Friday, March 19, 2004

Coorgi Nostalgia

Oh...I am off to Coorg in a few hours from now with office crowd. It's gonna be exciting I am sure. I remember the last time I had been there...it was in 1999 September. The purpose of that trip was completely different.

It was 8th Sept 1999 when we were flagged off from Vidhana Soudha, Bangalore. Vidhana Soudha is one of the finest monuments in India. That's where the state Govt. can be physically located also. Back to the trip part...we were ten of us and we set off. It was going to be a long journey....after all we are on our bicycles (non-geared).

We had a theme behind doing this Cycle Expedition. "Aids Awareness". For that cause of spreading awareness, we had tried, practised and enacted after direction, screenplay, lyrics, dialogues...u name it.....a play...a street play to be precise. Since we were on our route to Madikeri / Coorg, we would be covering a lot of villages enroute and so a street play in local language Kannada was the best suited.

Now, we were supposed to travel not more than 50 km a day. We just covered 20-30 km more in a day;-) What resulted due to that is that we got to stay in Coorg for a longer time...coz..we weren't supposed to return before 20th Sept.!!! This gave us ample time to visit a lot of places there...and enact street plays at strategic locations in the town.

The places that we visited were:

1. Raja Seat (A beautiful view from there of the hills around)
2. Abby Falls (This we covered by walk...that's about 9 km up and 9 down!!!)
3. Talacauvery (The birthplace of Cauvery)
4. A Tibetian Monastry (This place is happening...u feel u are in tibet....totally different culture)
5. Field Marshall Cariappa's Burial Place (His son Air Marshal Cariappa and his wife were so hospitable to us...it was a pleasure to spend an evening with them for tea. I tell you, you can't find finer people than them.)
6. Nisargadama (This is a zoo...pretty neat place)

Well, as far as I can stretch my memory, these were the places that we visited. We were probably short of time to travel to more places of tourist interest. Well, it was awesome at that time of the year to be in Coorg....the weather I mean...chilly weather. Food there was amazing. A few hotels really stood out. Oh how can I forget the movie that we all watched in a theatre. A kannada movie...it was so much fun.

Publicity came to us automatically. Why not, if u do street plays at main bus stands, market areas etc...reporters will be only happy to portray you in their papers...I have a few clippings...feels good now..:-) It was an experience I must say.

This time again, I would be having a lot of fun. Added to that I would be trying to spot the places where we did the street plays 4.5 years ago...!!

Got to pack now...