Tranquil Break



With mom visiting and with no real breaks in the last few months I was itching to head out of the chaos of the city and booked a nice treehouse that I found out while looking up the web.

So on a nice cloudy morning last Sunday I took my good old Alto for its first long spin out of the city this year.

Hit the first stretch of great road (Nice Toll Road) soon after home and with the music turned on it was a good beginning. The toll road with it wide open stretches where you are sure that there won't be any incoming traffic wrong side of the road is a dream drive .

However I did feel the need for speed with my sturdy old 800c Alto taking time to pickup speed but nevertheless it did cross the 100kmp mark soon !
We ripped through almost negligible traffic and we were in Mysore in flat 2hrs where we had a stopover for breakfast at Kamat. We then passed through some good green stretches specially once we crossed Gundulpet into the Muthanga Forest Reserve that lies across both the states of Karnataka and Kerela . As you enter Kerela you see big cut outs of Football stars mainly from Argentina and Brazil all along the road side !! Stopped and asked for directions for the resort at Sultan Bathery a small town ( named after Tipu sultan who had captured the Jain temple there and used it as his Battery) only a few kms away from Tranquil.


Tranquil at Waynad which seemed like a good place to just relax with a few books and walk around its 300acre coffee estate . I just had a gut feeling that it would have a different rhythm and surely it had a different beat about it. We reached there just after 11am and was greeted by the host Nisha and her daughter and then her Mom came by . The luggage was dumped and I relaxed a bit after the drive . At lunch we met up with the entire family who look after the estate and got introduced to Victor who had spent his early years of his life in Calcutta , turned out to be a big tennis fan and a player.


Now into his 60s he spoke about playing tennis almost every morning till he had a bypass few years back. 4 generations of the family live there in tranquility and each of them have an impressive personality and the days spent there was juxtaposed with some great conversations over the food table and otherwise. Having found one of the rare hardcore tennis fan and player I was thrilled

I spent my time walking around the lush green coffee estates and onto some of the clearly marked paths to a nearby peak or just finding my on some random tracks . The food and conversation over food was interesting and made the stay worth every minute and evenings was spent tucked in the luxury tree house watching the football world cup( specially remember the Portugal-DPR 7-0 drubbing ) and Wimbledon where the King Federer was almost shown the door on the first day.

We then bid adieu to the place to start our journey back to reality and 1hr into the drive we were stopped at the Kerela/Karnataka border by the forest guards disallowing any traffic flow whereas traffic freely flowed from the other side.
 We had to be stalled there till 5pm and even repeated requests by us wouldn't let the guards change their mind, guess their senior had asked them not to let anyone go. Imagine stranded in the forest with no mobile signal all the way till evening and not able to inform anybody at destination of the reason but for me thankfully Mum was with me. After 1.5hrs we saw 2 bikers get away and then on further requests they allowed us out, the lone vehicles. I zipped through the empty roads across the green forest stretches and then came another block cops asking us to stop and taking us to the Police station at Gundulpet charging me with crashing through barricades. Thankfully Mum was there and with her Govt. Identity card around and some talking and also car inspection they let us go. I am sure on another day with Mum not around ,I would have had to shell out some cash as fine to let me go!!  Hit Mysore in couple of hours and after a short stop for a bite at Maddur we were home by 5.

Route :Bangalore - Nice Road- Mysore Road -(SH 17)-Mandya-Sringapatna-Mysore-Ring Road Junction -NH 212 -Nanjangud- Begur-Gundulpet-Maddur-Muthanga Forest Reserve- Sultan Bathery - Kalpetta

Driving Time :5.15hrs with one stop for a meal !

Pictures from the Trip:Tranquil

Comments

Kanchan said…
Hey,
You managed to punch in loads of relaxation and adventure (especially with the cops) in one break. The place is beautiful and I have bookmarked it for future referances. Hopefully will go there one day!
10:52 PM
Anuradha said…
Yeah it was a great drive and trip ..
7:34 AM
Subhadip said…
That's a nice place you described here. Especially liked the treehouse. If only I knew of that place in 2006, I would have stayed there! (The place I stayed in Sultan Bathery wasn't really great).

I remember the nice roads through the forests in that region, but didn't really like reading about such harassment by Forest Guards. Hope it's an unfortunate exception.
12:30 AM
Unknown said…
Nice write up ! The place is very beautiful .
2:08 AM
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