Kodagu or Coorg is the Scotland of India due to its terrain and climate

Kodagu known more popularly as Coorg – what does the name convey to you? Is it a country, a people, a place or you’ve never heard about it?  To me, it’s always been a semi mythical place to go and see.... years ago, I studied the Coorgi culture and now I finally made it. A sylvan hideaway far from the madding crowd. Coorg…. a land where by right of our constitution the men can carry arms, where the men are said to be more handsome than the women (said in all honesty and without bias), where coffee and old world traditions are more valued than what happens in today’s world. Coorg in a nutshell is a delight to visit and which still remains unchanged, by and large.

Known as the Switzerland or Scotland of India due to its climate, temperature and hilly 5,000 ft high countryside, Coorg has excellent weather all year round, min 7 deg, max 30 deg.  The main crops are coffee, pepper, cardamom, flowers and, may I say, more coffee. The plantations are all around Coorg making it so green.

Coorg is easy to visit and see in a short day trip from Mysore but don’t do that. I urge you to stay in Coorg with a local family to experience the place which has so much to offer .. see further down on Home Stays. We left Mysore at 8.30am, had a breakfast halt and were in Coorg by 11.00 am. Everywhere you are offered coffee – but rarely do you get fresh ground coffee – its Nescafe, South Indian style, which is a pity as Coorgi coffee served fresh is really very tasty. We drove on the highway to Piryapatna and then via Putter to Sulliyan and Sidhpur towards a resort hotel which is called Orange County for lunch. Once off the main highway, the road is twisting and turning and soon we were amongst coffee plantations. En route at the 80 km mark from Mysore, in a small village, we saw an annual purification ceremony which is a Kerala version of the Coorgi ceremony. The procession is lead by a group of men wearing masks and colourful costumes who dance vigorously to purify the atmosphere of demons. They are accompanied by three ladies who carry the straw pallets which are put in front of the temple and young men wearing colourful lungis carrying big vertical drums. The drummers beat their drums as if their lives depend upon it. Then after a while, they stand in front of the temple in a small circle and beat the drums furiously for ten minutes. Prayers are chanted by the priest and later prasadum is distributed to all.   

Along the whole road, there are plantations with coffee plants 6 to 8 ft high. The critical aspect of a coffee plantation is to have many very tall trees, 70 ft upwards, growing every six to ten feet to give top line cover and thereby shade the coffee trees. 

Their trunks are relatively thin, not like in Cambodia or Laos where the trees are really wide with massive root structure. These trees are like European trees … very elegant and the thick vines covering the bottom half of the tree looks like a skirt on them! These surroundings are ideal for birds, small animals and other indigenous wildlife which is not found anywhere else in India. The entrance to a coffee plantation is through a small gate large enough for a Jeep rather than a Sedan and the drive way is long. You usually cannot see the house. En route on the main highway, we saw many bamboo trees which are massively wide – a circumference of easily 25 to 30 men holding hands! Absolutely humungous in size and height. 

Bamboos branches cut where they interact with the road had a cross width of nearly 9” to 12”. The wind whistles through them like a cycle being driven! Rosewood, Fig and Mahogany trees run riot throughout Coorg. The Cannucaddoo Coffee Estate of Tata Tea is huge and runs in a U shape… we had to drive all round it to get to our destination. Gulmohar trees were in full bloom and often we saw long patches of the road with Gulmohar flowers on the kerb… an orange pathway in the setting sun. A sight etched into my memory.  

As you come in from the Orange County road into Madikeri town, you go down hill past the Bus station which is at a crossroads leading to the main shopping area. This causes traffic bottlenecks galore but that is half the fun !! Madikeri, the capital, has a population of around 50,000 people out of a total Coorgi population of around 5 to 6 lakhs. Established in 1681, by the Raja of the Haleri dynasty, the city changed from ‘Muddu Rajakeri’ to ‘Madikeri’ of today. It is like Mahableshwar in size and also that due to the rains, the town is often shrouded in mist and looks serene.

One can walk around Madikeri easily as it’s a small place but it’s hilly. Basically there is one road into the town if you come from Sunticoppa and another from the south. The roads generally throughout are single lane but in good condition. Except for a small stretch of road, Piryapatna to Mysore, we never actually repeated any part of the road during our circular journey hence we saw fresh scenery all the time. The highway is dual lane and new with road dividers in between making for relatively safe driving but at villages where ditches were being dug, we found rough patches of road.

 

Madikeri Palace in the Fort

The main sights of Madikeri are the Fort Palace, the Raja’s Seat, the Omkareshwar Temple, the Museum and the market. Madikeri Fort rebuilt around 1815 looms over the town. To get to it, there is a small slip of a road which is at a sharp angle to the main road. Within the Fort, stands the palace built in European style with secret underground passages, now housing Government offices. True to our babu-dom policy, the building has a bluish whitewash colour and has totally lost its original charm. The ramparts are worth walking on as you get superb views of the city from the rampart top but carefully as there is barbed wire, spiky plants and trash liberally lying around. A couple of stone elephants at the gate stand testimony to the brutal killing years ago of royal elephants.

Whilst the guidebook beckons you to a unique museum of antiquities in the Fort grounds, exercise caution as it’s in a pitiable state. No leaflet, poor lighting, a resident official who knows nothing about anything of Coorg or its history [asked about handicrafts, he had no clue], the descriptors for the exhibits are incorrectly spelt or inadequate in information. It also had a few mementoes of Chief of Staff & General of the Army Cariappa but again one could not see them clearly due to very poor lighting. Finally there are only about 30 to 35 pieces on display there. Why don’t the Coorgis have a museum for their rich cultural and social heritage? Why cannot one buy any Coorgi handicrafts locally? … we were given names of two shops but did not find anything of quality. Coorgi pride in themselves seems to have gone downhill.

The Rajah’s Seat gets its name from the fact that the local royalty used to go to this place in the evenings to watch the sunsets. There are lovely flowers in season and a fascinating view of the winding roads. The Omkareshwar Temple was built in a combination of the Indo Saracenic style of architecture in 1820 by the then Rajah to ward off evil spirits. The Shiva linga is said to have come from Kashi / Varanasi. Frankly I would not go out of my way to see it as it’s not unique and I personally prefer the countryside with its ever changing hues.

I believe Coorg is one of those rare places in India where the concept of Home Stay has been actively and properly popularised. It must have arisen out of the need for the coffee planters to invite outsiders to their homes as a means of earning extra income as well as to meet their need to socialize. They were generally most of the time in distant isolated locations. A handbook “Kodagu Home Stay” divides Coorg into eight sections and details out, with photographs; the home stays in and around each area. Every house has a photograph and a section under it which states the distance from the nearest town, how to get there, the number of rooms / occupancy, speciality in terms of activity, food available, sight seeing places, things to do, indoor games if any, trekking places and general facilities available. With such a handbook, one just cannot go wrong. My wife and friends went to one such place for a weekend and had a great time. The family cooked local delicacies, both veg and non veg, and their cuisine being so different from mainstream food were a delightful change. It’s something to be recommended to anyone visiting Coorg. Far better to stay at a Home Stay than at any hotel, especially resort hotels.

Coorg has many places to see and each of these has its own charm –

·     Nisargadhama ecological park where the river forms an island and a bamboo forest. It is 30kms from Madikeri and has the usual tourist attractions of boating, bridges, elephant rides, deer park.

·     Abbi Falls is north west of Madikeri – after the monsoons, it is an awesome sight due to the full weight of the monsoon’s on the waterfall.

·     Gadduge is the site of three Islamic style tombs with gold minarets. There are carvings of Hindu deities at each tomb. From here you get a distant view of the capital.

·     Nalknad Palace - at the feet of the highest mountain in Coorg, and only 45 kms from Madikeri, was built in 1792. It is a two storied structure with interesting paintings of its past and has good architecture.

·     Nagarhole – the famed game sanctuary.

·     Irpu Falls – 15kms away from Nagarhole. There is a temple to Lord Shiva on the river bank. You can stay at any number of guest houses nearby in Virajpet, Gonicoppa and Kutta.

At Bylakoppa, we saw the second largest Tibetan settlement in India. They have a Namdrolling monastery and a Golden Temple. Actually the Tibetan area is spread out over quite a few kilometres. First you see a few houses, then in the distance a majestic structure which looks like a Tibetan Palace which is off the road and is not marked. We continued down the single road for atleast five kms to reach a Tibetan community. Past that, we finally came to the main temple. To get to it, you go past a large dormitory structure, four storeys high having single rooms, colourful dark red / maroon robes drying from the balconies. Some monks using cellphones can be seen on the balconies. There was going to be some festival so they were in the process of erecting a massive tent like structure which covered the whole frontage of the dormitory - equal to nearly two buildings in width. The fabric was white with colourful dragon designs. By the time I came back from the temple, I found the monks had nearly formed the tent using large poles at spaced intervals.

 The temple area has one temple with attractive carvings and lots of gold leaf everywhere. On one side was a hall outside which at 5.00 pm in the evening were gathered a large assembly of nearly 300 novice monks, all teenagers. Like teenagers, they needed to be shepherded and kept in line so that they listened carefully to the monk who was reading from a long paper scroll, which he unwound as he read it. A novitiate sitting near the monk’s knees carefully rolled it up again. The temple has gold carved Buddha and his disciples’ statues sitting in a row. Unfortunately I found that the Indian tourists were more in a holiday atmosphere and cared little for the Tibetan culture or understanding / appreciating their way of life. Outside the temple area are restaurants and a shopping mall – which we avoided as we were not interested in seeing shops.

If you are in Bangalore or Mysore and have a few days free, or even otherwise anywhere in the south, do go and see Coorg. It is a beautifully green place; totally different from the denuded hills of the Western Ghats. Stay with a Coorgi family, enjoy their way of life and come back enchanted that in India we still retain the old way of life which we have lost in the cities. You will definitely not regret the decision and maybe you will visit Coorg again.