2015 Travel Calendar

‘Short trips’ was this year’s recurring theme, making the best of my sparse holidays and sparser travel money.  If the last two years had been about discovering the joys of road-trips and solo travel, this year led me down a new path – food trips. Having always been a foodie, enjoying regional cuisine whenever I travelled, this year’s trips took this passion to new heights – trips where we ate like there was no tomorrow, hunting down the tastiest local specialities a place had to offer. I had more than enough food to savour, despite my supposed ‘drawback’ of being a vegetarian.

In between gorging on food, I photographed these delicacies, resulting in outright bad photos at first, but improving slowly by the next trip. This has made me want to better my food photography skills, something I’ve resolved to practice next year; not your glossy, studio set-up food photos, but photographing food on the streets. I love how travel brings such new challenges my way!

With a trip already planned for the first month of 2016, I sign off excitedly for this year, wishing everybody a very happy, healthy and travel-filled 2016.

                                                                                                         

Madurai

I travelled to Madurai by chance, as my husband, who spent a few years living there, wanted to visit the city to re-live his childhood memories. The trip quickly snowballed into a larger agenda, of also enjoying Madurai’s famed food. The city takes its title of 'thoonga nagaram' (the town that never sleeps) very seriously, buzzing from the wee hours of the morning, well into the night. Catering to the teeming mass of people are hole-in-the-wall eateries and road-side vendors, with a wide array of meals and tiffin items. While meals include a lot of non-vegetarian dishes, tiffin is predominantly vegetarian, and can be a meal in itself. Madurai's residents have a discerning palate, which reflects in the food they prepare, and it is almost impossible to get bad food anywhere in the city. I ate my way through Madurai tiffin, which offers a mind-boggling variety of dishes and beverages: from popular dishes like kotthu parotta and idli to unique local items like jigarthanda and thennangkuruthu. 

Kodaikanal

The best way to atone for indulging in such excesses at Madurai was to walk it off, I thought. What better way to do that than to spend a few days at nearby Kodaikanal? Kodaikanal’s crisp winter weather and laidback weekday disposition proved to be the perfect setting for rambling walks, energetic cycling around the Kodai Lake, and a sweaty hike to Dolphin’s Nose. Our determination to not focus on food, however, was thrown out of the window thanks to our gregarious home-stay hosts, who broke our resolve with every lip-smacking meal they cooked for us.  All the food sent us scrambling for more walks, and we returned to Bangalore refreshed by Kodaikanal’s charm and natural beauty.

Read about this trip: http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2016/08/seeking-nostalgia-in-kodaikanal.html

Kabini, Karnataka

This quick jaunt to Kabini in the monsoon was intended as a rejuvenating break after a strenuous first half of the year, and to celebrate hubby’s milestone birthday. As usual, Kabini lived up to its promise. Threatening clouds loomed, but it never rained hard enough to foil our plans. Four safaris into the forest, short walks around Kabini River Lodge’s campus, and contemplative sessions gazing at the Kabini reservoir got us fully recharged for the latter half of 2015.

Delhi

Dilli ki sardi was something my friend would often poetically rave about. I decided that it was finally time to experience it first-hand, inviting myself over to my aforesaid friend’s home. Research prior to the trip had armed me with a list of over 40 eateries to visit, many serving winter specialities, and I lost no time in dragging my friends along for the food mania. Over three days, we systematically chomped our way through the list, walking for hours through Old Delhi, seeking out nondescript push-carts and not-marked-on-any-map eateries, all serving some of the cheapest, freshest and most delicious food I have ever eaten. When we could walk no more, we took breaks at some of Delhi’s lovely monuments, catching forty winks and resting our tired legs, only to resume our mission soon after. Not for the faint-hearted, this trail!

2013 Travel Calendar

The irony of 2013 – I always imagined that being self-employed would give me a lot of time to travel, but, reality was that it left me with neither time nor money. In a flash of brilliance, I planned a few trips around a timeshare membership which had been lying unused for aeons. This was my saviour for the year, as it allowed me to enjoy a few vacations without pinching my pocket.  

The other defining characteristics of this year’s holidays - most were road-trips, some were work-related travel and one was so spontaneous that I’m still surprised I went. My trusty 9-year old car was a constant companion for more than 35 days on the road this year.  

I can’t be sure what the rest of 2014 has in store for me, but, I’m beginning the new year with a much-awaited trip; yet another road-trip. From being a paranoid road-traveller, I’m discovering how having the right company on a road-trip can make it my favourite way of travelling; hands-down.

Karnataka & Goa road-trip

18 days and 2300 kms - I enjoyed my first-ever road-trip so much that it set the tone for the other holidays this year. Restricting my travel to a section of coastal and North-west Karnataka, 18 days gave me enough time to soak-in the flavour of the region. Of course, with Goa being just a hop-skip-jump away, we couldn’t resist a few days in South Goa before returning to Karnataka. 

A sneak peek at my myriad experiences in Karnataka, which I now call home:

http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2013/02/january-on-wheels.html

Other stories from this trip:

http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2014/05/juggling-identities.html

http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2014/11/kambala-race-of-titans.html

For planning your trip, read the trip log here:

http://nomadandabag-guides.blogspot.com/2014/04/karnataka-road-trip-trip-log.html

Bhadra

I’d visited Bhadra for the first time as a part of my Karnataka road-trip. When some work took me back there, I was only too happy to go. Though working meant that I could not go on any safaris, I enjoyed every minute of spending time by the water, surrounded by the raucous calls of hundreds of River Terns nesting and hatching. 

Read about Bhadra here:   

http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2013/10/bhadra-still-water-still-mind.html

Chasing the monsoon

A friend was on assignment in South Kerala, awaiting the onset of the South-west monsoon. One particularly tedious day at work, the photographs she kept sharing with a bunch of us led to furious planning during the lunch break. Tatkal tickets and a quickly-packed bag of monsoon gear in hand, two of us set off to join her, without a return ticket; the most whimsical I’ve ever been. The next five days were spent chasing the monsoon; rather, chasing the chaser of the monsoon. This impromptu trip has given me one of my most memorable experiences - watching the monsoon wall move towards land whilst standing on a deserted fishing beach, soon being smacked on the face by piercing rain and uninhibitedly jumping and screaming in the ensuing storm, soaked to the gills. 

Read about some of my other monsoon experiences: 
http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2013/09/under-my-umbrella.html

Kerala road-trip

I returned to Kerala towards the end of the monsoon. This time, the trip revolved around a long-standing desire to see the famous snake-boat races of Kerala. We drove long-distance from Bangalore, through Cherai, Alleppey, Kumarakom and Thekkady, for 11 days. Disappointingly, the organisation of the Nehru Trophy boat race left much to be desired, though the sheer muscle power of the rowers kept me spellbound.  I also discovered that Thekkady is no longer the pristine, quiet forest it used to be, in my memory from 15 years ago. However, the night trek through the Periyar Tiger Reserve despite a sprained foot, a gravity-defying Kalaripayattu performance and emerald monsoon vistas made the trip worthwhile.

Bandipur

Two back-to-back trips to Bandipur on work gave me the opportunity to spend time in a forest I hadn’t visited that often before. The proliferation of Lantana and Parthenium has reduced the visibility of the forest floor, but, birds, plants and insects gave me more than enough to focus on.

Hogenakkal Falls

‘Niagara of the east’ or ‘smoky rock’ – whatever you choose to call Hogenakkal Falls, it does make for an enjoyable day trip from Bangalore. The river Cauvery winds her way across the two states fighting over her, creating a spectacular cascade on each side. The ‘Karnataka falls’, the ‘Tamil Nadu falls’, coracle rides through picturesque gorges connecting them, oil massages by the water and fresh, fried fish sold by enterprising vendors – Hogenakkal has options to keep everybody happy.

The 'Karnataka Falls'

Thadiyandamol, Coorg

Coorg’s highest peak deserves its own special trip. And, no amount of time will suffice. Four days spent on and around Thadiyandamol revealed the profusion of life it supports – birds, reptiles, fungi, flora and other fauna. It also made us very aware of every joint and muscle we possessed, the sad fallout of sedentary city life. But, to share the pain, to hobble around together, to make exciting discoveries at every turn, to pluck leeches off ourselves each evening, and to lounge around with coffee and snacks after a very exhausting day, were a bunch of friends.  It made for a very memorable birthday. 

Kurinji, Sholas and a dragonfly, at Thadiyandamol

Read about my Thadiyandamol trek, here:

http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2015/08/thadiyandamol-trek-ground-beneath-my.html

Read about other trips to Coorg:

http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-river-runs-through-it.html 

http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2012/01/coorg.html

Yercaud: good things come in small packages

A version of this story has been published in July 2014, in the Sunday edition of Deccan Herald.

With the unfortunate sobriquet "poor man's Ooty" hanging heavy over its head, it would seem like Yercaud doesn't stand a chance. But maybe, people don't give it a chance, treating it as a day-trip option. Sure, it's used by Salem-ites as an extension of their city. Sure, it does not feel as exotic as a hill-station is supposed to. Sure, it's not as much travel as you'd expect, for it to feel like a holiday. But maybe, that's what prevented it from 'developing' too much.

Excessive creature comforts are missing: you don't have a choice of twenty hotels to stay in, not many options for eating out or entertainment and no roads lined with shops for retail therapy. Now that I've told you what Yercaud is not, you probably are wondering what Yercaud is about and what I did there.

One weekend, fed up with 7-day work weeks, off I went. It helped that Yercaud is so easily accessible from Bangalore. At the end of my drive, my introductory view of Yercaud was the noisy area around the lake; I immediately doubted the sagacity of coming here to relax. At check-in, they were surprised to hear that I planned to stay for three days. I was told about the viewpoint-temple-waterfall-lake-garden circuit I could take. And I was told that once I've done the circuit, in a day at the most, I would be done with Yercaud. Hmm.

In the early 19th century, the British visited Yercaud and began setting up coffee plantations. By the mid 19th century, Yercaud was brought under British rule. They established estates, built a few buildings, schools etc. For the British living around sultry Salem, salubrious Yercaud must have been a pleasant respite. Centuries later, I could still see why; by evening, a strange languor had seeped into me. I felt as relaxed as I'd feel after a few days on a holiday. Maybe it was the nip in the air or the chirps of the winter migrant birds which had begun arriving. Maybe it was the vista of coffee plantations or the mist which slowly enveloped everything. Maybe it was the hot soup or the comfort food. Or, small luxuries like calling for hot 'Horlicks' at midnight, curled under the blanket with a long-pending book.

Yercaud calls for a simple routine of sleep-eat-walk-sleep. If you seek more activity, make it sleep-eat-walk-read-sleep. For the adventurous, there's sleep-eat-walk-read-trek-sleep. Any which way, you will be well fed and well rested at the end of the holiday. Yercaud also takes you back to a simpler time: when you walked a lot, when a ten-rupee boat ride was fun, when you didn't hunt for parking whenever you went out, when snacking did not mean going to cafes, but, eating hot 'bajjis' or peanuts from a vendor, and when meeting for coffee meant having hot chai seated on the footpath or a park bench. It's life without brands. It's the 1990s.

Coming back to the suggestion I was given, of what to do at Yercaud, I hauled myself out of my room some days. The lake, which is the 'central' area of compact Yercaud, was a short walk from my hotel. I sat there each evening, watching people paddle away furiously at the cartoon-character shaped paddle boats. I sat through a frenzied photo-shoot of an awkward newly-wed couple, racing against the fading light - the lake seemed to be the focus of most peoples' activities, be it visitors or locals. At sunset, the park shut and all of us moved out, only to sit around the omnipresent tea stalls; the thought of hot tea as the temperature dropped drew us to them like moths to a flame.

An unwritten rule-book for hill-stations seems to mandate the presence of at least one waterfall and one viewpoint; even pint-sized Yercaud complies. The 1.5 kms long, pant-inducing trek to Kiliyur falls may lead you to an anti-climax during the dry season; however, visiting on the heels of one of the heaviest monsoons in Tamil Nadu, I had a beauteous cascade of water to behold. There isn't much space around the falls for hordes to stand. So, if you don't want your view of the falls speckled with people, visit on a week-day, like I did. If the climb down wasn't tedious for you, the way up the steep path and steps will surely work up your appetite for lunch.

The very nondescript Shevarayan temple hides a surprise cave within. The idols are of Lord Shevarayan, the patron deity of the Shevaroy hills in which Yercaud is nestled, and, the river Cauvery. The cave is said to be so deep that its base touches the river Cauvery. A very uninterested priest presided over the temple and ensured I didn't linger once I'd made the customary donation to his 'aarti plate'.

A little disappointing were the three famed viewpoints - connected by a single road, crowded and littered. They're curiously named ladies', gents' and children's seats. The winter weather didn't help either and views were misted-out even in the afternoon. In better weather, I can imagine that the vistas might have been beautiful, even allowing views of Salem. There is a humungous park being developed around these points, with the road linking all the way to the lake and the boat-house below, to create some sort of 'tourist hub'. Shudder?

Wiser now, here's what I'd suggest you do: Leave your expectations behind. Choose accommodation with sprawling property. Carry binoculars, sensible walking shoes and a good book; in winter, a light sweater too. Feed on staples of hot soup, chai and bajjis. Do 'nothing' for a few days. The erratic mobile signal is actually therapeutic. Yet, be close enough to return quickly to ‘civilisation’ when you need to. The bag of oranges in your car will be the only souvenir of your holiday; yes, Yercaud grows other things besides coffee. Besides, of course, growing on you.

For information & tips about Yercaud, read this:
http://nomadandabag-guides.blogspot.com/2013/01/yercaud-information-tips.html