Amidst the craggy
mountainscapes of the Sahyadri range of the Western Ghats is nestled the
average everyday Indian town of Chikmagalur. The town and the entire district
wear a small-town calm; the shops are small, the buildings are sleepy, the
signboards are only in Kannada and the people have an air of of small-town
innocence. Wikipedia rather ungenerously describes Chikmagaluru district as
“not known for well maintained roads”. There’s a lot of other things about this
place that make up for that part, though.
Like coffee.
Coffee invigorates. Coffee energizes. So we made sure we stayed away from it
for two lazy days in the coffee estates of Chikmagalur! Actually, ‘coffee
forests’ would be a more fitting term to describe the acres of plantations in
Chikmagalur. Reams of rich deep green carpet the landscape. The coffee berries
are out in full force now; some are a resplendent red agaisnt the deep green –
it’s a sight for the sore soul. Others await the merry sunshine to blush into
that shade of red that warms the coffee-planter’s heart.
The jeep safari to
our camping site rattles us down to our bone marrow. ‘It’s daily business’; our
driver nonchalantly brushes off our observation on the difficulty of driving on
a road on its last lap of existence.
The brooding
clouds add generously to the magical eerieness of the campsite. We walk to the
sunset/sunrise view point – it is splendid. We are at the very edge of the
cliff and there is a sheer drop to the valley below. We sit down on the bare
rocks. On closer inspection, we see that the ‘bare rocks’ are of course,
teeming with life that’s very capable of crawling up our legs. Ants and a
variety of bugs make themselves confortable in the damp mossy forest floor.
Bright red spore capsules, all of a centimetre tall, provide a contrast to the
moss’ glass green (Darn, should have gotten Kiwi to take a close-up snap!)
There’s all kinds
of food – delicious Nutella-Banana sandwiches which overnight turned into
Ant-ella sandwiches with some insistent ants drowning in the Nutella. (I wonder
how it would be to drown in a Nutella river, or pond if you like?) There’s a
big citrusy fruit we do not know the name of and the largest cucumber I have
ever seen generously donated by the caretaker Ranganna. We also manage to pull
together something that remotely resembles sambar
rice and veggies.
It’s time to pitch
tents – never knew it was so much fun. And time-lapse photography takes grip.
You can see the very funny results here.
Engineering brains
are put to good use as the guys build a tripod that supports an umbrella to
protect the camera while capturing the clouds at a rate of 1 shot a minute… results here! I quietly rue the lack of a chicken that could have roasted gently
over a warm fire ably aided by the tripod. Yeah, good roast wild chicken would have
done marvelous justice to that tripod! I know at least one other member of the
group felt the same way too! :)
Some unnecessary
brain exercise follows – for the record, I hereby state that the longest game
in the history of ‘bluff’ lasting 3.5 hours was played in a 4-person Wildcraft
tent under stormy conditions on a remote hilltop in a coffee plantation
somewhere near the town of Aldur which is around 12 km from Chikmagalur.
Needless to say, the nuances of faking things was lost on yours truly. Indeed,
I was the richest player with the thickest stack of cards through most of the
game!
Time blinks by.
Time to return, the townsfolk looking at us quizzically, wondering why we
city-folk want to be there anyway. A change of scene and scenery? To get away…
from what? The trick, as we city-folk know, is to get out of there before the
inconveniences get to us.
Chikmagalur –
Camping, time-lapse photography, building tripods, cooking and chopping and
cleaning! And cards! Hey, this wasn’t such a lazy trip after all, was it? :)
Credits: Photo and
Videos – Kiwi
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