Cool Madikeri

As holidays for schools were about to end, my family and I wanted to visit a cool place to beat the heat of Bengaluru! Though we visited Madikeri individually, all of us wanted to visit it together, spend quality time and visit important places of the town and nearby Bhagamandala, Talakaveri and various waterfalls in leisure before monsoon sets in. We started our trip on Friday May 26, 2017 after booking a home-stay in Madikeri for 3 nights / 4 days.

First, a shock by TravelGuru one day before my trip!

I booked home-stay in Madikeri through TravelGuru a week before my journey. Required payment was done and the booking was confirmed by TravelGuru about four days in advance. I used the travel website a few times before and every time booking was OK without any problems. After my family members pressed me to check with the home-stay owner directly one day before my journey, I shocked to know that the owner did not receive any intimation regarding my booking from TravelGuru! I was really upset as my family and my sister's family were ready to travel in a day and we had to hear bad news that put us in a dilemma on what to do. TravelGuru did not inform me any problem with my booking. When I called TravelGuru in Bombay, a concerned person confirmed that there was a problem with my booking as the home-stay was not available! What? Then what does one mean by confirmation? The person could not explain the reason why home-stay was not available for me even after confirmation. After shouting to that guy, he passed my call to a manager who blamed the home-stay owner for not updating status on their computer. The home-stay owner blamed TravelGuru saying it did not send any booking intimation to him. After some argument, the manager booked at some other home-stay and asked me to contact home-stay owner immediately and confirmed the booking. That saved my holiday for which my sister's family came from faraway place! So, the moral of the story is always confirm booking with the home-stay or hotel even if travel websites confirm the booking! Finally we started our journey the very next day.

First Day

Plan for the day was to reach Madikeri and see as many tourist important places as possible. Started for Madikeri from Bengaluru at 6:30am by car. We had breakfast at Kamat restaurant on the way. As my guests did not visit Brindavan garden earlier, we deviated from our main route for an impromptu visit to the garden. To our surprise, various fountains were on even during day time and hence took a few nice photographs in the garden!

There were hardly any people at that time. Place was calm without any hustle and bustle. We resumed our journey after an hour of seeing the garden and reached Madikeri at about 2.30pm.

We first visited Madikeri fort. Parking was not a problem at all. There is plenty of parking place inside the fort premises. Beautiful elephant statues and a long walkway adjacent to the fort boundary wall were highlights of our trip to the fort.

We also visited a museum in the fort premises but we were not very much impressed with it. You can finish it in five minutes unless you are an archaeologist! There is also a temple in the premises but it was closed when we were there. We left for Raja’s seat after an hour and half at the fort. Car parking at this place is available. Entry place into the Raja’s seat is a garden. You will find a viewing point at the end of the garden. As the view of hills from there was really nice, we spent quite some time taking photographs with backdrop of clouds hanging over distant hills.

After exiting from the Raja’s seat, we noticed a toy train on our right side. Journey time for the train is about 5 minutes. But it is not really worth the time using the toy train as we did not find any great scenes on its short journey. Kids may enjoy its ride.

Second day

Plan for the second day was to visit Bhagamandala, Talakaveri, Chingara and Chelavara waterfalls. Bhagamandala is about 40 kilometers from our home-stay. We were in Bhagamandala by 9:30am. We visited Bhagandeshwara temple and Triveni sangama. We could leisurely visit the temple as it was not crowded at all. Triveni Sangama is opposite to the temple located a few meters away on other side of main road. It is the meeting point of rivers Kaveri, Kannike and Sujyothi. We saw people taking bath in the sangama water. You can finish visiting both these points in an hour.

Next point of our visit was Talakaveri which is 8 kilometers away from Bhagamandala. As we were reaching it, we had an exhilarating experience as we could see clouds passing though us! There is a lot of place for parking vehicles. In fact, car parking fee was collected as we left Bhagamandala, i.e., a good 8 kilometers away! As we noticed a large number of cars near the temple, we parked our vehicle almost half a kilometer away from it and walked to the place instead. It is the birth place of river Kaveri. I expected to see a stream of water but the area is completely covered with granite slabs with a tank where water collects. Found a few people taking bath in the tank. There is one more small tank where priests sit doing poojas for the visitors and the water seems to be reaching that place first and then to the big tank below. We had to be in a queue to see the origin of Kaveri but we hardly managed to see it as we were asked to move on quickly! Next, we climbed top of an adjacent hill that has granite slab steps with railings to reach its top. We had a nice view of surrounding hills and clouds passed through us once in a while at the top of the hill. It is a nice place for great photographs. We spent couple of hours at Talakaveri.

We left Talakaveri at about 1:30pm for Chelavara waterfalls. We missed direct road from Bhagamandala to Virajpet! We realized that we were travelling back along Madikeri road via Cherambane and hence took right turn at a junction where Bhagamndala-Madikeri road and Napoklu-Madikeri road meet, reached Napoklu and  joined back Bhagamandala-Virajpet road! Some sections of the road we traveled were narrow and bit scary because we hardly found vehicles moving along the road  and both sides of roads have very tall trees. However, we were disappointed to know that the road to Chelavara waterfalls was closed for repair when we were about 5 kilometers away from the waterfalls.  Problem may not be there now as I saw some photographs of the waterfall in news papers recently. Resumed our journey back to Madikeri via Murnad. We were surprised to find an impressive Kalabhairava temple that was not in our list at Kakotuparambu on our way back to Madikeri. We did not visit the temple as we did not find any movement of people to or from the temple. However, an adjacent hillock, inside the temple premises, covered nicely with grass turned out to be another beautiful place for photographs.

Third day

Plan for the day was to see Abbey waterfalls, Dubare Elephant Camp and Golden Temple of Tibetan settlement at Bylakuppe. Abbey falls is about 7 kilometers from our home-stay. Parking at the falls site was found to be limited, but we could park our car without any hassle. We walked up to the waterfalls that is about 500 meters away from the parking lot. As such one can not reach its water as the viewing area is fenced. Took a few photographs at the waterfalls and left for Dubare elephant camp.

We reached the camp around noon on that day. Couple of kilometers of road to the camp is really bad. We took a lot of time to reach the parking place because it was difficult for two buses to pass along the road. Traffic problem was compounded due to incessant rain on that day. Reaching the camp at noon turned out to be a bad idea as elephant related activities are available only in mornings and evenings. Better you reach the camp in the morning around 9am or after noon 4.30pm. But one thing we enjoyed there was rubber boat ride in river Kaveri. This costed us Rs. 150 per person. Then we got into water and spent quite a lot of time in the river. We had lunch in a restaurant on the bank of the river and left for Bylakuppe for a visit to Golden Temple of Tibetan settlement.

There is huge parking place before the temple. The temple has very big statues of Buddha and others in very bright colors. These statues are similar to those you find in Buddhist temples of Sri Lanka and China. We spent an hour there and came back to our home-stay.

Fourth day

Had breakfast at the home-stay, packed our bags and started return journey to Bengaluru with many sweet memories of our trip. We had lunch at a restaurant called Parampare we found after passing Srirangapatna. Though it did not look a great restaurant from outside, the food was very good.

Useful travel tips:

Distance: Madikeri is 269 kilometers from Bengaluru via Ramanagara and Srirangapatna. Bypassed Mysuru. Traveled by car.

Time to visit: Before end of May. Owner of the home-stay said the area receives a lot of rainfall for four months starting from June.

Accommodation: We stayed at Nisarga Thana Home-stay that we booked on-line for three nights and four days. It is on the main road to Madikeri on its outskirts, opposite to electric substation, about 3 kilometers away from the main city area. There are many other home-stays and hotels near Nisarga Thana. You need your own vehicle to buy any food items from the city center as you do not find any shops around the home-stay. It was a calm place with nice view of nearby hills covered with clouds. It costed us less than Rs. 800 per head per night after a discount given by a travel website. Make sure you confirm your booking with the owner of home-stay if you book on-line. A confirmed booking on-line at travel website may not guarantee the booking for you as we had learnt the hard way before we started our trip!

Places of interest at Madikeri: Madikeri fort, Raja’s seat and Abbey waterfalls. One place we missed visiting was Omkareshwara temple near Madikeri fort.

Nearby places of interest: Bhagandeshwara temple and Triveni sangama in Bhagamandala. Talakaveri and adjacent hillock. Chingara waterfalls that we skipped. Chelavara waterfalls that we could not visit. Kalabhairava temple on our way back to Madikeri from a road near by the waterfalls.