🚂magaluru (Chikmagaluru)

I have always gone on trips with friends from school / articleship / Ctc, but never with people from work. It started quite on a whim between me and a couple of colleagues, and before we knew it we had a group of 14 people readily agree to join. And thus went the first office trip, to Varkala in 2023. Like every other gang, after a couple of months since that trip we’ve been going around in circles trying to plan something similar once again - in an attempt to make it a yearly ritual. But as it always happens, the trip kept eluding us - time, budget, choice of places - each one of us wanted to do a different destination. The conversations kept happening now and then, but nothing materialised for 1.5 years.

Finally, by the end of February 2025, about 6 of us sat together and finalised the dates and destination for the trip - the Good Friday long weekend - Chikmagaluru. As we opened up the option to rest of folks at work, we arrived at a total of 9 confirmed interests (8 of us from Chennai, and one guy from Bangalore). Accommodations and travel tickets were booked. We were to take a bus from Chennai to Bangalore and then hire a van from Bangalore to Chikmagalur. 

So, Thursday night, 17 April, we take the overnight bus from Koyambedu to Bangalore. The excitement that we are actually doing the trip kept a few of us wide awake for a couple of hours, in which we ended up playing a couple of rounds of Uno and some random Youtube music quizzes. We managed to get about 3-4 hours of sleep, as the bus dropped us off at Majestic at around 5:45AM. Our van was scheduled to arrive at 7:00AM, so we had almost an hour to kill, and decided to find a place to refresh, but couldn’t find a proper place and ended up sitting outside the Metro. As we waited for the van arrive, we explored various reel options for the trip, and finalised on the cross clap transition thing (the final output was definitely worth the effort - the insta savvy trip youngsters definitely did an amazing job at editing)

Sharp at 7 AM, the van arrives, and along with it the last man of our trip, the guy from Bangalore arrives as well. It’s an AC van, having a SmartTV and all - orey luxury only. As we start to move along, the van inches forward really slowly, and guess what could be the reason - the infamous Bangalore traffic, as always. Gosh, even at 7AM on a Friday morning, the roads are jam-packed with vehicles. We stop at this beautiful and serene looking place called “Krishna Kesava” for breakfast. The place was vast and crowded, but we did manage to secure a table quickly and place our orders. To mark that we were in Karnataka, we did go about ordering Benne Dosas and Thattu Idlis. The food was mostly served quickly and turned out to be delicious. The only problem we faced was, the waiter annas never served drinking water - you stop them ‘n’ number of times and ask for normal drinking water, it never came. Sort of forced to use the bottled ones - not really a great thing! And we off continued to trod on.

Krishna Kesava’s entrance

Thankfully, the traffic thinned out a bit, but it continued to peek out at the toll gates. Doesn’t every office trip always have this one guy who’d act as the Music DJ? Well, we definitely had one, and our DJ fellow was so true to his DJing that he’d never play a song for more than one and a half minutes. Any song you request would invariably be played, but before even the charanam starts, the boy skips to the next song. After a while of trying to stop him from skipping songs, we decided we were better off not playing any music and resorted to Mafia and Dumb Charades. Mafia was quite entertaining, sort of brought back memories from our previous trip (to Varkala) when we first played this game. Dumb Charades never loses its charm  ever, right? Googling to come out with the most weirdest movie name ever (e.g. Kekraan Mekraan, Athipatti Muthupandi) it was super fun to see everyone try to act out the words and make their team find out the names.

Phew, thus flew another 4-5hours, and we were close to Chikmagalur. As we settled down to have our lunch, we started to discuss on where we could go that day. Honestly, our itinerary was quite blank. We just had a handful of places to go, and never really planned out much. So, we decide we could go to some view point for the sunset and then go back to our hostel at night. But our driver anna - I’m not really sure if he was helping us out, or was just trying to minimise his time at the wheels, definitely had other plans. He outright denied to take us to a view point for sunset, saying we didn’t have a lot of time, and the places would close their entry by 4:30-5PM, and we had no chance of reaching there by that time. But, he offered to take us to a lake, Hirekolale Lake, which was enroute to our place. Apparently, the weather outside didn’t look really promising - it was rather a bit too sunny. All of us were a bit dejected and worried about what’s the point in going to a lake in Motta Veyyil? We grudgingly agreed to his offer - but in a surprising turn of events, 5 minutes into the drive to the lake, the weather completely changed. It became much cooler and breezy. As we reached the lake, there were mild drizzles. The lake in itself was stunning - pristine waters, surrounded by peaks on either sides, a neat sidewalk - we were floored, atleast, I was. We spent a while there walking around, trying to see who could throw a stone into the water farthest, taking pictures, and not to forget, take that 3 second clip for our transition video (Yes, in continuation of the one we took at the Metro). It felt a little too awkward to request people to take that video for us, but the promise of the final output made us go for it. 

Hirekolale Lake

From the lake, we drove over to our stay, the Hosteller. Well, nestled amidst coffee plantations, this place was definitely a gem of a find - a nice outdoor common area, dorms with cool balconies, an open play zone. We freshened up a bit, and headed to the town for dinner. Dinner was at Town Canteen, another round of Benne Dosas - we were starting to get a bit tired of it. Came back to the hostel, and spent a while playing Uno, Geistes and chatting about and retired for the night. The night was cool with occasional rains.

Hosteller

The next day, we started off at about 7:30AM to go to Z point trail walk and Hebbe Falls. We reached the entry point to Hebbe around 8:30AM after having a breakfast of idlis and pooris enroute. Z point was a little further from here and we were confused for a while trying to decide which one to do first. Ultimately, it was decided that we’d do Z point and then go to Hebbe. Z point trail walk had an entry fee of Rs.118 per person (well, that’s 100 + 18% GST - ingeyuma GST moment). It’s a 3km walk one way with almost 75% flat terrain and about 25% incline. The first half of the walk was inside the forest cover and felt cool. We did encounter a small waterfall even. After this, we were almost at the top of the mountain, and directly out into the sun. And the sun wasn’t kind that day, it did get a little too hot as we ventured forward. After about 20 minutes of walk, we reached the peak. I definitely missed the monsoon greens. The grasses and the forest beneath were quite dark and dry, owing to the winter and the summer that followed it. This place takes its name as Z point trail owing to the trail resembling the shape of the english alphabet Z. The walk down was fairly easy, but quite draining because of the noon sun.

By about 11:30AM, we were back at the entrance of Hebbe Falls. To reach the Hebbe Falls, you had to take a 40-minute jeep ride and then walk down for another 15-20 minutes. The ride costs about Rs.590 per person, and each jeep had a capacity of 13 people. Unless you’ve 13 people, or you agree to pay Rs.7,080 to have a full jeep for yourself, the jeep wouldn’t start. Luckily for us, we were a group of 9 ourselves, so we quickly got another 4 people to join us. This jeep ride was just like every other jeep ride ever, jostling you in all directions, but much better than the one we had to take in Kudremukh. After a while, we reach a spot from where we are to walk down to the falls. There’s this mild drizzle in the air as you get near the falls - that feeling of water spraying in your face is something I’ll always love and never get tired of. The falls is magnificent. It pours down onto a big rock, so you are barred to go really to close it. But as it flows there are multiple little pools that you can get into and enjoy the water flow. We spend a good one hour there and are back at our jeep, for the return ride. It was almost 3:00ish by the time we are back at the entry point. We grab a late lunch enroute back to the hostel. 

We decide to explore the town of Chikmagalur in the evening and walk around the market road, buying some coffee and eating some chaat. The dinner that night was quite an experience - we waited for almost an hour at a hotel only to know that they haven’t even started preparing our orders. Eventually, we were forced to walk out and eat off a quick dinner at Domino’s and reach the hostel at 11! We’d wanted to start off early next day to go Bandekallu Gudda, but the chances of us making it there the next day seemed very unlikely after this whole dinner fiasco. So, we call it off and decide to have a slow morning. 

A slow morning, we did have the next day, strolling about the roads around the hostel. These lavendar blooms that lay strewn on the road right outside the hostel were so beautiful. Of course, some photos were taken. I even posted myself a photograph of that from the Chikmagalur Post Office. 

We bid goodbye to the hosts at the hostel and start our journey back to Bangalore, stopping enroute at the Belur Chennakesava Temple. Though a little blinding and hot, the temple’s carvings and architecture never failed to charm us. Having visited this place earlier, I tried to flaunt around the little knowledge that I’d gained previously. We wind up from the place in less than an hour and continue to trod on towards Bengaluru. During our pitstop for lunch, we were surprised with a kutti spell of rain showers which felt quite refreshing after the day’s heat. As always, as we near Bangalore; we could feel the traffic building on, and the van inching through the maze of vehicles. 

Even the ceilings had intricate carvings

Dinner was had at Bangalore Cafe, a fancy vegetarian (alas!) restaurant. Their menu had some really cool pictures of various food items and we were tempted. The mushroom noodles were really yummy. But the star of the day was the dessert - Tres Leches, and the Rishta Pucca (which was gulab jamun with vanilla icecream with a very generous drizzle of nuts on top). With this dinner, the trip officially came to an end, as we walk along to the bus stand and board our bus home!

The amazemax Tres Leches

It’s definitely a trip to cherish - the people and places, with lovely memories, for which I shall forever be grateful.