Tuesday 7 February 2017

Adrenaline Fix At The Coorg Adventure Club

"One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an Adventure"
-William Feather.

My adventure to Coorg was very refreshing. The adrenaline rush proved to be therapeutic. Yes, traveling could be heavy for your pocket but so can western medicine. I suggest you take that trip!In a span of almost one month I had written my GRE, college exams, and TOEFL. If that was not reason enough to take a break I didn't know what was. Not that I need a reason to travel. I would pack my bags tonight and leave but attendance shortage!

We had planned our Coorg activities privately, prior to leaving Manipal. The timing was perfect. My friends, Anushka, Krupali and I finished our TOEFL in Bangalore on 29th October. It was Diwali break in college and we couldn't have been happier. All we needed to do was get on the bus to Madikeri from Bangalore. Madikeri and Virajpet, thirty kilometers away from each other are the two big towns in Coorg. The night bus dropped us at Madikeri at 5 in the morning and we got a cab to Virajpet. The cab ride was 1000 rupees but we decided to take it anyway because the other option would have been to wait for a bus for one hour in the freezing cold. Our two-night stay in Coorg had just begun as we checked into the Coorg Adventure Club.

The Club owner and our instructor were very friendly. After some rest and breakfast, we were all ready to start. We made a new friend, Eden,  who was also staying at the Club dorm. Our guide took us for our first trek. The trek was rocky filled with steep ascends.  At some places, we had to use ropes and pull ourselves up. I was about to give up but the motivation from my friends kept me going. The view from the top was breathtaking. We bathed in the winter sun and enjoyed the picturesque view of the valley below. After some rest and photography (obviously!) we were ready to make our way back to the adventure club.

Zip lining across the lake and kayaking were on our bucket list and we ticked that off on the same evening. Zip lining got me very excited and I was glad I did not chicken out of it. I was the last one to go for zip lining but the first one to try kayaking. It was a small boat that could hold only one person at a time and that left us with no choice but to peddle our way around the lake. Coordinating the peddle boat took a few minutes to master but made perfect sense one you got a hang of it. We were exhausted by dinner time due to the morning trek as well as the bus ride from the night before. After enjoying a warm bonfire we called it a day and went to bed.









Our second day was spent in Kabbe village which was an hour from Coorg. Our guide took us on another trek promising us that it would be easier. He was right. It was cold and foggy while we trekked up. It rained when we were at the peak. We got drenched and the cold did not help. To make matters worse we had leeches sucking our blood, literally. As the cloud cover got thin we headed down as we were starving. For lunch, our hosts had spoken to a homestay called Kabbe holidays. It was some of the best home food I have ever had. We enjoyed the delicious food whole-heartedly. The family was very welcoming and it was easy to make conversation. We did not want to leave but we still had two more places to explore.


Our instructor led us to a beautiful waterfall where we had a wonderful time after which we went to explore beautiful coffee plantations of the owner of the Coorg Adventure Club. They even showed us pepper, chikoo, oranges and a few other plants. It was an amazing evening all together. We made our way back from Kabbe to the club house as we sipped hot tea in the auto rickshaw. Dinner that night was delicious. We had another bonfire and our hosts even got us homemade fruit wine.




















Coorg, the Scotland of India had been an experience of a lifetime. The next morning we had breakfast before we said our goodbyes and started our return journey. The journey back is a story on its own. Let's just say we changed four buses and it took us ten hours to get back instead of the normal five-hour journey between Coorg and Manipal. That brought me to the end of one adventure and now, this blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Until next time.
Signing off,
Nishma Khetia.

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