Road Trip to Coonoor

It was a dream trip, conceptualized on a whim, iffy till the last moment, and consciously kept at a no itinerary space. 

The view from Sans Souci

The No Itinerary was like a mantra to the trip.......it simply takes away any kind of expectation, and puts you in this nice space of 'just being'.

Coonoor can just envelope you in its tranquility and beauty..... just being one with the mountains and the clouds....and Sans Souci, where we chose to stay, was this quaint old house from times gone by, and has pretty much been retained as is, including all it's furniture.......giving the whole experience a feeling of timelessness.  

That's the frontal view of the house. And as we go in, the excitement just keeps mounting, and I hear Diksha say 'It'll take us two days to just explore this house ma'.

Let me start with day 1. 

We got off to an early start, and it was an interesting drive as it crosses four different kinds of terrain. Bangalore to Mysore is this crazy busy highway, where entire focus is almost just traffic, but that pretty much gets done in under three hours, breakfast included. We did Maddur Wada at Maddur, but I guess that was more experience than taste, so won't talk much for the wada. 

Mysore to Bandipur, was mixed bag. First a great road stretch and then an awful road stretch as it's under patchy repair for a few kilometers, and not nice stress on car and driver (me)

Then you get to the Bandipur Tiger reserve, and that's an interesting drive through, more the feel and smell of jungle than any wildlife really. All you get to see on a sweltering summer afternoon is lots of deer, and boar and lots and lots of monkeys and langurs. And that's where you also cross into Tamilnadu. Its called Bandipur on the Karnataka side and Madumalai Tiger Reserve on the TN side.

Monkeys in Bandipur

Then the ghats. That was lots of excitement as it's after all the Nilgiris and part of the Western Ghats of India....about 2250 m above sea level, so a really steep climb with loads of hair pin bends at crazy angles and we even got to see a bad accident where this car got totally over turned, which just added more focus to our own driving. While driving up was full on focus, it hit when I got to Ooty and felt my arms so sore and knees literally buckle. The stress and strain of a first timer I guess :)

          

We did lunch at Ooty, and then another hour to Coonoor, and a further hour to Sans Souci.

A village on the way to Coonoor

Finding Sans Souci was a crazy challenge as no two people seem to pronounce it the same way, and the only landmarks are gravel roads and tea estates :)

That was our gravel road, and it goes on over a kilometer to reach the home.

Diksha of course found some doggy friends at a neighboring farm. That's her with the little boy Surya and the doggies Shanthi and Rosy

We reached the home stay at around 4 in the evening, and then we just chilled and took in the place :)

Diksha wanted this pic because she felt it was like ammamma's paintings :)

As we were driving through the blistering summer heat, I'm telling Diksha 'gosh, it'll be so nice to turn on the ac and crash, and she's like 'you don't seriously expect ac's in coonoor, do you?', and imagine our surprise when we get there and find that...'forget ac's, they don't even have fans'. 

But that's Coonoor, we actually used a razai for the night !