Monsoon on India Travel Blog

July 13, 2010

Now that monsoon clouds have reached the northern parts of the country and have covered all of India, it is a good time to recap all monsoon related posts on India Travel Blog. I was tempted to compile a list of places to visit, but realized after going through the archives that (a) a compilation has been done before and (b) there is more about monsoons on this blog than just destinations. So, here is a list of posts, that include articles on photographing the monsoons, review of a book on monsoons, list of places worth visiting this monsoon and more. I am also updating a destination list published last year and pushing the post to the main page.

	Places to Visit. A list of places to visit this monsoon season. Some places with plenty of rains for those who love monsoons and some places that do not get the effect of monsoons for those who want to stay away from rains.
	Book Review – Chasing the monsoons. Review of the book Chasing the Monsoon by Alexander Frater – a book on everything you would want to know about monsoon in India
	Travel Photography – Photographing monsoons. Your guide to photographing the monsoon season.
	Travel Photography – protecting the camera. Protecting your photography gear during the months of monsoon.
	Monsoon Musings. Watching the falling drops and observing the world come alive on a rainy day.
	Monsoon FAQ. An FAQ on monsoon season meant for those visiting India during the monsoon months.

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Monsoon Magic – Places to visit this rainy season

This post was originally written in June-09, listing out places to travel to during the monsoons. It is now updated with a few more links to posts written since then.

	Chikmaglur. Visit the hills of Bababudangiri, Mullayyanagiri and Kemmanngundi the remain covered in mist for three months. See Ayyanakere, a large lake just outside the town at the base of the tallest hill in Karnataka. Feel the wet weather of Malnad region, see its foggy hills, gushing streams the green vistas. Chikmaglur travelogue – 1. and Chikmagalur travelogue -2
	Jog Falls. India’s tallest waterfall is best seen in the monsoon. Fog and rains play with the views of the waterfall, making it disappear and re-appear every few minutes. The waterfall is reduced to a trickle for most of the year, but if there are some good rains, return to its glory in the monsoons. Jog Falls travelogue.
	Monsoons in Coorg. When I called up a home-stay at Coorg in the middle of monsoons two years ago, the hosts politely said that it is not a good season. It was raining heavily. But it rains that we wanted to see. Two days drinking coffee, eating heavy and delicious food and sitting in the the balcony with a book watching the rains come down. One of those things called perfect holiday! Coorg in monsoon travelogue.
	Ladakh. Ladakh is a monsoon destination for wrong reasons – it doesn’t rain there while most of India is wet. The arid mountain regions of Ladakh are a unique landscape not seen anywhere else in India. Friendly people, thousand year old Buddhist monasteries, highland pastures, amazing scenery,.. There is lot to see and do in Ladakh, I spent two months there last season and came back wanting for more. India Travel Blog now has one of the longest and most comprehensive travelogue series on Ladakh.
	Cherrapunjee or Sohra. It was once the place that held the world record for highest annual precipitation. The record was taken away by another place not far away, but the charm remains. Like Coorg, this is another place where you go to see the rains. Cherrapunjee travelogue.
	Shivanasasmudra. The twin waterfalls, probably largest in the region in terms of volume of water that goes through them, gain strength with the progress of the monsoons. Shivanasamudra images and information.
	Lahaul and Spiti. A neighbour of Ladakh. This is another area where it doesn’t rain when rest of India is witnessing monsoons. The region has some of the most beautiful mountain ranges that India can boast of. Lahaul and Spiti Travelogue.

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A short visit to Chikmagalur

October 6, 2009

I spent the September busy, if not pretending to be busy. To tell you the truth, all I did was to travel and muse about travel. A trip to Shimla kept me in in a mood for mountains for a long time, when all I did was to let my thoughts linger there. As they often say these days, I needed another holiday to get over the holiday mood.

This time the destination was the hills of Mullayyanagiri bordering the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary. It was going to be an inactive holiday – no intensive travel, no exploring, no photography. No activity, that’s all!

chikmagalur roads

A file photo of a road near Mullayyanagiri

We had left Bangalore on a rainy afternoon and arrived at Chikmagalur at 11pm – a little later than we would have liked to. It was still drizzling as we got into the rugged jeep that took us deeper into the hills. We drove on a wet and misty road towards the hills of Mullayyanagiri with no thoughts in the mind but to quickly reach the destination and retire for the day. I would have liked it if we were on this road during the day, when one could see the lush grass on the slopes, and when weather permits, rolling hills or the plains of Chikmagalur. But not to feel bad, we were to spend two days in a coffee estate nestled in the depth of these hills.

With us in the jeep was Prasad, the cheerful driver and the estate manager Cariappa. Cariappa kept to himself first but quickly got talking when Prasad started a conversation.

‘I have been managing the plantations here for 33 years now. There are multiple estates spread in different locations around Chikmagalur…

‘I am from Ammathi at Coorg. I would like to go back to Coorg now but they would not let me..’

‘We always used to spot some or the other wild animals on the way to the estate. There was nothing today, not even a deer or boar..’

We reached the estate exactly at midnight. Having arrived in the dark, I had no clue about the location and setting of the estate. It wasn’t much different next morning either, when I woke up to see a thick fog blocking my views. But with whatever little I could see through the fog once in a while, it did seem like a beautiful place. Occasional holes in the blanket of moving fog revealed me a hill covered with thick tropical vegetation at its base and a silver-oak plantation near its grassy ridge. It seemed like there was a valley far below hidden in the fog that I would never get to see in the days I was to spend there.

mullayyanagiri

A file photo of hills near Mullayyanagiri

Within my views were the coffee plants spread on the slopes, a few buildings within the coffee estate and the dirt roads that crisscrossed the area. A silhouette of tall Silver Oaks stood parallel to each other in the fog. The trees in the estate looked wet, fresh and green, washed by three months of monsoons. The place looked mysteriously beautiful in the foggy weather, but left me in anticipation of seeing the landscape behind the depth of the fog.

Sitting back on my chair in the balcony with a book in my hand that morning, I watched the wind carry the clouds away and bringing in a fresh lot every now and then. The day was just unfolding for me, and also for the birds in the forest. I excitedly watched a barbet land on a tree very close to where I sat. A grey wagtail came closer and landed on the roof before it saw me and flew away. Malabar Parakeets made long distance flights between gaps in the canopy, squeaking loudly in flight. Red Whiskered Bulbuls inspected the nearby bushes, probably in search of worms. I watched them all, drowning cup after cup of hot filter coffee that compensated for the cold mountain breeze, occasionally glancing at my book when the outside world fell silent.

malabar parakeet

File photo of a Malabar Parakeet in Bhadra Wilderness

On a long walk past the estate later in the day, the magic of the monsoon unfolded in the slopes of the coffee country. I saw along my way, a bell-shaped purple flower with tiny water droplets on its petals that kept it fresh and beautiful. As I bent down to take a closer look, a tiny insect walked out from the heart of the flower, having had a stomach full of nectar. I peeped in closer to see two more of its kins busy feeding. A little later, I found a bee-like insect hovering over small yellow flowers, sucking the juice with ease with its long and sharp suction pipe located on its nose, which allowed it to easily delve deeper into the flower. Big butterflies of all colours hovered on the blooming flowers – one with a greenish wing with a strip of bright white, another with dark wings with a sparkling blue patch and another one bight yellow.

Up on the trees with their barks crowded with lichens, birds fluttered and sang happily. I saw a scarlet minivet that stood out in the greenery with its crimson plumage, a bunch of babblers, a flock of white-eyes and a large number of bulbuls. A hawk cuckoo sat graciously on a branch and inspected its surroundings. On a sharp curve along a steep slope where the trees were spread thinly to keep the coffee in shade, the mid-day symphony of the cicadas amplified into an almost ear-piercing clamour. Streams emerged from the slopes, appearing pristine but probably laden with pesticides from the coffee plantations sprayed before the monsoons. Fog disappeared slowly with progress of the day, revealing smooth grass laden slopes above the treeline.

A let up in the fog reveled the valley of Bhadra later in the day. In the view was thick uninterrupted greenery covered the wide basin of the valley, with hills rising again at the far end. Reflection from the waters of Bhadra Reservoir sparkled brightly near the horizon. Fog played with the scenery like a curtain raising and falling, sometimes letting in just a glimpse of the wide expanse of the vista.

mullayyanagiri

File photo – A foggy day near Mullayyanagiri

Later in the day, I spoke to Aravaind, the estate owner and former forest ranger, about the conservation efforts in Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary. The reserve makes a good examples of rehabilitating people who once lived in the park and depended partially on the forest for livelihood. When the sanctuary was notified, the villagers in the forest were efficiently rehabilitated and every family was given arable land elsewhere in the district.

‘Some villages were deep in the forest. They had to walk for two hours to get to the nearest shop,’ Aravind told me, ‘so if they want to have some chicken for dinner, it would have been easy to go search for some fowl in the jungle than walk for four long hours.’

I have seen some results of the rehabilitation myself. In places where they had paddy fields before people moved out, you now see a bunch of bisons carelessly feasting on wild grass. Spread across an area of nearly 2,000 km², Bhadra is a tiger reserve with thick tropical forest and a population of more than 30 tigers (according 1997 census. See project tiger website). The trees here are tall and the canopy so thick, once traversing in this forest, I heard bird calls all along the way from the treetop, but never once managing to spot the origin of these sounds.

Spending another day in the foggy but pleasing weather, we drove back to Chikmagalur next day, again in darkness, again wishing that we had driven during the day.