Tuesday, January 27, 2009

South Kodagu

Despite my best efforts to screw it, the first long weekend of the year went very well. South Kodagu offers a rather surprising confluence of National Parks. The abundant wildlife of Nagarhole, the barren - except for the river - Kabini forest, the exotic Wayanad and the adventurous Brahmagiri.

Add to this, the Coorgi hospitality, Coffee and the amazing diversity of languages (Coorgi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil), its an experience.









Itinerary:

Saturday: Morning Bus to Kutta. Junked our plan to go on Jeep Safari at Nagarhole. Spent a quiet evening in Irupu at Dreamland Homestay.

Sunday: Irupu Falls. Went looking for game in Nagarhole. Shot Elephants, Deer, Wild Boar and Langurs with Canon 18-50mm! Completed the circle with Kabini reservoir/forest and driving past Wayanad.

Monday: Hiked upto Narimale Camp House on the Brahmagiri trek (10 km roundtrip). Took a dip in a ravine and back again at Irupu falls. Bus to Gonikoppal and thence to Bengaluru.

Atleast two more trips to the region are in the pipeline. One to Wayanad and the other to complete the 2 day Brahmagiri/Narimale hike.

11 comments:

GuNs said...

What camera do you have man? Looks like you bought a new SLR.

BTW, new post up on my blog. An actual 'write-up' after a pretty long time. Would love to read your views on that.

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs

Balaji Chitra Ganesan said...

yes, I have a Canon XTi Rebel and a pair of lenses. the default f/3.5-5.6 18-55mm and the prime f/1.8 50mm.

FlyingHigh said...

Last time I was at Kabini, I spotted a tiger! How cool is that? Ok I will stop commenting from now on, looks like you have covered all places I've visited except coastal K'taka.

Balaji Chitra Ganesan said...

Tiger?! Nice!!

Coastal Karnataka, hmm ... sometime this summer.

Unknown said...

Wooo hoo, man. Same pinch. I have the same camera and the same two lenses. The camera is called and labelled as the EOS 400D in Europe though and that is what I have.

I also have a telephoto Canon 90-300mm lens which is a lot of fun for extreme closeups.

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs

Balaji Chitra Ganesan said...

oh, interesting telephoto choice. i'm yet to make up my mind. how does it work for you?

GuNs said...

Thats the cheapest telephoto lens out there, I believe. I bought it retail for about 150 pounds but you could get it cheaper on ebay or Amazon, I think. Its not really 'L' series quality and is pretty slow at F4.0-5.6 but it does the job.

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs

Vijay said...

nice. What is this Coorgi language...have never heard abt it...I think it is most likely a dialect.

Balaji Chitra Ganesan said...

oh, i think there'll be some other term for languages like Coorgi. Just like Tulu, its a mixture of Kannada, Malayalam and others. In case of Tulu, we know that, its original. I don't think Coorgi is original.

Everyone there is a polyglot. Coorgi and Kannada, everyone knows. In places like Kutta (right on the border), more ppl speak Malayalam than Kannada. Estate workers speak Tamil.

Both our van driver and the forest dept guide spoke Tamil (with a heavy malayalam accent), though Coorgi is their mother tongue.

KA12 said...

@Balaji: Nice pics. Guide speaking in Tamil? Isn't it great people customize themselves for tourism sake. Next time I visit Chennai, I would love to have a Kannadiga guide with us. But, I know for sure, that won't happen :)

Balaji Chitra Ganesan said...

oh the guide was not customizing for tourism's sake. the people there are multilingual. coorgi, kannada, malayalam and tamil are spoken widely. besides many of the estate workers are from Tamilnadu.


and I'm sure you'll find lots of people in Chennai who can speak telugu. and my hometown in northwest TN has lots of Kannada speakers.