Trip to Kushalnagar

Last year (2005), just after Diwali, along with my wife and two daughters, I went on a trip to Coorg. Coorg is a district and the places we visited included Kushalnagar, Madikeri, Bhagmandala and Talakaveri.

We started early in the morning, around 6:15, from Bangalore. Enroute is our favourite breakfast place, Kamat Lokaruchi, in Ramnagara. The dishes are good and the coffee is better :)) From here you proceed towards Mysore and before you reach Mysore, you need to take a right leading into Srirangapatna. I dont know how the road signs are now, but we almost missed the turn. So keep looking out for this. You will need to go to Hunsur and from there to Kushalnagar. Keep a map with you.

You can easily reach Kushalnagar by lunch time if you are out of Bangalore limits by 6:30am. We reached there during lunch time. I had booked accommodation in Nisargadhama. This is on the banks of Cauvery and is a tourist spot. It looked great but I realized the problems much later in the day. If you are there without your kids, it is a great place to stay. Lot of bamboo trees and the Cauvery flowing nearby. Late in the evening, the caretaker came and told us to keep all our belongings in a big wooden box !!! He said that rats generally come into the room at night. My kids were scared and wanted to know what else came in. Frogs certainly did. So the night was spent with the lights switched on !! You would be better off staying at either Kannika International or Shylaja Arris, the two decent hotels there. And dont even think of eating in the canteen at Nisargadhama.

On the first day evening, we went to Bylakuppe, where the Tibetian monasteries are situated. This is off the Hunsur-Kushalnagar road. If you are coming from Kushalnagar to Hunsur, you need to take a right turning. It is close to Kushalnagar and there are lot of signs. You should visit the big monastery here, which is excellent. Dont go there thinking you will get some Tibetian stuff there. Whatever the shops had was the usual junk you would get in Bangalore. The monastery is a nice place. Dont miss it.

Tibetian Monastery at Bylekuppe

It was raining the next day. So we started a bit late and went to Dubare. This elephant camp on the banks of Cauvery is an excellent place to visit. You need to drive from Kushalnagar towards Madikere. A couple of kilometers after Nisargadhama, you will get a cross road. You need to take the left turn here. The road leads to Siddapura but you dont need to go that far. After some distance on this road, you will need to take a village road to your left. You will see a sign here. Drive carefully and slowly since there is almost no road here.

Dubare is a nice place. Lot of water in the river. You need to cross to the other bank on a boat. There you can interact with elephants. You get to wash them and feed them. As can be expected, the kids love this a lot. Since the parents are tired of washing and feeding their children daily, they dont want to do it one more time ;)) Just kidding. You will also get a good lecture about the elephants and their habits. Then you will be taken on an elephant ride. If the rush is high, there will be a long wait for this ride !! If I were to go again, I will skip the elephant ride and go sit with my feet in Cauvery. That is a great feeling.

We had lunch at Dubare. There is a restaurant here and we were not sure how good it would be but the lunch turned out to be hot and good. We then got back to Nisargadhama. My daughters had by this time formed a great bond with the rabbits there and kept on feeding them. In the evening we moved from Nisargadhama to Hotel Shylaja Arris.

Will write about the visit to Madikere, Talacauvery and Kakabe in my next post.