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Happy New Year!!

First of all, a very Happy New Year!  It's been a while since I wrote on the blog.  I am re-starting it again hoping that I will be more consistent in writing on the blog daily.

Well, last month was fun.  Wife and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in Coorg.  Coorg (Kodagu, as it is called now) is a beautiful place filled with waterfalls, lush greenery and just a beautiful landscape.  We went to Coorg from Bangalore after picking up DS's cousin in our car.  Hence, we started off for Coorg around 4:30pm.  That was not a good idea since Coorg is about 7 hours away and with my little son with us, it is nearly impossible to drive 3 straight hours without stopping.  We stopped in Mysore and had our dinner at Country Club, Mysore.  Please save your time and money and don't eat at this place.  It serves lousy and spicy food and the cleanliness of glasses is horrible.  It is better to eat at Kamat's that comes along the way.

We left Mysore around 8:20pm.  The road to Coorg is quite good till the town of Kushalnagar.  The real challenge started after we crossed this town.  The roads are being re-built and the entire 18-20+km stretch to madikeri (where we stayed) is horrendous.  There is hardly any tar road and rest is dug up.  To add to our miseries, it started pouring down.  No lights at all anywhere and it took us about 1.5-2 hours to cross this stretch.  I just went to our homestay and went to sleep.  I was too exhausted mentally.

We visited various places like Nisarga Dham.  Here you can find a beautiful place where you have to cross over on a hanging bridge.  It shakes quite a bit if there are people walking on it.  We took an elephant ride on it that my son had been craving for.  He had a ball and wanted to go again.  There is a facility to feed the deers lettuce.  This is a nice feature and lots of fun to be so close to the animals.  However, I would love to see these animals in their real habitat i.e in the wild. Besides these things, Nisarga Dham has a nice tree house and lots of bamboo trees along with others.  It was quite wet that day as it rained almost every evening we were there.

We also visited Golden Temple, the monastery of the Tibetans.  It felt like an intense spiritual place.  The beautiful idols and Gautam Buddha and others awesome to see along with the beautifully detailed paintings on the walls.  We also went to a schools where kids were studying.  I have no clue what they were studying.  Ducks and Turkeys were roaming freely.

We ate at Club Mahindra and Coorg International and the food was ok.  Club Mahindra buffet is quite good.  it costs about Rs. 400+tax.  With Club Mahindra card (friend or relative's) there is a 25% discount.

We also visited tala Cauvery, Abbey Falls, Raja Seat etc.  They all are quite good but I would advise folks to skip Tala Cauvery if they are short of time.  If you are deeply religious, then this place would be worth visiting.  This is the place where river cauvery was born.  The scenery is beautiful, no doubt.

After we came back, I visited Bombay to meet my brother, who had come to get his visa stamped.  Since I used to spend most of my summer vacation in Matunga in Bombay, it always brings back sweet memories visiting Matunga Gymkhana to watch kids practising cricket, visit 5 gardens, eating Veg toasted sandwich at Udipi near King Circle, going to Marine Plaza to have lunch buffet and then sitting near the beach on Marine Drive.  It is so nice to visit Bombay.

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