I took my wife and two daughters on a road trip. We set our eyes on Munnar and decided that we would stop at places en-route that caught our interest. We made night halts at Yelagiri and Yercaud.
We didn’t pre-book any of the hotel rooms and decided to pick a hotel after we landed at the places. While checking online with very scant connectivity, one particular place caught my eye. In fact, it was one particular type of accommodation that caught my eye…a Tree House. I immediately knew this was it.
I called up the owner, Mr.Gregory Bosen, and inquired about the availability of the Tree House. When he heard that I was bringing along two kids, he was quick to advise me against the tree house as it is perched on a tree 80 feet off the ground. That nailed it! I knew this is the place for us! 
We landed up at Glenrock estates, spread over 100 acres of coffee, cardamom and pepper plantations. Mr.Greg relented seeing my perseverance and let us use the tree house.
We had to walk a good 10 minutes downhill into the foresty plantation before we came across this magnificent tree. The first thing that it reminded me of was the Eva tree in Avatar movie. It was massive and earned my complete respect. The tree would easily be over 100 years old.
While I was hoping for a rope ladder or even pegs hit against the trunk, it was a slight let down to see proper steps made out of iron rods that lead to the tree house. A little less adventurous but convenient for my wife and kids.
It was at dusk that we began to realize how lonely and secluded the place was. While there is basis light and water available at the tree house, it can get eerily lonely at night. My kids began to freak out by the sounds of the forest.
I later found out a wonderful wood house on a hill top with a brilliant view in the estate. But more importantly it was closer to the owner’s house and the kids felt a lot more comfortable. We shifted over but we will never forget the one hour that we spent on top of the tree house.
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I’m starting a mini-travelogue documenting my trip to Detroit. In this travelogue, I’ll try and capture interesting experiences along the way.
Meeting the Phantom Limb Man :
On the Feb 7th night, I head to the Chennai airport to catch my JetAirways flight. While waiting to check-in at the counter, I was pleasantly surprised to find the famed V.S.Ramachandran standing behind me. I opened up the conversation mentioning that a couple of my friends met him at Landmark book store and he mentioned that he was here for the launch of his new book, The Tell Tale Brain. He spoke about how he had another title but his publishers recommended the new one as his old title sounded too academic. Requested him for a podcast but he politely refused saying he’d rather do it after two weeks. I’ll hold him to that.
Where the $*%#& does my flight leave from?
After checking-in, while waiting for boarding the flight, I noticed that the passengers were a bit harried and bugged. I soon realized why. There was no information which gates the flights are departing from. There are 10 gates and no info on which flight is leaving from which gate. And to make it worse there was no information kiosk to ask as well. The only saving grace was that the PA system was clear enough and one had to stay tuned to the announcements to get the results.
Just 1 Internet PC?
There is just one cybercafe from AirTel inside the waiting lounge for passengers waiting to catch their flights. And that solitary cybercafe has just one computer! No WiFi as well. Can you believe this? There must be atleast 500 passengers at any given point of time and just one internet PC! I asked the guy who was manning the AirTel counter why only one, and he shrugged saying, ‘Airport authorities have allowed permission for only one computer’! Geez. He then proceeded to say that Airtel is having this couner more for advertising reasons than as a business proposition. Right. What else can they expect to do with 1 PC?!
The Nicest Lady Captain I’ve Heard.
We had a lady pilot for the Chennai-Brussels flight and the most informative one that I’ve heard in my life. Most pilots spell out basic information in a robotic way but this lady captain was having a conversation. She must’ve spoken for a full 5 minutes and in a very friendly and interesting way. She said that the flight was burning 3000 litres of gasoline per hour! She also warned early that the its quite windy in Brussels and to expect a bumpy touchdown. True to her words, the climbdown resembled a DisneyWorld rollercoaster ride.
Movies and Food.
It was a really long flight. In addition to a little bit of sleep, managed to watch two full movies. ‘The Town’ and ‘Life as we know it’. I quite enjoyed the service by Jet Airways and the food was above-par and filling.
Landed at Brussels.
We landed at Brussels airport and I expected it to be snowing. Afterall its in Europe right and was surprised that it was warm at 11 degrees.
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This post is part of the Binsar Travelogue. A group of six travel bloggers headed out on a 4 day trip to this beautiful Uttaranchal region.
On the 3rd day of our trip, we decided to rough it out. After getting pampered at the comfy rooms at the Club Mahindra resort, the call of the wild was too strong to resist. We asked Amarnath Bakshi, the resort manager, for suggestions and he told us exactly what we wanted to hear. An overnight camping in the woods. It got all of us quite excited.
There’s something about the hilly air that makes you ravenously hungry. We gorged on the food. The resort manager said that they won’t provide any non-vegetarian food because the smell of meat would attract unwanted visitors. I don’t think there were any dangerous animals around but realized that its the basic respect for the wild, just the same way we don’t play loud music or wear heavy perfume while trekking.
We spoke about our many trekking experiences. Then started antakshari, a favorite amongst the bollywood smitten locals. I knew as much about hindi songs as a fish knows about bicycles. So, played the background hummer for most part.
We retired around midnight. Each of us snucked inside warm sleeping bags. BTW, its my first ever experience in them. It was slightly claustrophobic but I had no choice with the cold.
Way beyond the mountains, were the himalayan peaks (not seen in this picture) that absolutely mesmerised us.
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It’s these small things that really make up an experience. When we entered our room at the Club Mahindra resort at Binsar, the first thing that caught my eye was this White Swan on the bed. When was the last time a simple bath towel that really caught your attention at any hotel or resort?
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This is the first in a series of posts I plan to write on our trip to Binsar.
Over two months ago, the plan was hatched to make the second Travel Bloggers trip. The first one to Coorg last year was fabulous and it made every sense to plan the second edition. We had a whole host of destination choices but chose Binsar in Uttaranchal for one reason: It’s remote location. Figure this. It takes a 3 hour flight, an overnight train journey and a 7 hour road trip via hilly, curvy roads to reach this place! I’m a big fan of exotic remote, unspoilt locale and Binsar fitted in like a ‘T’.
The six bloggers, three from Chennai, two from Bangalore and one from Mumbai, all flew into Delhi airport. We all banded together and hired a van to take us to railway station to catch our overnight train to Kathgodam. The train’s departure time was 9:50 pm and we started from the aiport at 7:30 pm. We were told that its an hour’s journey from the Airport to the Sarai Rohilla railway station and we figured we were well placed to reach in time. But boy, were we wrong!
I always had the impression that Delhi’s traffic was the better amongst all major cities. That impression took a serious beating. The Delhi traffic that evening would’ve made a tortoise look turbo charged. Looking at the brighter side, the bangaloreans amongst us felt better!
7:30 became 8:30 and we hadn’t even crossed the half way mark. We were still confident of making it in time. At 9:15, we were just a kilometer from the railway station. But we were stuck in the middle of a traffic deadlock. At 9:25, we hadn’t moved an inch and the nervous jokes turned into worried thoughts. We were mentally warming ourselves up for jumping out of the vehicles, hauling our heavy bags and making a dash to the railway station.
I got off the vehicle and approached a gentleman on a scooter in front of us to ask how long would it take to reach the station. His answer was least bit reassuring. “1 hour by car in this traffic. 20 minutes if you can run”. Not good. We had just 20 minutes with us.
By then, he had found a small gap in the traffic for him and he squeezed through to take a right turn and was gone. I returned back to van to convey the bad news. Just when we were about to offload our luggage and run, the scooter guy knocked on our vehicles window. This guy had parked his vehicle on the other side, crossed the road to meet us . He simply gestured us to follow him.
At that stage, we were desperate. We asked no questions. We urged the driver to blindly follow the fellow. We squeezed through the small gap in the road, took a right turn and entered a small gully that was only a bit wider than the van we were travelling in. After multiple lefts and rights through the Delhi gullies, we found what we were aching to see. The dimly lit Sarai Rohilla railway station board.
The scooter guy had to take a road before the railway station and urged us to keep moving. I felt sad that we didn’t stop to shake his hands and thank him. Actually guys like him deserve a hug.
We made it to the railway station 10 minutes to spare, a luxury actually. We used the time to quickly pack Dal-Chawal for all of us and rushed to our seats just in time for the train to move.
I’ll never forget the nameless good Samaritan on the old Bajaj Chetak. ( Prashanth, fellow traveller, managed to capture the guy’s number plate DL 85 P 2329). Without him, we would not have made it to our four day vacation that we were so looking forward to. This post is dedicated to the kind souls who go out of their way to help others.
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Email:Kiruba @ Kiruba.com
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