Trip to chickmaglur

I witnessed the most beautiful sunset @ chikmaglur. This is the highest peak in karnataka and is called as Mulyangiri hill.

About Chikmaglur -> Chik means younger and maglur means daughter in kannada. This literally translates to the Younger Daughter's Town. According to popular legend, this town was presented as a dowry to the younger daughter of Rukmangada, the famed chief of Sakrepatna.

We started at 7 am in the morning from Bangalore and reached chikmaglur at 2.30 p.m. The roads were nice and weather was little hot. This was the most awaited trip as it had a gap of 4 months, which is a big gap for a travel freak like me. My last trip was sometime in oct to Kerala backwaters & Munnar. In chikmaglur we had booked a homestay. Homestay concept is very popular in Karnataka which I haven’t seen at many places in India. Homestay means a traditional house/ family invites you to stay with them and experience the place in their style. They provide you accommodation as well as local cuisine. This homestay was located in Bhadra wild life Sanctuary. It was a pretty decent accomodation. As we reached, we were served yum chicken and other delicacies (it was also the Ugadi festival which means the start of new year for Karnataka) but it was the first day of navratri and my conscious did not allow to eat. But I had made up my mind to be flexible for rest of the days for non vegetarian food, as that’s the specialty there. The homestay had hammock where we lazed for sometime, played badminton till winds started taking the shuttle far from the court. We carried cards to play in the night. There was TV in the common area but who was interested in it! Honey taught us new game called “UNO”. We enjoyed playing till 1 in the night.

Morning we went for trekking cum coffee plantation tour (chikmaglur is also famous for its coffee plantation). The mgr appointed there explained us the coffee making process, which definitely was a good to add in our knowledge database. Evening we visited Mulyangiri hills to see the sunset. The scariest part was the last stretch to hill. The road was broken and one really had to be careful while driving because the broken part was exactly in the middle of narrow slanted hill road. After we reached the hill parking area we realized it wasn’t the end of journey. There were some 490 stairs to climb to reach the top and no other ways of climbing it. Climbing stairs was quite painful. We had to take rest in between. We knew the aftereffects will be known in the night. Along with us was there a couple with a small cute little daughter who joined from homestay to the hill top trip. It was fun to have them with us. The Mulyangiri had a small temple which was active. At the hill top we realized that the next cliff was better for a sunset view so we decided to comedown and started climbing another cliff which obv. did not have any stair case. We somehow managed to reach before sunset and it was the most amazing experience there. It wasn’t crowed at all as we were just 5 and half people there. (I m counting baby to be half :P). we returned late in the night to homestay. He gave us yummy chicken and awesome food. We were drooling over it before we even could put stuff in our plates. I surely wood recommend this beautiful place to people staying in Bangalore. Worth utilizing a long weekend.