sweet. We then reluctantly decide to climb down at 2.30 pm. We lost our track again trying to descend in a different route, and we come back to the original route and start our descend. It was uneventful and easier. And so we reach honey valley and before i could look back at the peak thadiandamol and exclaim that the conquest of thadiandamol was successful, we heard a voice shouting at us and it was not a friendly voice.

As we reached honey valley, there stood waiting for us the owners son in a bad mood. He then started shouting at us wen my partner asked if we could refill our water bottles(explains his nature). He claimed that we were tresspassing(he wasn't aware that it was his workers who had helped us with the routes when we were lost), he claimed that only his clients had access to all the nature around that place, he claimed the ownership of the mountains surrounding the estate, the surplus waterfalls all around tat place, pathetic bastard also claims the owner ship of all the birds in and around their estate. If it wasnt for their hospitality they had shown previous evening, i would end up bashing that idiot. And once the son left, his fathers comes and starts it all over again and we left swearing to god never to come to honey valley again. After all who are these asses to think they own this nature, it's a gods gift given for all true nature lovers. Such things like honey valley just spoil the fun. It was clear what these money mongers had done, they had closed down all the old trekking routes and made knew ones passing through their estates(it's like buiding a house in bombay-pune highway and collect cess from all commuters or to be more appropriate build a temple in a house and expect ppl to pay them money everytime they visit their gods). To all of those reading this blog, pls do not encourage such agents of satan who spoils your unification with the god. I think i've said enough about honey valley.

So we trek back from honey valley to kakkabe and go back to coorg and then to our dear old disease pot mangalore with soaringly high temperatures. We reached our hostel in surathkal by midnight in drenched clothes, lots of memories, mild fever, honey, and a bad temper(u knw y)